Sigh....

[Mary S]

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=2243034



Does this bother anyone else as much as it bothers me? We've become "enhanced" to the detriment of sports....

[-Metablade-]

I wonder of Bill can lend some expertise:
Bill, is there any way that a person can have unusually high levels of Testosterone naturally? Or are the levels they are testing for way above the threshold of what is considered the borders of someone who produces a lot of it?
I wonder if they doing any sort of comparison of his levels before the race?
How do they know he just isn't a natural hormone factory?

[IJ]

There's a range of normal for all endocrine tests, and the normals depend on the situation in which they're drawn. For example, the level of a hormone that raises calcium may be in the normal range, but its too high if the calcium at the moment its drawn is also high; the hormone should be suppressed.

I'm sure he's been tested before and they could compare the befores and afters, and I'd be shocked if they didn't have endocrinologists weigh in on how competition could change these results. Whenever something made by the body is studied, a little variation is expected, and if these guys put this on the news, I'd be fairly confidant the value they got is well beyond normal variation.

[Aaaargh]

On the other hand- a normal range that's defined by inclusion of, say, 99% of the population at large, might be an inappropriate range for a population of elite athletes. Only those with tons of natural testosterone are likely to make it to a competition like the Tour de France.

That said, I have no idea how they do these tests and set their normal ranges, but I have to hope they know what they're doing.

[Gene DeMambro]

O the day he flamed-out in the mountains, he drank some beer and Jack Daniels to drown his sorrows. The next day he staged a comeback for the ages. There are some studies to show that booze will increase the epitestosterone ratio, and he was tested the day after he drank some alcohol.

It could also be that he used a performance enhancing substance way before the Tour and it just now is being detected. Also, he does have an exemption to allow for Cortisone injections for his arthritic hip.

Who knows, but if his second test shows up dirty then it looks suspicious. Which is too bad, as I've been singing his praises since he won.

Gene

[f.Channell]

At the turn of the century many pro baseball players were using cocaine and a host of other drugs. why do we make such a big deal about this now?
At what point do things go from being natural to illegal.

F.

[Stryke]

At what point do things go from being natural to illegal.

that would be when it`s legislated against .

I`ll wait till all the results are done , but cheats should be punished .

[Bill Glasheen]

The issue here isn't high testosterone levels. That's not how the drug test works. There are indeed people who have high testosterone levels. The way this particular drug test works is to test the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone. Normally that ratio is not much over 1 to 1. When that ratio exceeds 6 to 1, then it is assumed that the excess testosterone is likely of external origin.

It could be a bad result. Mistakes are made in the lab. We'll have to see how the "sample B" tests out.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

This is still rumor and innuendo. But if true, it doesn't look good. There's no way to do a tap dance around the carbon isotope test.

- Bill

Some of Landis' Testosterone Said Not Natural


By JULIET MACUR
The New York Times

Tests performed on Floyd Landis’s initial urine sample showed that some of the testosterone in Landis’s body came 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.

That finding contradicts what Landis has claimed in his defense since the disclosure last week that he tested positive for an elevated ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone after his decisive performance in Stage 17 of the Tour de France. Landis won that stage in the Alps and improbably climbed to third place over all after he had struggled and plunged to 11th place the day before. He went on to claim the Tour title.

During a news conference in Madrid on Friday, Landis said: “We will explain to the world why this is not a doping case, but a natural occurrence.” He explained that the testosterone levels throughout his career were “natural and produced by my own organism.”

But the French national antidoping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry performed a carbon isotope ratio test on the first of Landis’s two urine samples provided after Stage 17 of the Tour de France, said the person, who works in the cycling union’s antidoping department. That test was done after Landis’s ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was found to be more than twice the allowed under World Anti-Doping Agency rules, the person said. The rules limit the ratio to four to one. The normal range is between one to one and two to one.

Landis’s personal doctor, Dr. Brent Kay, of Temecula, Calif., said the initial result was a false positive. He did, however, acknowledge that the test found a ratio of 11 to 1 in Landis’s system. He and Landis are seeking an explanation for that high level.


“I’ve seen body builders with numbers 100 to 1,” Kay said. “Although Floyd’s was elevated, it’s not off the chart or anything.”


The carbon isotope test examines the testosterone and determines if it is natural or synthetic. The test found that Landis had synthetic testosterone in his body, the person said.


Landis, who is in New York after canceling or postponing several talk show appearances, could not be reached for comment this evening.


The urine sample Landis provided after Stage 17 was divided into an A and a B sample. Landis received the test results of the A sample last Wednesday, and he had five business days to request an analysis of the B sample. Confirmation of the A sample result is needed for any doping violation to occur. If the B sample comes up negative, the case is dropped.

{snip}

Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency and a professor at New York University School of Medicine, said Landis would have several options if his B sample shows the presence of exogenous testosterone.


“The rules say that it is a violation, but if you can show that the athlete had no fault or no significant fault, there could be a mitigation of the sanction,” he said. “No matter how it got there, the athlete has to show how it got into his or her body. It could have been sabotage or contaminated dietary supplements, or something else, but they have to prove how the testosterone got there.”

[Mary S]

The issue here isn't high testosterone levels.

Actually, MY issue is why people who I look upon with admiration for their amazing feats of athleticism cheat and then lie about their cheating.

I couldn't care less what he injected/swallowed/smoked....just don't do it when you know there are rules against it and lie about it. That puts you below the belly of the worm in my books.

I saw the funniest thing on the tube the other night about this, a comedian talking about doping and illegal supplements/drugs in sports and wondered why curling has never been tainted by such scandle suggesting it was the only clean sport left (if one considers it a sport).

[Bill Glasheen]

wondered why curling has never been tainted by such scandle suggesting it was the only clean sport left (if one considers it a sport)

There's always golf...

- Bill

[Bruise* Lee]

Testosterone Said Not Natural

Remember that it was a French lab that tested, and I believe .... if I am not mistaken.... that the French consider testosterone to be foreign to a males body.

[Asteer]

This article on the subject may be of interest...

http://www.johnberardi.com/index.htm

Things are not always black and white...
Who knows?

[Bill Glasheen]

The article is a good one.

Floyd had at least 6 biological samples collected and tested during the Tour de France. Five of them came back clean. One of them, however, allegedly contained a high amount of testosterone relative to epitestosterone.

{snip}

But get this - Floyd was tested on three consecutive days. Interestingly, he was "clean" on day 1, "dirty" on day 2, and "clean" again on day 3. Something sounds kinda fishy, eh?

I agree. Plotting the data out may show that point to be an anomaly. For those who took a little math, anyone who plots a trend and sees a point in that trend that makes the curve not continuous and/or differentiable should suspect something odd.

The body just doesn't work this way.

However...

The T:E test has so many problems that a newer test - a test that determines whether an athlete has exogenous testosterone in his/her body - has been developed. This techinque is called isotope ratio mass spectrometry.

I'm not really sure why this technique hasn't been used yet while the flawed T:E test is being used - but that's for cycling officials to address. If this test comes out containing exogenous (external) testosterone, then the case is more certain.

If we believe the heresay, it has been done and came out positive.

But it's heresay for now.

the French consider testosterone to be foreign to a males body.

- Bill

[Mary S]

Second test, same as the first,
A little bit cloudy, a little bit worse....

That's it. I've become jaded.