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Landis Test's High for Testosterone!
Just in from CNN. Seems he tested high the day he won stage 17 - THE STAGE. Petrol - what natural explaination could there be? I have never heard of extra testosterone in ones system helping for a specific day - I thought it was a long term program....
Comments
Firstly as an endurance sport why would a cyclist want to use an anabolic steroid. The drug of choice for cyclists is EPO.
Secondly it takes a long while for the affects of any anabolic steroid to take affect. Anabolic steroids allow you to train harder for longer and reduces the muscle breakdown phase after training, thats why they are favoured by sprinters.
Now to Landis. Now as I understand it WADA have reduced the cut off level for which an athlete can have a positive result for testosterone. That has resulted in a large number of positives over the last 2 years.
Its possible for an athlete to have a higher level of testosterone just out of natural variation but one assumes that WADA would have accounted for this in their tests.
In all probability the B test will be positive as well. So under the rules of strict liabilty Landis has to account for this high level.
The state of the art test for testosterone is known as carbon mass spectrometry. In short one looks for the amount of Carbon 13 isotope within the the body's testosterone.
Carbon obtained from purely dietary means produces a level of only 1% Carbon 13 ( C13)in normal testosterone.
However synthetic tetsosterone has a much higher level than this. If the lab tests show Landis having a higher than normal levle of c13 in his testosterone his ass is grass!!!!
Overhere he's called "Fraud Landis" already....
Just like a single injection of testosteron is going to help you the next day. It's just too random, they should have noticed it in earlier stages.
Basic sreeining test are carried out first before deinitive positives are made public. Otherwise the testing agency and ruling bodies are open to litigation.
However, he says the chances of this being a false positive are next to nil. Why? Because what they are looking at is a ration of testosterone to epi testosterone. The ration in Landis' case was to LOW on the epi not too HIGH showing that he did not take any testosterone enhancing drugs - but he had no idea what would cause a drop in the epi number. Specualtion has it that the effort he put out on the stage in question could have caused a reaction from his body to alter the epi number.
If any of this akes sense to you Petrol let me know - well it kinda makes sense buthow close to real physio science is this theory?
the whole thing still doesn't tell us what the point of having a high testosterone level would be... especially just for one day.
he told larry he'd been tested 17 times during the tour, only once did he show high testosterone levels. doesn't make sense, but hey, i'm not a doctor
Testosterone exists in the body as the active testosterone and the inactive epitestosterone. In the normal ratio of 1:1 in most people. A ratio of 6:1 was considered as positive. This was reduced to 4:1 2 years ago.
The science assumes that thsi ratio applies to athletes under sporting conditions but there are not enough randomised clinical test to proove this.
As I see it if Landis test consists totally natural testosterone and no synthetic derivatives, the guy can't be banned. There are enough extenuating circumstances to explain this. Abnormal metabolism, stress from his arthritic hip etc.
Contrast Landis' situation to Gatling's. Now Gatling's test comprised of purely synthetic testosterone. Now what's that doing in his body, Hence he will get a life ban.
One thing that puzzles me is how the labs differentiate between natural testosterone and synthetic T.
Aren't they both C19 H28 O2 in similar ring formations?
Is it the other compounds which could be associated with the natural form that are actually the indicators?
Spin
Today I heard that Landis himself hasn't asked for a 'contra-expertise'. The UCI itself has started action now to know what the results of this second test are.
I suppose the test that should make clear whether there are synthetic derivatives isn't part of the contra-expertise??
He's got some 'splainin to do.
Nice one Ned...