Race Radio said:
The results of the retro testing of the 99 samples say a lot. After Festina riders were scared. It shows in the test results. The vast majority of the positives were Armstrong's, who had no such concerns.
No they weren’t. LA had more positives than anyone else, but his total of 6 (maybe 8-9) was less than half of all the positives. And remember, a) as the MJ during much of the race, LA was tested probably more than anyone else; b) not all B samples from that Tour were analyzed; and c) Ressiott did not try to determine the IDs of all the analyzed samples he might have had access to. He was primarily interested in LA; the other announced positives were mostly to show that he wasn’t totally focused on one rider from the outset (though of course he was).
So I don’t buy the notion that everyone but LA was afraid to take EPO in 1999. Why should they be, when there still was no test? All Festina had taught them was to be more careful about hiding the physical evidence.
I think there are two assertions here that aren’t being separated very clearly. First, that very few big names tested positive during 99-05. Chris’ point, which I have also made here in the past, is that if LA was protected, it really didn’t figure in his results, since none of his major rivals was busted, anyway (Mayo's treatment an exception). One could argue (and I have here, in the past) that maybe LA’s protection allowed him to dope to a greater degree, that he didn’t have to resort to the carefully timed use of microdoses that other riders did. I think that’s a legitimate possibility, though of course it so far remains unproven. Even now, it’s well known that most dopers, most of the time, don’t get caught.
So it's plausible that LA could have been protected, no one else was, and that the odds were that they were going to get away with it, anyway. But while this interpretation doesn't support Chris, it also doesn't necessarily support the notion that LA's protection was what made the difference in winning the Tours. As Chris also notes, what Floyd and Tyler say is that riders were doping pretty much as they wanted, and with each other's knowledge. Once riders began using self-transfusion, they could blood dope pretty much to the 50% limit. Even now, with the passport, this method is basically indetectable, Ashenden's work, linked here a while ago, emphasizes this point. So unless LA was going well over that limit, I don't see that he was getting much of an advantage. Not unless he was using something like HemAssist or PFCs, we will just have to wait to see if solid evidence of that ever comes out.
The other point is that after LA retired, the dam seemed to burst, with major riders falling all over the place. Why? Was it because, as I think Chris suggests, that there was some protection for all riders, because the ASO didn’t want a bust spoiling the big party? Maybe, but it could also just have been timing. Police started to get involved, hence Puerto, which took down Ulle and Basso. The HBT was developed, which nailed Tyler even before LA retired, and Vino and Kash in 2007. EPO testing become more proactive, so Ricco was caught taking CERA, which he thought was safe. Some teams also seemed to take more responsibility for what their riders were doing, hence Ras was kicked out of the Tour.
Personally, I like the idea that LA knew that trouble was coming, and that’s why he retired. If he hadn’t retired, he would have been odds-on favorite to win the Tour in 2006, so why not continue racing? This really is consistent with his being protected up to then (in which case he was warned that he could no longer be), or that he wasn’t protected.
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