I'm still puzzled over why Floyd Landis might have taken testosterone. After all, bicyclists are supposed to be svelte, and injecting yourself with a little hormone the night after a tough ride probably wouldn't lead to increased muscle recovery in time for the next day's race. So why do bicylists (like this guy) do it? Well, it seems that the only immediate effect testosterone has is psychological. The former cyclist Jesús Manzano put it bluntly: "Testosterone gives you a euphoria." Lab experiments with hamsters seem to confirm this. As researchers at USC note, "Testosterone overdose resembles opiate intoxication."
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One only has to turn on a TV, or browse through any news site, to read the story of disgraced Tour de France winner Flloyd Landis. Landis, an American, was reported to have an abnormally high testosterone to epitestosterone ratio in one of his urine samples given right before the end of of the race…
Floyd Landis, most recent winner of the Tour de France, has tested positive for testosterone use:
Landis denied cheating and said he has no idea what may have caused his positive test for high testosterone following the Tour's 17th stage, where he made his comeback charge last week. But he aims to…
As some of you may have noticed, I have been keeping up with the science of Floyd Landis's failed drug test in a rather long post here.
In the post, I mentioned that there is another test besides the Testosterone to Epitestosterone ratio (the test he already failed) that they can use to check…
After the whole Floyd Landis thing, I wrote a long post about the science of detecting steroid abuse. The primary test uses something called the T/E ratio to determine whether the athlete has injected steroids. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has a maximum T/E ratio of 4. If an athlete gets…
Several curious things about the case:
1] Reports of the test were a ratio of 11:1 [test:epitest], with up to 4:1 being normal. What were his results after Alpe d'Huez and the other stages where he had the yellow jersey?
2] If he took testosterone before the stage, why did he win it, knowing that he would be tested?
3] One could easily mask the ratio by taking some epitest with the testosterone. Why didn't he do that?
4] Landis claims his abnormal ratio may be the result of a hypothyroid condition. It's hard to believe that someone who is hypothyroid could perform any endurance athletic event well [symptoms include weight gain, sloowed metabolism, diminished cardiac output, loss of muscle tone].