- Mar 18, 2009
- 14,644
- 72
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He also said:
That was the hypothesis that a lot of people came up with and I couldn’t defend against it at the time because I couldn’t just say ‘This is when I did the transfusion and this is when the positive test came.’ But then they went back and ran the B samples on other tests and the pattern of the positives they came up with can in no way be related to the blood bags. It just doesn’t make sense. And the complexity of the test made it so that they could convict me without anybody actually looking at what they actually did. That lab…they probably do some good tests but the results they came-up with were absolutely senseless. They really never did identify testosterone. And the dumb part is…I actually took testosterone the year before that - the cream stuff I used the entire race - and I was tested and nothing came up. But then I decided if I am going to carry around drugs, I might as well carry around something that’s in a syringe. Doing testosterone was easier but growth hormone worked better.
It felt better. The effects of these hormones are delayed. It’s not like taking an amphetamine or a drug where you feel something different immediately; you really have to pay attention because the differences are subtle. Some anabolics work faster than others; some cause you to retain water more; for me, the growth hormone didn’t make me feel as stiff and bloated as the testosterone did. And there was no risk (of detection) with the growth hormone at all, apart from just physically having it, so I just decided I would do that. USADA (the United States Anti Doping Agency) have asked me to try and reconcile the tests with what happened, and I don’t want to discredit them or WADA (the World Anti Doping Agency) because I do think that there are some people there trying to do the right thing, but I stand by my argument that if you are going to have this strict liability thing, where people are responsible for everything they’ve got in their system, then you better get it right. I did use testosterone leading-up to the Tour, and I know what the clearance rate is, and I know more now about how the carbon-isotope test works and how long the delta change in the carbon isotope should last and how it should degrade over time and I can’t match it up with a blood transfusion. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
That was the hypothesis that a lot of people came up with and I couldn’t defend against it at the time because I couldn’t just say ‘This is when I did the transfusion and this is when the positive test came.’ But then they went back and ran the B samples on other tests and the pattern of the positives they came up with can in no way be related to the blood bags. It just doesn’t make sense. And the complexity of the test made it so that they could convict me without anybody actually looking at what they actually did. That lab…they probably do some good tests but the results they came-up with were absolutely senseless. They really never did identify testosterone. And the dumb part is…I actually took testosterone the year before that - the cream stuff I used the entire race - and I was tested and nothing came up. But then I decided if I am going to carry around drugs, I might as well carry around something that’s in a syringe. Doing testosterone was easier but growth hormone worked better.
It felt better. The effects of these hormones are delayed. It’s not like taking an amphetamine or a drug where you feel something different immediately; you really have to pay attention because the differences are subtle. Some anabolics work faster than others; some cause you to retain water more; for me, the growth hormone didn’t make me feel as stiff and bloated as the testosterone did. And there was no risk (of detection) with the growth hormone at all, apart from just physically having it, so I just decided I would do that. USADA (the United States Anti Doping Agency) have asked me to try and reconcile the tests with what happened, and I don’t want to discredit them or WADA (the World Anti Doping Agency) because I do think that there are some people there trying to do the right thing, but I stand by my argument that if you are going to have this strict liability thing, where people are responsible for everything they’ve got in their system, then you better get it right. I did use testosterone leading-up to the Tour, and I know what the clearance rate is, and I know more now about how the carbon-isotope test works and how long the delta change in the carbon isotope should last and how it should degrade over time and I can’t match it up with a blood transfusion. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
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