Reuters: Landis fails doping test

I've always thought Lance Armstrong was incredible, because he won all those Tours de France beating everyone in a level playing field.

Everyone dopes = even playing field.

It takes nothing whatsoever away from his achievement, but it's a sad state of affairs.

That's how cynical many of us have become. Frankly, I don't care if they dope - as long as they all dope. :

 

From DocTalk, who is a very busy guy and I truly appreciate his time and response:

The body has pathways that makes testosterone and epitestosterone side by side and they don't interconnect. The accepted ratio of normalis 1:1. If you ingest excess growth hormone or anabolic steroid precursors that get metablized to testosterone, the ration increases. If the ratio gets to be greater than 4-6:1, then either you have a tumor secreting hormones, or your body has a natural imbalance or you're drug doping. Aside from the B sample, the labs can look back at previous test and determine if the T/E ratio has been stable fro a particular athlete, which would point to a naturally occuring imbalance.

Of course, there is a way to offset an elevate T/E ratio and that's by injecting epitestosterone, which would normalize the numbers.

Make sense? Thought you might like a couple of references to share with the board at your leisure.

http://www.fpnotebook.com/URO39.htm
http://www.asada.gov.au/substances/facts/testosterone.htm
http://joe.endocrinology-journals.org/cgi/content/abstract/142/2/353

 

Just on the wire...

 

In other news, I've got a natural 15-inch penis.

Honest.

 

so why did he dress like a penis at the news cofnrence?

 

The ESPN guy was saying that the ratio was high because Landis' epitestosterone level was abnormally low. I don't think I've seen this explanation in any print stories. As pointed out above, the doping test looks at the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone, which can go high because either the numerator is high or the denominator is low.

 

Lance doesn't miss another opportunity to bitch-slap LeMond...



In an interview Friday for ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong said he wasn't going to pass judgment on Landis.

"I don't want to pass judgment until we have confirmation on the 'A' sample," Armstrong said. "I'm not going to speculate; you can get Greg LeMond to go on the air and speculate. I'm not going to do that. ... I'm not going south like Greg does. I believe in the sport, I'm a fan of it and I love it."

 

Those two just love each other, don't they?

And do you think LeMond is a little irked that his bike line was purchased by Trek?

 

One other thing I'd like to hear is what can cause your epitestosterone to drop because they keep saying that his testosterone wasn't unnaturally high, it was the ratio that was out of whack.

Is this the sort of thing that can be caused by all the cortizone shots for his hip?

The ratio number I've heard is 11-to-1. Landis can't be THAT stupid, can he?