Tour de France champion Floyd Landis denied taking performance-enhancing drugs
Posted in Random Feed, Sports, Pop Culture on July 28th, 2006Tour de France champion Floyd Landis denied taking performance-enhancing drugs during the race, after initial tests found higher-than-normal levels of testosterone in his body.
Landis would become the first Tour de France cycling winner to be stripped of the title for drug use if the second portion of the test confirms a violation. The 30-year-old rider from Farmersville, Pennsylvania, said he understands if the public doesn’t believe his claims of innocence.
“There’s no way I’d be able to tell myself that this wasn’t going to turn out to be a disaster even if I cleared myself,'’ Landis said in a media conference call from a European location he refused to disclose. “It’s going to be a long road.'’
Landis said he had “no explanation'’ for the testosterone level, which he described as abnormal rather than a positive test for drug use.
This year’s Tour de France began July 1 amid a blood-doping scandal resulting from a judicial investigation in Spain. The probe led teams to suspend nine riders on the eve of the race, including favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso. Both deny wrongdoing, and Landis said he’s not a drug user, either.
“All I’m asking for is that I be given a chance to prove that I’m innocent,'’ Landis said. “Cycling has a traditional way of trying people in the court of public opinion before they get a chance to do anything else. I would like to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, since that’s the way we do things in America.'’
Suspension
Landis was suspended from racing, pending the result of tests on the second part of his urine sample, his Phonak team said in a statement yesterday.
The only other Tour champion to lose the title was Maurice Garin, who was disqualified from the second edition in 1904 for taking a train over part of the route.
Patrick Schamasch, the International Olympic Committee’s medical director, said in a telephone interview that a high testosterone level might be considered an anti-doping violation even if no trace of a banned substance is found.
Landis succeeded another American, record seven-time champion Lance Armstrong, as winner of the sport’s premier event, winning by 57 seconds from Spain’s Oscar Pereiro.
Landis’s testosterone reading was recorded after he won the 17th stage by more than five minutes, riding solo for 130 kilometers (80.8 miles) to get back in contention after falling more than eight minutes behind the leaders the previous day, Phonak said.
Beer, Whiskey
Landis said on the conference call that he spent the night between those stages drinking with teammates, first a beer in a bar and then in their hotel rooms from a bottle of Tennessee whiskey that “somehow or other'’ appeared.
“It wasn’t in any way an ordinary night before a stage, but in the context of things it was a way to get through the day,'’ he said.
Drug tests are conducted on urine samples divided into two parts, with one tested and the other initially sealed. If the first part shows the presence of banned drugs, the second part is tested, with the athlete able to be present and provide a defense. If the second test is positive and no mitigating circumstances are found, the athlete faces punishment, usually a two-year suspension for a first offense and loss of records. Positive cases may be taken to arbitration.
Male Hormone
Testosterone is a naturally occurring male hormone that is banned in most sports as a strength builder when it is found in certain levels. The amount of testosterone in an athlete’s body is measured against another naturally occurring substance, epitestosterone, which usually is present in a 1-to-1 ratio. The World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, says further investigation is needed if the ratio exceeds 4-to-1.
“You may normally have elevated ratios, but every time you were tested you would have those levels,'’ Gary Wadler, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine and a member of a WADA advisory committee, said in an interview. “The other explanation is that you administered testosterone.'’
According to a 2001 report by Simon Davis of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, the ethanol content of alcohol can increase the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone.
Landis had received permission from race officials to get a cortisone shot, normally banned in the sport, to deal with the pain of a hip injury, the New York Times reported July 10. He has said he plans to have hip-replacement surgery.
He also said in the conference call he had been taking a daily dose of thyroid hormone for a medical condition.
Drug History
Drug abuse has cast a cloud over the race for years. In 1967, British rider Tom Simpson died of heart failure and heat exhaustion on Mont Ventoux after taking amphetamines.
In 1998, French cyclist Richard Virenque’s Festina squad was expelled from the event after drugs were found in a team car. Four years later, the wife of Lithuania’s Raimondas Rumsas was arrested for carrying banned doping products on the day her husband clinched third place. She received a suspended four-month jail sentence last January.