Floyd Landis Is A Creative Enabler

The New York Times did a first rate job of investigative reporting on the new revelations of Floyd Landis; who now demands of USA Cycling CEO Steve Johnson an immediate investigation into his numerous allegations of prohibited substance use by his old teammates at US Postal Service. Floyd Landis basically told Steve Johnson to make a choice; investigate his allegations or claim loyalty to the doper establishment. Steve Johnson has no choice but to comply with Floyd Landis because such an important witness can not be ignored. John Fahey is in the same position as WADA president; he must order re-testing of old samples for possible prohibited substance use by old teammates of Floyd Landis; even though these samples will provide very little evidence of blood tampering; frozen blood samples render red blood cells useless; ask Tyler Hamilton who still has a Olympic time trial gold medal because the laboratory froze his confirmation 'B' sample.

Exactly, so many tests from so many riders will probably prove expensive, though worthless; and my even generate false positive results. As everyone knows with the current draconian WADA laws concerning prohibited substance use; mere existence of a substance constitutes a crime for which there is no defense!

Stored Samples Create Problems

rEPO samples stored in vaults that have a tendency to degrade over time; six year old samples that generate 100% pure rEPO isoforms are suspect in a scientific sense; hint: the 1999 Tour de France prologue results of one Lance Armstrong.

Christiane Ayotte warned that 100% rEPO isoforms are very unlikely in urine samples tested six years later; the scientific basis of her argument that rEPO is a biological agent and therefore prone to degrade with time; was never addressed by David Walsh, Micheal Ashenden, Jacques DeCeaurriz, the French Sports Ministry, or WADA. The UCI did ask questions though and the Vrijman report was the result. In the Vrijman report LNDD was accused of poor laboratory practice, lack of acceptable chain-of-custody, and poor security measures that would prevent sabotage of rider samples.

Damien Ressiot; obtained the 1999 Tour de France doping control form numbers of Lance Armstrong from the UCI. These numbers were assigned to the 1999 Tour de France rider samples that were being tested for "scientific" reasons by LNDD. LNDD did have the sample numbers included on the sample bottles and the date the samples were given...so no great deductive logic would have been needed to solve the puzzle of whom the samples belonged to. If Ressiot had some contact at LNDD.

Bingo! Damien Ressiot published the results of the LNDD research test results in L'Equipe before the results were known to WADA, the UCI, or the French Sports Ministry! The results were provided by someone at LNDD.

What are we to make of all this nonsense? Were the Lance Armstrong samples "sabotaged" after Ressiot received the doping control numbers from the UCI? Is Lance Armstrong a doper and do these prologue results of 100% synthetic isoforms prove it? There are no confirmation tests that are required by WADA; the sample must be collected and divided in half; one half of the sample will be designated 'a' and one 'b'; if the 'a' sample is deemed positive then the athlete has the right to test the 'b' saple in the presence of a representative selected by the rider.

Will WADA abandon the confirmation tests? Will USADA file an adverse analytical finding (AAF) based on an old sample result that has no confirmation test? Will the athlete be able to defend him or herself from these "new" rules?

Because even though 'Roid Floyd' did dope, he was still correct when he stated in Positively False; the anti-doping agencies will take liberties with the rules; if the rules are not written in stone in WADA code. And that is a very scary proposition.

To think after fighting WADA for two years, Floyd Landis may be the clown that enables the anti-doping agencies to hang an innocent person. That is a damn shame.