The official CBS 60 minutes thread

[thehog]

that's interesting. depending on how much credibility you give Saugy, it might suggest that Floyd got screwed afterall.
Why would Saugy support Floyd if he wasn't sure that Floyd's sample was actually screwed with or badly handled or infact negative?

Floyd was screwed. Badly. I mean there's Armstrong ducking and weaving on EPO positives then Floyd gets pinned on T/E ratio! I mean come on!? Same goes for Tyler. How did the entire USPS team take massive amounts of drugs and never get hit whilst Ty & Floyd get snaked with a sissy positive like they did. No one has tested positive for the same ratios since.

Now Floyd and Tyler were doping but to get pinged they way they did was way way strange.

 

[Benotti69]

<snip>


BTW Floyd just tweeted a link to an article saying that LA won the PR battle yesterday, odd -> http://twitter.com/#!/GreyManrod/status/76321576815042561

I think Landis has his tongue firmly in his cheek.

 

[ansimi]

Fabiani:

"In an investigation characterized by unlawful leaks, it is amazing how quickly the leaker responded to today's `60 Minutes' letter, by reaching out to the AP in Los Angeles, and leaking some more. It is time for the press to stop giving comfort to this lawless form of character assassination and name names. Who is leaking this information? Whoever is doing so is committing a crime and should be investigated for it."

This is the same guy who's been saying over and over that it's a waste of resources to investigate drug trafficking, fraud, and a host of other crimes...but media leaks on the other hand...

 

[webvan]

Hehe...

I think Landis has his tongue firmly in his cheek.

Yes! That article did conclude on a PR win for Armstrong though!

Floyd was screwed. Badly. I mean there's Armstrong ducking and weaving on EPO positives then Floyd gets pinned on T/E ratio! I mean come on!? Same goes for Tyler. How did the entire USPS team take massive amounts of drugs and never get hit whilst Ty & Floyd get snaked with a sissy positive like they did. No one has tested positive for the same ratios since.

Now Floyd and Tyler were doping but to get pinged they way they did was way way strange.

I don't know if we have the exact dates, but didn't TH get popped after Floyd refused to re-sign with USPS (because he was scolded by JB for racing too hard in the Alpe d'Huez ITT according to what he told Kimmage) and joined TH and Phonak? Was it maybe a warning sign to Floyd (whom LA probably feared after his excellent 2004 TDF) that there would be no "taking care of it" anymore? I would put that past LA and Heinie. Not so sure about Floyd's positive though..."If you leave and win the Tour you won't be keeping the title"? He would probably have told Kimmage...

 

[Benotti69]

Hehe...


Yes! That article did conclude on a PR win for Armstrong though!


<snip>

I think he has lost the PR war. He may be lucky to save a few of his fans but it is game up at this stage.

I am of the belief that Wiesel is hanging Armstrong out to dry as slowly as possible while he tidying up his own house to lessen the damage for when the dam burst and the flood waters reach his door, which i hope he gets done as much as Armstrong.

 

[dancing on pedals]

looking back it does seem odd that so many former Armstrong team mates got hit with doping bans, after they left the team ......................
thanks

 

[webvan]

Clearly any protection they may have had was gone. There could be mode to the timing of the TH positive though. What goes against that is that Landis never said anything about it AFAIK, event to Kimmage.

 

[Merckx index]

Floyd was screwed. Badly. I mean there's Armstrong ducking and weaving on EPO positives then Floyd gets pinned on T/E ratio! I mean come on!? Same goes for Tyler. How did the entire USPS team take massive amounts of drugs and never get hit whilst Ty & Floyd get snaked with a sissy positive like they did. No one has tested positive for the same ratios since.

Now Floyd and Tyler were doping but to get pinged they way they did was way way strange.

I don't think it's out of the question they were set up, but there is nothing in the linked Saugy article that suggests he felt Floyd's positive was rigged or unfair. His statement was basically support for a passport-type of system, recognition of the difficulty of testing for micro-dosed substances. I don't know of his relationships with riders, but nothing in that article, either, about being chummy with them and telling them how to best tests.

Better evidence for Floyd might be a) the unusual IRMS profile, in which not all the metabolites were at criterion; b) the fact that the T/E was thrown out by CAS on technicalities. Though I felt all along the evidence convicted Floyd, his numbers were not by any means a textbook example of what testosterone doping is supposed to look like.

There were peculiarities with Tyler's positive, too, as has been discussed here before. It has been suggested that some of the anomalies might be explained by a mixup of blood bags. Actually, though, this would be one case where contamination would be very easy to carry out. All you would have to do is put a very tiny amount of foreign blood into Tyler's to get his results. That would explain why the foreign antigen levels were so low. Of course, Tyler tested positive twice, so you have to theorize this was done twice.

But Tyler's situation makes an interesting contrast with the 99 samples, where it would be very difficult to get the results with spiking. For someone who had access, spiking Tyler's blood would be a piece of cake. You could even use your own blood, draw out a few ml with a syringe, that would probably be enough. You would have to know enough about the HBT test to understand that it's sensitive to small amounts of foreign blood, and also enough about transfusions in general to realize that a few ml of incompatible blood are unlikely to be dangerous (either that, or this hypothetical spiker didn't really care if he put Tyler in harm's way).

 

[Oldman]

looking back it does seem odd that so many former Armstrong team mates got hit with doping bans, after they left the team ......................
thanks

This is just now occurring to you? Its a common pattern for his former teammates to suffer some unexpected testing "issue", except his "brother" George.

 

[Benotti69]

This is just now occurring to you? Its a common pattern for his former teammates to suffer some unexpected testing "issue", except his "brother" George.

who maybe looking over his shoulder expecting to suffer a testing time from his little bro....

 

[Epicycle]

Better evidence for Floyd might be a) the unusual IRMS profile, in which not all the metabolites were at criterion; b) the fact that the T/E was thrown out by CAS on technicalities. Though I felt all along the evidence convicted Floyd, his numbers were not by any means a textbook example of what testosterone doping is supposed to look like.

Technicality is the key word regarding the T/E. The result was thrown out because it didn't meet the stated requirement but in reality the peaks on the GC/MS graph were very well-resolved. They didn't show any evidence of being artificially inflated by a hidden component. Seemed obvious to me that the T/E result was very likely valid.

I see 3 possibilities regarding Floyd saying he didn't take the testosterone...he's lying, somehow the sample got doctored before it reached the lab or something like he got rubbed down multiple times with testosterone cream by a soigneur but didn't realize it. I think the last option is most probable.

 

[MR_Sarcastic]

I guess the ends justify the means.

(and sells a hell of a lot of air time.)

Didn't we just go through this sort of thing about "somebody's" Birth Certificate??

I guess the French have it right....Guilty until proven innocent.

 

[mewmewmew13]

How about:

"A person on the cyclingnews forum familiar with the case told AP....."

Hog! you didn't....

 

[I Watch Cycling In July]

Frosty & Mercx,

But after Landis made his allegation last summer,Saugy approached Howman during meetings in Lausanne, expressing concern about a “suspicious result” he had discovered during a doping analysis years previously, Howman said.

“What he did was quite professional and quite proper,” Howman said. “I stopped the conversation. I put him in touch with the right people.”

This was reported in several places after the 60 minutes episode.

Whether Saugy really told contradictory stories to the press and feds is still open for debate IMO. Something along the lines of "I had good reason to believe that the samples were LA's because XYZ but I can't 100% confirm they were his" to the feds and "I wasn't sure who the samples belonged to" to the press. Add a bit of paraphrasing and some interpreting inaccuracy and the result is an apparent contradiction.

I don't insist on this interpretation, the delay in providing the results he talked about is certainly difficult to interpret in Saugy's favor. But I want more information before deciding whether Saugy was corrupted, the whistle blower, or both.

 

[VeloCity]

I see 3 possibilities regarding Floyd saying he didn't take the testosterone...he's lying, somehow the sample got doctored before it reached the lab or something like he got rubbed down multiple times with testosterone cream by a soigneur but didn't realize it. I think the last option is most probable.

Seem to remember that there was some speculation that he may have transfused with blood that had testosterone in it.

 

[thehog]

Agree with everything you write.

I didn't mean to imply that Floyd or Tyler samples were spiked. What I meant was with the entire peloton doping & routinely talking about it and with Armstrong ducking a weaving A sample positives it's almost if Floyd and Tyler's positive were "selected".

Why them and why for the "type" of positive they received?

Saugy didn't think Floyd was set up he thought that it was odd that ge could be sanctioned on the results in his urine. Saugy had seen a lot in his time. Floyd's positive baffled him - why a red flag.

I don't know. But I do know Saugy hasn't told us the full story. Like I said he met with many athletes. He liked them. Thought he was helping. Perhaps he was leant on to go see Lance and explain the science.

Simply stated the lab needs to keep itself independent from the ruling body and the athlete.

I don't think it's out of the question they were set up, but there is nothing in the linked Saugy article that suggests he felt Floyd's positive was rigged or unfair. His statement was basically support for a passport-type of system, recognition of the difficulty of testing for micro-dosed substances. I don't know of his relationships with riders, but nothing in that article, either, about being chummy with them and telling them how to best tests.

Better evidence for Floyd might be a) the unusual IRMS profile, in which not all the metabolites were at criterion; b) the fact that the T/E was thrown out by CAS on technicalities. Though I felt all along the evidence convicted Floyd, his numbers were not by any means a textbook example of what testosterone doping is supposed to look like.

There were peculiarities with Tyler's positive, too, as has been discussed here before. It has been suggested that some of the anomalies might be explained by a mixup of blood bags. Actually, though, this would be one case where contamination would be very easy to carry out. All you would have to do is put a very tiny amount of foreign blood into Tyler's to get his results. That would explain why the foreign antigen levels were so low. Of course, Tyler tested positive twice, so you have to theorize this was done twice.

But Tyler's situation makes an interesting contrast with the 99 samples, where it would be very difficult to get the results with spiking. For someone who had access, spiking Tyler's blood would be a piece of cake. You could even use your own blood, draw out a few ml with a syringe, that would probably be enough. You would have to know enough about the HBT test to understand that it's sensitive to small amounts of foreign blood, and also enough about transfusions in general to realize that a few ml of incompatible blood are unlikely to be dangerous (either that, or this hypothetical spiker didn't really care if he put Tyler in harm's way).

 

[Berzin]

I see 3 possibilities regarding Floyd saying he didn't take the testosterone...he's lying, somehow the sample got doctored before it reached the lab or something like he got rubbed down multiple times with testosterone cream by a soigneur but didn't realize it. I think the last option is most probable.

So now the Landis and Hamilton positives were part of some conspiracy.

No. It didn't help that they were away from the US Postal safety net, but they were both doping and have not clearly stated exactly what they were doing to have gotten caught.

All Landis said was that he did not take testosterone, but he obviously took something to make that epic ride possible on stage 17 of the 2006 Tour.

Any excuses like the ones stated above are just a bit too implausible.

 

[hrotha]

Furthermore, hadn't Hamilton been warned beforehand because his values were all over the place? The conspiracy theory makes for an interesting story but overall, with the info we currently have, it doesn't add up.

 

[Merckx index]

Furthermore, hadn't Hamilton been warned beforehand because his values were all over the place?

Yeah, and according to Howman, calling a rider in and telling him his test results are "suspicious" is “inappropriate”.

The conspiracy theory makes for an interesting story but overall, with the info we currently have, it doesn't add up.

Yes and no. No question Tyler was blood doping during that period. You could argue he was a runaway train heading for a cliff. But what he said to Pelley, which will probably be the most sincere statement he ever makes publicly, was that he was transfusing his own blood. Doesn't matter how much of that you infuse, and what it does to your off-scores, it does not get you a positive in an HBT.

He did suggest his Olympic positive could have resulted from previous doping. Assuming he understands the HBT--he should, after all the time and money he spent trying to overturn the decision--he would only make that statement if he had been doping with someone else's blood. Still, there are anomalies in his Vuelta test results that can’t be explained by transfusing someone else’s blood in the normal manner.

But here’s an idea that never occurred to me before, and which could explain Tyler’s strange HBT results. Maybe he was intentionally mixing his own blood with someone else’s blood. Why would he do that? To reduce the amount of his own blood he had to use.

As we have discussed here before, one way to beat the passport test (and its forerunner, the off-score, in place in 2004), is to follow a withdrawal with an immediate re-infusion, and riders may go through several cycles of this during the season. But the cycle has to begin at some point with a withdrawal that is not followed by a transfusion. This makes the rider vulnerable to any testing at that time, as well as weakened for training.

These are the main advantages of using someone else’s blood. No risky withdrawals necessary, and no down time on the bike. But given the need for secrecy and compatibility, it might be difficult to get all the foreign blood you need for the targeted races. So I can imagine riders going through withdrawal/infusion cycles, but supplementing their own blood with foreign blood at times. This would reduce the amount of foreign blood they had to procure, while helping them keep to their withdrawal/transfusion cycles.

Thus during or preceding the Vuelta, Tyler might have infused, say, 500 ml of blood, but only a portion of that was someone else’s. This could have resulted in the very low levels of foreign antigens detected.

 

[powerste]

Yes! That article did conclude on a PR win for Armstrong though!

Yeah, and that article was a pathetic shill PoS. I mean, I get it that different people can see the same situation in different lights, but this Rudawsky guy needs to lay off the heany opiates...

An emotional, rambling, factually inaccurate (oh, and BTW futile) demand is "Bold"...a "Brilliant piece of media management"?

When I have my own PR crisis, I know who I won't be calling.

I'm 100% with Bugs Bunny on this one..."What a maroon!"

EDIT: And yes, Floyd's tweet was 110% tongue in cheek!

 

[rata de sentina]

Floyd gets pinned on T/E ratio! I mean come on!? Same goes for Tyler.

No one gets "pinned" on their T/E ratio. As a screening test it sucks but otherwise it's irrelevant. You should know that hog being around here for a while. If you have a theory of some sort about Landis and Hamilton then support it with some real evidence, otherwise you're just clouding the issue and giving oxygen to fruitloops.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I am of the belief that Wiesel is hanging Armstrong out to dry as slowly as possible while he tidying up his own house to lessen the damage for when the dam burst and the flood waters reach his door.

I think we'll see this beyond LA, Wiesel, even up to the UCI. As the heat increases, they won't have much issue pointing fingers at each other, as is almost always the case in legal situations like this. As the old saying goes, there is no honor among thieves.

I don't buy any conspiracy theories against either FL or TH. Floyd either received a transfusion that had T in the blood, or doesn't remember getting the T in his cocktail. I mean, if Lim, or anyone else knows, you don't really expect them to step up and correct him, do you? TH's situation is that I think the test wasn't entirely refined at that point as much as it would be later. It was enough to catch obvious blood doping, but if you'll recall he was the first person do be caught this way.

I do however feel that it's possible Roberto Heras was set-up. Not that he was clean. He wasn't. But there was an awful lot of heat on Liberty, Saiz, and himself at that time, and the way his tests were revealed, then the fact he was blacklisted from the sport, all just drew up a red flag to me looking back, where someone wanted to get rid of them from cycling. Then again, it's also quite possible he just used "too much" EPO before that final ITT, and came up positive.

 

[DISTRICT 9]

So now the Landis and Hamilton positives were part of some conspiracy.

No. It didn't help that they were away from the US Postal safety net, but they were both doping and have not clearly stated exactly what they were doing to have gotten caught.

All Landis said was that he did not take testosterone, but he obviously took something to make that epic ride possible on stage 17 of the 2006 Tour.

Any excuses like the ones stated above are just a bit too implausible.

Landis and Hamilton are both truthful and honest individuals. I believe everything Landis has said on Larry King and Tyler on 60 minutes.

 

[MarkvW]

Landis and Hamilton are both truthful and honest individuals. I believe everything Landis has said on Larry King and Tyler on 60 minutes.

I believe in Tyler's twin!

. . . and Tugboat!

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Well, it comes to a point where you have to ask whom you believe: Floyd, Tyler, George, and who knows how many others, or Lance, JB, Hein, etc.