More on Landis' Bodily Fluids

Up until yesterday, I was pretty certain that Landis was not guilty. I still felt he had a coin's toss chance to prove it, and I felt that because of the following reasons:
1) Testosterone is not a performance-enhancing drug in the short term. It helps to build muscle, which is why the body produces it in the first place. This is not a drug you would take in the middle of the Tour de France for any reason.
2) Landis' previous six drug tests during the Tour did not indicate anything unusual about his testosterone levels
3) Landis' testosterone level was very low, not elevated, it was his T/E ratio, or the ratio of testosterone to another naturally occurring hormone
4) Industry consensus (not the cycling industry, the medical testing industry) is that this test is susceptible to a wide variety of problems
5) Every test of this type that has been challenged has been overturned
6) There are many alternate explanations for Landis' high ratio, including a naturally high testosterone to epitestosterone level, bacterial contamination, hormones he takes for his adrenal glandular problem, cortisone injections he takes for his hipular problem, alcohol consumption the night before the test (variously reported as one shot of Jack Daniel's or two beers and four shots of Jack), natural depletion of hormones due to the efforts of the race, or contamination of the specimen during testing
7) You'd have to be stupid to get caught, since there are many ways to take testosterone without elevating your T/E ratio

What happened yesterday? The New York Times in this article indicated that an IRMS (isotope ratio mass spectrometry) test showed that some of the testosterone in Landis' sample was synthetic. While that doesn't change any of the reasons above, it's unlikely (at least to me) that two different tests gave false positives. There are many problems with the IRMS test as well, but... every single athlete caught at doping claims he (or she) is the isolated case of a false positive. The AP in this article said that the leak came from the International Cycling Union. [Note: I previously reported incorrectly that the leak came from the French national antidoping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry.]

Landis' B sample will be tested and the results will be announced on Saturday, but I find it unlikely that the results will be significantly different. If Landis wants to avoid a two-year suspension and being stripped of his Tour de France title, he's got some 'splainin' to do.

Read more in my series on the 2006 Tour de France:

First | Prev | Next | Last