these guys have an army of cooks and chemists hidden in the shadows, all working on building these goons in a way that doesn't get detected...

who's to know what they have found , they aren't afraid to use animal hormones, not kidding , 2 years ago , a flemish cyclist and his cook got busted with products that aren't even legal for cows...

so who's to tell how this stuff works and why it shows up in weird, and normally unlogical ways ???

if the test says he has synthetic traces of any hormones, then it doesn't matter what we know about how it should work , the boys in the shadow know a lot more , they are not limited by what testing procedures the FDA allows...they hardly have a conscience either...

maybe they found a wonder dope that we don't know the name of yet... and it just happens to show up , as a fluke, in the test as a synthetic trace of what is know...

either way , a synthetic trace, comes from a synthetic product, not a naturally elevated anything...

is this synthetic thing officially confirmed yet or not ?? haven't been watching the news much lately..

No doubt.

It is supposed to be synthetic Testosterone. The reason why it illogical to be present is that the reason for doping with testosterone is to build muscle. Landis has been tested (random I believe) a number of times during the same race without an elevated ratio. Trying to use testosterone for short term gain makes no sense. That is why this finding is illogical. It has not been confirmed. I think that the testing should be conducted by two independent labs, frankly don't have much trust in this French lab.

Peter - if a guy has a testosterone level of 11:1, as Landis had, what would be that person's eventual physique. Would he be some sort of musclebound ogre?

I ask because if you're correct, it wouldn't benefit Landis in the long run to take this synthetic - distance cyclists need to be lean and very light.

Velodrome racers or sprinters might be a different story...

Well I'm not sure you're asking the right question. The ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone (a breakdown product of testosterone IIRC) is what has been judged to be a problem. The ratio suggests either synthetic testosterone or precursors like Androstenedione. I am unaware of what would happen if the absolute level of testosterone were "normal" but the ratio were that far off. OTOH, we all kinda know what chronic Andro/DHEA users look like (see body building and Mark McGwire). (Which have elevated levels of overall "anabolic" steriods).

Oh found the WADA document if you're interested:

http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/end_steroids_aug_04.pdf#search='testosterone%20epitestosterone%20metabolite'

Also found an add for Andro that ads "test/epitest ratios of less than 6:1 in 24 hours."

In Floyd's case, its been reported by "his people" to be a low level of e, not high level of t. The only way to explain this is that either he took synthetic t (knowingly or unknowingly) to aid recovery (a technique frequently discussed, usually a transdermal patch on the scrotum) which normalized his t levels but, because it was synthetic, caused suppressed levels of e. Taking t supresses the body's production of e; or , in the alternative, some natural process caused a very low level of e.

Its widely reported that Landis's sample showed signs on spectrometry of exogenous t. That test itself is not foolproof, but it is considered to me more definative than the ratio itself.

The spectroscopy is a confirmatory test once the ratio is found to be abnormal, and looks specifically for the ratio of carbon isotopes to try to help determine if exogenous t was administered.

Landis' B sample yields a positive result, same as the A sample.

Not good at all...

As of now, he's automatically stripped of his TDF title and suspended from Int'l competition, banned from Olympic competition, and faces being fired from his team.

Harsh!:(

Yeah, he's goin' down, whether or not he doped. Still sounds fishy to me. I think that the two samples need to be tested by separate labs especially since Landis now has to prove that the synth testosterone got into the sample some other way than being in his blood for him to be cleared.

he's toast. Unless he has blood/urine samples collected from the same days and bracketed by a couple, I don't see how he can "prove" anything. I wonder if there are any of the A and B sample left that can be set to other labs for different analysis. My bet would be no...

he IS fired by Phonak
they announced that , right after the B sample results got published


he'll be riding around with a bumper sticker on his car :

"i won the Tour de France, and all i got was a stupid yellow shirt"

Poor/stupid sucker. I wonder if he tried to mask it with the beer and whiskey shots he had the night before.

"Will Ride For Food"

"Murieta to San Diego Pedicab Service" :rolleyes:

Funny how that works, no?

He's not riding anywhere with that bum hip. But he can build bikes and make outrageous statements like LeMond. Maybe end up like the Conseco of bicycling.

Yeah but LeMond has won three TdFs - legitimately.

Landis is 30. All he seems to know are bicycles and the Mennonite religion.

So it's either become a minister or go to night school.

If he built a bike and attached his name to it, so what? Can't you just hear the peloton talk: "Is that a Landis?" "Yeah." "The guy who was doped up during 'The Tour' then stripped, fired and suspended from the sport?" "Uh, yeah." "Yeah, nice bike..." with a :rolleyes: of the eyes...

As a matter of fact, Swiss-owned BMC builds Landis' bike:
...and they must be hella embarrassed on their own right now, not to mention upset about potentially lost sales. Why? Figure it this way; no one heard of Trek until Armstrong started winning Tours aboard one.

BMC still has this on their website...

Here's Landis' bike:
http://www.bmc-cycling.com/images/Pr...llow_Floyd.jpg
Damn good looking machine for $8,200.

I agree here with several of the last statements. From this point he could argue / appeal this thing until he turns blue. Still does not change the obvious.

He will lose more than just this race and all $$ associated with it. His name is now $hit. There is no 'splainin' dis away Lucy! His voice just may be next thing you hear out of your local drive-thru speaker.................asin: "Hey.......you want fries with that?"

"OK.....OK.....How 'bout some funnel cake?"

If you believe the statement quoted by Stijn that no one can win the tour without a little bit of chemical help, then GL must have been guilty too. (steriods and self transfusions were available then).

As to GL, although I was a major fan, the statements that come out of him nowadays are a few shades less than pure psychosis.
Wonder if he's getting lead poisoning (or maybe long term psychosis from steriods;) )?

I think GL is just bitter becuase he's fat.

or fat beause he's bitter.

or fat because of butter.

mmmmm, butter....

I hate to read this.,,, :(

is there really no pssibility that he was clean? He had a great inyerview in last months "Bicycling".
rats!