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This is a guest post from Dana Lookadoo www.PixelPosition.com
. Dana will be receiving a free BicycleFrenzy T-Shirt for contributing an article

Is this a farce or a justification?

Floyd Landis was found guilty of testosterone doping and the 1st Tour de France winner to be stripped of his title.

Is this France vs. America? Wasn’t it France that didn’t want any websites using dot com or the English language to be available for access in France?

It’s hard to say he is innocent when tests show that exogenous (manufactured) testosterone in his system.

Why testosterone? That’s what doesn’t make sense. Testosterone is not an immediate performance-enhancing drug but a recovery aid. Men are high in testosterone anyway, which gives their bodies strength and stamina, but it’s a long-term cumulative effect. EPO, a common doping drug that is often used in kidney patients who cannot cleanse their blood thoroughly and thus produce enough oxygen-carrying cells, would be more like Viagra. Short-term performance.

Why would Landis take testosterone for a 1-day recovery? He bonked and cracked the day before on a grueling stage (Stage 16 ), and then he comes back to win Stage 17. Shouldn’t his blood show a drug that has effects like EPO?

Was he setup by someone putting “testostogel” on his skin? Someone could have run up behind him and gave him a push. Osmosis (similar estrogen patches for women) and…whallah! Positive test!

I want to believe the system works. I want to believe in Landis. Can the two beliefs coincide? It’s the issue of the use of testosterone that raises disbelief.

His power output for Stage 17, the day he kicked butt and killed everyone, was not an exceptionally high wattage. He no longer was dehydrated and recovered. Could it have also been strategy and that no the other riders were watching someone else and not paying attention to who was chasing?

The Cycling News article of Sept 20, states that ” Landis’ defense was based around raising questions about the LNDD lab and how the sample was analysed.” Chances are the test was at least close to accurate, given they took 2 samples. But the question, which cannot be proven in a laboratory is, “Why Testosterone?”