Friday, July 28, 2006

My Understanding of the Floyd Landis Debacle: Why I Kind of Think Floyd Is Innocent

The test that Tour de France winner Floyd Landis recently failed, raising suspicions of doping, measures not the level of testosterone in the blood, but rather the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. In other words a "positive" test could be either the result of unusually high levels of testosterone (which can be produced sythetically and taken as a performance enhancer) or ususually low levels of epitestosterone (which is produced naturally and would not benefit athletic performance). Correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong.

This is how I see it: If someone were to evaluate my diet, that person would conclude that I have an unusually high veggie-to-meat ratio. One might then suspect that I had been gorging myself on broccoli and squash; but in truth, I am a vegetarian and therefore consume very little meat (occasional seafood). With this analogy in mind, I suspect that Floyd Landis did not take illegal performance-enhancing substances.

This article from the Associated Press makes a much stronger, more scientific argument in favor of Landis.

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