News-Record.com

... re: Floyd Landis' positive drug test.

Let's leave the conclusion jumping to the French media - he's guilty! - and national pundits - is there nothing we can believe in any more?

Here's what we do know - or think we know about Landis.

1) He tested positive for an abnormally high testosterone to epitestosterone ratio after Stage 17, his big win in the Tour. Normal humans have a 1:1 ratio. In order to test positive, your ratio must exceed 4:1.

2) Yesterday, ESPN's cycling analyst John Eustice was saying that it wasn't a case of high testosterone levels that caused the positive test. Rather it was low levels of epitestosterone. However, Landis seemed to contradict that today when he announced that he has naturally high levels of testosterone and this could be an explanation for the positive test.

3) If that's the case, it seems a little strange that Landis didn't test positive on samples taken earlier in the race.

4) Even stranger is this. Some folks in the know will tell you that it takes several weeks of taking testosterone before enhanced results start showing up. This would seem to shoot down the theory that Landis bumped up his testosterone the night before his big stage 17 win. Since Landis DID NOT test positive on samples taken earlier in the race, the theory of deliberate, long-term testosterone boosting doesnt appear to hold water either. Unless ...

5) You buy into a theory espoused by a German doctor that Austin Murphy mentions in his on-line piece for SI.

6) Of course, in the same piece, Landis tells Murphy that he's been taking small does of thyroid hormone on a daily basis for a thyroid condition. Maybe that messed with his levels?

7) Later in the Murphy piece, Landis said he's enlisting the help of a Spanish doctor who has challenged dozens such positive tests and has knocked down every single one. Eustice, in a radio interview with ESPN, said testosterone tests are notoriously flaky and are routinely shot down when challenged. If that's the case, why even use the test?

As you can see, in an attempt to lay out what we know, I've only stumbled across more questions. Still, I think it's safe to say that something doesn't add up here. And that may be Landis's best defense here. I have a pretty strong feeling that the B test will also show up positive. But it wouldn't shock me if Landis gets any punishment thrown out and holds on to his Tour win.

Then it will be left up to us to wonder whether he was found Not Guilty, or whether he truly was Innocent.