Tuesday, August 01, 2006

outlandish

From the NYT:
Tests performed on the cyclist Floyd Landis’s initial urine sample showed that some of the testosterone in his body had come from an external source, and was not naturally produced by his own system, according to a person at the International Cycling Union with knowledge of the results.
If true, that's that. Sorry, Teddy. Sorry, Sister A. I understand if others want to keep riding the Free-Floyd train, but, if true, this would be the station where I get off.

Speaking of being let down, I wanted to believe in a Woody Allen return to form after Match Point--which I highly recommend--but I just saw Scoop--which I don't. I felt like I was five minutes ahead of the plot the entire way, except for a point of confusion toward the end, which was mostly because the part of the plot resolution ultimately makes no sense (sort-of spoiler in white-text, highlight to see: the poisoning and cuff-link that animate the movie's premise end up getting explained with a quick throwaway line that I didn't even understand; if someone else who sees this gets it, feel free to explain to me via e-mail.).

6 comments:

wiscjennyann said...

There is a detailed discussion of the Testosterone/Epitestosterone ratio test, the World Anti-Doping Agency's guidelines on establishing evidence of testosterone doping and additional tests to detect exogenous testosterone (including IRMS) at Cyclingnews.com:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=features/2006/testosterone_testing

Anonymous said...

I think this is more proof of Floyd's innocence, not guilt. I'm betting on cross contamination in the lab.

Anonymous said...

This is probably because I'm lame, but I've never seen the white-text invisible ink trick before, and I totally think it's clever. It's so Harry Potter! awesome!

Anonymous said...

Well, okay, here I am clutching at straws, but I'm still withholding judgment until I see the full report, and not just a leak from somebody at the lab. I really want him not to have cheated.

The test for exogenous testosterone relies on comparing the C13/C12 ratio in the testosterone found to that ratio in some other compound found in the urine (presumably one that would not have been ingested). Compounds produced in your body tend to have a consistent ratio of these carbon isotopes, while ones that you consume are likely to have a different ratio. Nifty little test; the ratios, aren't necessarily all that vastly different, though, so I guess I can cling to the possibility that they're isn't a statistically significant difference in this case. At least until I see some more info.
Technical abstract here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10360427&query_hl=14

If Floyd did cheat, it seems to me to support what I've been hearing on rec.bicycles.racing for a while now, that doping is pervasive in pro bicycling. Very disillusioning.

jeremy said...

The Inviso-text is a trick I've seen other places (e.g., Marginal Utility). An alternative is to set up something that pops up when you hover with the definitions for the "enunciation candy" words in my sidebar.

tina said...

Teddy Love, I don't know anything about anything on this topic, but Discovery News just posted this story that says that this particular test is highly accurate.