Development in the Landis case

Tony Raven said:

So there is now a serious question over whether the "positive" sample was a Landis sample
misrecorded and subsequently corrected or was in fact correctly recorded
and belonging to someone else.

What a balls up. One would think the powers that be would be on top of
this sort of thing by now, all that [censored] we've had about doping and
no-one charged. So who HAS won the 06 TdF???

Wonder who the other rider was?

Tony B

Tony B wrote on 17/03/2007 12:56 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven said:

So there is now a serious question over whether the "positive" sample
was a Landis sample misrecorded and subsequently corrected or was in
fact correctly recorded and belonging to someone else.

What a balls up. One would think the powers that be would be on top of
this sort of thing by now, all that [censored] we've had about doping and
no-one charged. So who HAS won the 06 TdF???

Apparently not. The more that has been coming out (some of it forced
legally by the Landis team and not voluntarily released) the more it
seems to be a complete shambles. Leaked documents reveal that the lab
has made multiple testing mistakes and had to withdraw positive data
against riders on a number of occasions previously. Their
instrumentation was running on obsolete software (Windows OS2 which
pre-dates Windows 3.1) and obsolete firmware that was six generations
behind the current version. They had no operators manual for the
instrumentation (despite them being available on the web) and in the
absence of the manual were operating the instruments outside the
manufacturer's specifications. It even seems now that different labs
have different definitions of "positive" so that the positive Landis
results from LNDD would not have been classed as positive by some other
WADA labs.

Quoted message said:

Wonder who the other rider was?

It appears it can be narrowed down to Landis, Honchar or a rider picked
at random (being the yellow jersey, stage winner and random rider
required to be tested for Stage 19)

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Tony B said:

Quoted message said:

What a balls up. One would think the powers that be would be on top of
this sort of thing by now, all that [censored] we've had about doping and
no-one charged. So who HAS won the 06 TdF???

The team with the best pharmacist

in message <[email hidden]>, Tony Raven

(') said:

Much has been made of the fact that the LNDD testing lab had written the
wrong sample number down on Floyd Landis' test reports and then
corrected it later. The closeness of the two numbers was used to
justify the correction. It has now emerged that the "wrong" sample
number actually belonged to another TdeF competitor whose sample was
being tested in the same lab on the same day. So there is now a serious
question over whether the "positive" sample was a Landis sample
misrecorded and subsequently corrected or was in fact correctly recorded
and belonging to someone else.

Full details on BikeBiz:
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/26138/Whose-wee-was-it

And I hear the case against Ullrich has been dropped, while the case
against Ivan Basso imploded. Without wishing to claim that all
professional cyclists are pure as driven snow, it looks like last year's
feeding frenzy of anti-doping hysteria was somewhat exaggerated, to say
the least.

In which case, *I* was cheated. I wanted to see Basso win the Tour. And
everyone interested in road racing was cheated, too - to say nothing of
Ullrich (who had what could have been a great end to his career wrecked),
Basso (who had a good chance at the Tour), and Landis (who rode out of his
skin).

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

See one nuclear war, you've seen them all.

Tony Raven said:

Much has been made of the fact that the LNDD testing lab had written the
wrong sample number down on Floyd Landis' test reports and then
corrected it later. The closeness of the two numbers was used to
justify the correction. It has now emerged that the "wrong" sample
number actually belonged to another TdeF competitor whose sample was
being tested in the same lab on the same day. So there is now a serious
question over whether the "positive" sample was a Landis sample
misrecorded and subsequently corrected or was in fact correctly recorded
and belonging to someone else.

Full details on BikeBiz: http://www.bikebiz.com/news/26138/Whose-wee-was-it

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If the World Doping Authority does not pull the accreditation on this lab soon I am going to get really [censored]. They seem to be breaking every rule in the book with still no actions against them, the fact that they dont seem to be putting up much of a defence in the media leads me to believe that they dont have a defence in this case. Whats going to make this worse for Landis is if he gets off on a 'technicality' there are those who will still believe him guilty, when it is quite possible that he should never tested positive in the first place.

jcjordan wrote on 18/03/2007 03:13 +0100:

Quoted message said:

If the World Doping Authority does not pull the accreditation on this
lab soon I am going to get really [censored].

They can't and they won't. [censored] Pound has stuck his neck so far out on
this case that any sanction of the lab by WADA would be impossible while
he is in charge.

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In article <[email hidden]>, Tony Raven
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Their
instrumentation was running on obsolete software (Windows OS2 which
pre-dates Windows 3.1)

OS/2 was OS/2, nothing to do with Windows. It was developed jointly by
Microsoft and IBM starting in 1985. During development of OS/2 3.0
Microsoft wanted to give it a version of the Windows API, which upset
IBM and collaboration ceased in 1990. Microsoft switched its
workstation development efforts to Windows NT, and IBM continued
developing OS/2. The final version of OS/2 (Warp 4.52) was released in
2001, and support was only recently discontinued.

jcjordan said:

Tony Raven said:

Much has been made of the fact that the LNDD testing lab had written the
wrong sample number down on Floyd Landis' test reports and then
corrected it later. The closeness of the two numbers was used to
justify the correction. It has now emerged that the "wrong" sample
number actually belonged to another TdeF competitor whose sample was
being tested in the same lab on the same day. So there is now a
serious
question over whether the "positive" sample was a Landis sample
misrecorded and subsequently corrected or was in fact correctly
recorded
and belonging to someone else.

Full details on BikeBiz:
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/26138/Whose-wee-was-it

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at
least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If the World Doping Authority does not pull the accreditation on this
lab soon I am going to get really [censored]. They seem to be breaking
every rule in the book with still no actions against them, the fact
that they dont seem to be putting up much of a defence in the media
leads me to believe that they dont have a defence in this case. Whats
going to make this worse for Landis is if he gets off on a
'technicality' there are those who will still believe him guilty, when
it is quite possible that he should never tested positive in the first
place.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at
least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If the World Doping Authority does not pull the accreditation on this
lab soon I am going to get really [censored]. They seem to be breaking
every rule in the book with still no actions against them, the fact
that they dont seem to be putting up much of a defence in the media
leads me to believe that they dont have a defence in this case. Whats
going to make this worse for Landis is if he gets off on a
'technicality' there are those who will still believe him guilty, when
it is quite possible that he should never tested positive in the first
place.

Sorry about the blank reply. I was one of the people minded to accept
Landis' guilt, nothing against Landis personally just a suspicion that
they are all at it.

However if the lab procedures are found to be so lax that they can't
stand up to an attack it will be a disgrace and obviously alternative
testers should be found.

You are right I will personally always suspect Landis unless the Lab is
proven to be more than incompetent. However this is just a case of the
Toothpaste not going back in the tube. In public I would fully support
the restoration of his reputation.

Nick wrote on 18/03/2007 11:26 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Sorry about the blank reply. I was one of the people minded to accept
Landis' guilt, nothing against Landis personally just a suspicion that
they are all at it.

However if the lab procedures are found to be so lax that they can't
stand up to an attack it will be a disgrace and obviously alternative
testers should be found.

You are right I will personally always suspect Landis unless the Lab is
proven to be more than incompetent. However this is just a case of the
Toothpaste not going back in the tube. In public I would fully support
the restoration of his reputation.

The bit that convinces me most now, aside from all the lab blunders, is
he was on authorised daily cortisone injections for his hip and yet the
samples attributed to him on Stage 17 show no cortisone traces. The
probability is therefore high that it was someone else's sample that
tested "positive".

Moreover medical evidence is that a testosterone shot would not only
have not done him any good in the timescale of the next day, it would
actually have depressed his performance by diverting ATP (energy) into
muscle protein synthesis. So as a way to win Stage 17 it would have
been a totally dumb drug to take.

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Rob Morley" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>, Tony Raven
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Their
instrumentation was running on obsolete software (Windows OS2 which
pre-dates Windows 3.1)

OS/2 was OS/2, nothing to do with Windows. It was developed jointly by
Microsoft and IBM starting in 1985. During development of OS/2 3.0
Microsoft wanted to give it a version of the Windows API, which upset
IBM and collaboration ceased in 1990. Microsoft switched its
workstation development efforts to Windows NT, and IBM continued
developing OS/2. The final version of OS/2 (Warp 4.52) was released in
2001, and support was only recently discontinued.

And of course there's nothing wrong with running instrumentation on
"obsolete" software. If the machine was supplied with a computer and
software, there's no need to update it to get the latest shiny software - in
fact, it's a good idea to not do this, as that sort of thing typically
requires hardware upgrades at the same time.

See eg traffic lights - nobody's complaining these aren't being upgraded to
Windows Vista rather than the quite old computers which control some of
them...

cheers,
clive

Tony Raven said:

The bit that convinces me most now, aside from all the lab blunders, is
he was on authorised daily cortisone injections for his hip and yet the
samples attributed to him on Stage 17 show no cortisone traces. The
probability is therefore high that it was someone else's sample that
tested "positive".

Moreover medical evidence is that a testosterone shot would not only
have not done him any good in the timescale of the next day, it would
actually have depressed his performance by diverting ATP (energy) into
muscle protein synthesis. So as a way to win Stage 17 it would have
been a totally dumb drug to take.

The other bit toadd is that we never hear anything about the tests on
subsequent days. Surely there would still be traces in those as well.

Pete Whelan wrote on 18/03/2007 17:56 +0100:

Quoted message said:

The other bit toadd is that we never hear anything about the tests on
subsequent days. Surely there would still be traces in those as well.

That was because the USADA at first refused to release the information
about tests on the other days at all and then refused unless Landis
allowed them to test his B samples for all the other days in the LNDD
lab. But I gather the USADA have now been ordered by the arbitrators to
release the information.

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Quoted message said:

And of course there's nothing wrong with running instrumentation on
"obsolete" software. If the machine was supplied with a computer and
software, there's no need to update it to get the latest shiny software - in
fact, it's a good idea to not do this, as that sort of thing typically
requires hardware upgrades at the same time.

We were running medical notes software on a pre-windows based
system( I called it MS-DOS, but don't listen to me)
and it worked, which is more than you could say for the posh new TPP
system they dumped on us last year.
TerryJ

Tony Raven said:

Nick wrote on 18/03/2007 11:26 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Sorry about the blank reply. I was one of the people minded to accept
Landis' guilt, nothing against Landis personally just a suspicion that
they are all at it.

However if the lab procedures are found to be so lax that they can't
stand up to an attack it will be a disgrace and obviously alternative
testers should be found.

You are right I will personally always suspect Landis unless the Lab is
proven to be more than incompetent. However this is just a case of the
Toothpaste not going back in the tube. In public I would fully support
the restoration of his reputation.

Quoted message said:

The bit that convinces me most now, aside from all the lab blunders, is
he was on authorised daily cortisone injections for his hip and yet the
samples attributed to him on Stage 17 show no cortisone traces. The
probability is therefore high that it was someone else's sample that
tested "positive".

Quoted message said:

Moreover medical evidence is that a testosterone shot would not only
have not done him any good in the timescale of the next day, it would
actually have depressed his performance by diverting ATP (energy) into
muscle protein synthesis. So as a way to win Stage 17 it would have
been a totally dumb drug to take.

Authorised cortisone injections? But those *do* increase performance,
regardless of whatever medical reason there may be for prescribing
them! If they allow that, I suspect the whole legal thing is a farce,
like most drugs legislation.

--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Chris Malcolm said:

Authorised cortisone injections? But those *do* increase performance,
regardless of whatever medical reason there may be for prescribing
them! If they allow that, I suspect the whole legal thing is a farce,
like most drugs legislation.

given that athletes are banned for minute traces of prohibited
substances which can have no performance enhancing effect whatsoever, it
is safe to assume that the original reasons are lost in the legal
shenanigans
--
---
Marten Gerritsen

INFOapestaartjeM-GINEERINGpuntNL
www.m-gineering.nl

In article <[email hidden]>, Clive
George
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

And of course there's nothing wrong with running instrumentation on
"obsolete" software. If the machine was supplied with a computer and
software, there's no need to update it to get the latest shiny software - in
fact, it's a good idea to not do this, as that sort of thing typically
requires hardware upgrades at the same time.

Lots of specialist kit uses ISA cards and RS232 serial ports - does
Vista even support ISA?

Quoted message said:

See eg traffic lights - nobody's complaining these aren't being upgraded to
Windows Vista rather than the quite old computers which control some of
them...

OS/2 used to be very popular with banks. ISTR reading that some banks
started running ATMs on Windows last year - people noticed because they
were crashing.

Clive George wrote on 18/03/2007 15:24 +0100:

Quoted message said:

And of course there's nothing wrong with running instrumentation on
"obsolete" software. If the machine was supplied with a computer and
software, there's no need to update it to get the latest shiny software
- in fact, it's a good idea to not do this, as that sort of thing
typically requires hardware upgrades at the same time.

There is if you are an accredited lab and the upgrades are to fix
deficiencies in the original software (as opposed to adding new features).

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

in message <[email hidden]>, Tony Raven

(') said:

Clive George wrote on 18/03/2007 15:24 +0100:

Quoted message said:

And of course there's nothing wrong with running instrumentation on
"obsolete" software. If the machine was supplied with a computer and
software, there's no need to update it to get the latest shiny software
- in fact, it's a good idea to not do this, as that sort of thing
typically requires hardware upgrades at the same time.

There is if you are an accredited lab and the upgrades are to fix
deficiencies in the original software (as opposed to adding new
features).

But is this the case?

I'm not particularly defending the lab. It's clear that [censored] Pound in
particular, and WADA in general, went completely over the top last year
and that most if not all of last year's 'doping' accusations were without
any solid evidential basis. However, Landis' defence team have not been
entirely free of hyperbole, either.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; An enamorata is for life, not just for weekends.