Floyd Landis Rides Again

Floyd Landis has returned to professional cycling with team OUCH, formerly known as Health Net Maxxis. Floyd Landis participated in the AEG Tour of California after a two and a half year suspension for alleged testosterone use. The Tour of California was won by ASTANA rider Levi Leipheimer.

USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart made an announcement in the New York Times that Floyd Landis has agreed to pay the Court of Arbitration of Sport imposed fine of $100,000 in installments as a condition to continue racing. The timing of this announcement during the Tour of California by USADA after months of speculation among cycling fans as to the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Mr. Landis against the Court of Arbitration of Sport in United States Federal Court seems to be another attempt at sensationalism by Travis T. Tygart and USADA. In the lawsuit Mr. Landis alleged conflict of interest among arbitrators involving back room deals, vote trading, and corruption. Mr. Landis argued that this malfeasance amounted to blatant attempts by the Court of Arbitration of Sport arbitrators to persuade Anti-Doping Organizations to assign arbitrators additional business where they could expect favorable outcomes against athletes in doping arbitration cases. Mr. Landis also argued that in his appeal against the ruling of the AAA Panel where he was found to have used a prohibited substance (testosterone) in a split decision, that the Court of Arbitration of Sport arbitrators placed future monetary reward in the form of selection and work by Anti-Doping Organizations above analyses of sound scientific evidence of incompetence and sloppy laboratory practice by Chatenay-Malabry WADA accredited laboratory LNDD.

The Floyd Landis case was dismissed without prejudice in U.S. Federal Court. Apparently a settlement was reached between the parties at the time. No announcement of the agreement was offered by either side; therefore an assumption was made that some sort of confidentiality agreement was ordered by the Court. This assumption appears to be incorrect speculation in light of the Tygart revelation to the New York Times of an agreement of a payment plan by Floyd Landis to USADA.

USADA triumphs again against a probable innocent rider, Floyd Landis, who with the existing evidence will never be proven guilty with one hundred percent certainty given the abhorrent conditions existing at the laboratory where his samples were tested. Mr. Landis seems to want to move on with his life and his career and he seems to recognize at long last that he wasted a great deal of time and money fighting a system blessed with an incredible amount of largess, where athletes cannot prevail.

Floyd has retreated into a world from where he originated into cycling, reportedly living in a cabin like Charly Gaul did, in seclusion, focused on training. His marriage seems to have ended, his father in law a suicide.

Race on Floyd and win! You are not alone. You will always have supporters in this world, chin up. And ride like the wind. VV

Lance Armstrong Scraps Internal Testing Transparency

The New York Times has reported that seven time winner Lance Armstrong will not publish the results of his internal team Astana biological profile results on the Internet as advertised. There seemed to be some concern of tampering with test results by miscreants (hackers) of the online data and speculation by people who will consider any natural variations in biological data (hematocrit values, others) as suspicious parameters suggesting prohibited substance use. Of course, Lance Armstrong has a valid argument since there has always been and will always be people with an agenda who consider his recovery from testicular cancer and his subsequent post cancer improvement as impossible without aid from prohibited substance use.

Fair enough. Longitudinal data of the sort provided by the UCI Biological Passport will encourage people to imagine things, even doping by people they hate. And the ADAMS system used by the UCI is how secure? Some cycling teams like Astana wanted to keep internal data on their riders not only to prevent team dopers from winning races, but as an insurance policy?

Why would some one suggest that riders may need additional evidence or insurance to defend themselves from unreasonable accusations when everyone knows that WADA is doing the testing and the UCI is in charge of the evidence? Christiane Ayotte, head of the Montreal WADA accredited laboratory, argues that internal longitudinal testing by teams is not necessary. Tests conducted outside of the WADA family are of questionable methods, hidden in secrecy, unreliable and invalid. Even if the testing is done by such luminaries of doping research like Dr. Don Catlin or Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard the results cannot be trusted. Dr. Christiane Ayotte also seems most annoyed with a lack of scrutiny of team rider data by WADA or the UCI. Dr. WADA argues that the testing will not conform to WADA accredited harmonious standards, the results will be a "shotgun approach" impossible to verify and even may be methods to mask doping strategies by villains intent on subverting the anti-doping effort.

Very weak arguments by Dr. Ayotte and WADA obviously. A professional cycling athlete has several valid reasons to want insurance from people like Dr. Christiane Ayotte, WADA, and the UCI. The most important reason is incompetence by the WADA laboratories and the lack of independent oversight. As Dr. Meier-Augenstein pointed out very clearly, the WADA accredited laboratory at Chatenay-Malabry France, the same laboratory that is responsible for testing of Tour de France riders, could not pass an independent accreditation audit outside of COFRAC. If LNDD is incapable of passing an independent audit for something as simple as a testosterone analysis how could anyone rely upon a WADA lab to complete correctly a complicated number of additional tests that would be needed to compile a biological profile?

Dr. Christiane Ayotte seems to think that people who question the methods and means of WADA are nothing more than sensationalists who want to make a name for themselves from the notoriety. Dr. Ayotte mentioned Dr. Paul Scott as a prime example of a seeker of "fifteen minutes of fame" by staunchly defending Floyd Landis from LNDD's sloppy lab work and illogical results. If Dr. Don Catlin defended Lance Armstrong from questionable UCI biological profile results with internal Astana team results or Dr. Rasmus Damsgaard did the same with Saxobank results WADA would accuse them of Paul Scott tactics.

Dr. Ayotte forgets that she probably testified at the Floyd Landis hearings to achieve the same result, notoriety.

Lance Armstrong probably has done the sensible thing by hiding his test results for the moment. If some parameter were to surface that might justify a investigation or possibly warrant a "adverse analytical finding" Mr. Lance Armstrong as any rider would have an opportunity then to defend himself with all available evidence.

Lets us not jump the gun on this issue and condemn Mr. Armstrong without just cause even though you may suspect him of subterfuge.

In a perfect world everyone could be trusted and secure. But this is not a perfect world.