Two Wheel Blogs

The New York Times just published an article that says the testosterone found in Floyd Landis wasn't his:

Test Said to Show Synthetic Testosterone in Landis’s Body

Tests performed on the cyclist Floyd Landis’s initial urine sample showed that some of the testosterone in his body had come from an external source, and was not naturally produced by his own system, according to a person at the International Cycling Union with knowledge of the results.

This one hot on the heals of the CyclingNews article earlier today saying the test they did on Floyd's sample was the kind that detects exogenous testosterone:

As it turns out, the semi-synthetic testosterone has less 13C than the testosterone made in the body. The amounts of these carbon isotopes are measured using a method called Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS). A urine sample that is low in 13C, compared to a standard of endogenous testosterone indicates doping.

Things are getting even more complicated for Mr. Landis.

More from the NYT article:

But the finding disclosed yesterday, based on a more sophisticated test, shows that Landis failed his initial screening and could be subjected to punishment because he had a prohibited substance in his body.

The French national antidoping laboratory in Chatenay-Malabry performed a carbon isotope ratio test on the first of Landis’s two urine samples provided after Stage 17, the person, who is in the cycling union’s antidoping department, said in an interview yesterday.

That test, which differentiates between natural and synthetic testosterone, was done after Landis’s ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was found to be more than twice the allowed under World Anti-Doping Agency rules, the person said. Regulations limit the ratio to four to one. The range for an average person is between one to one and two to one.

Landis’s personal doctor, Dr. Brent Kay, of Temecula, Calif., said he hoped that the initial result of Landis’s test was a false positive. He did, however, acknowledge that the test found a ratio of 11 to 1 in Landis’s system. He and Landis are seeking an explanation for that high level.