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Tour de France Champion Accused of Hacking
ub3r n3u7r4l1st writes "A French judge has issued a national arrest warrant for US cyclist Floyd Landis in connection with a case of data hacking at a doping laboratory, a prosecutor's office said. French judge Thomas Cassuto is seeking to question Landis about computer hacking dating back to September 2006 at the Chatenay-Malabry lab, said Astrid Granoux, spokeswoman for Nanterre's prosecutor's office. The laboratory near Paris had uncovered abnormally elevated testosterone levels in Landis' samples collected in the run-up to his 2006 Tour de France victory, leading to the eventual loss of his medal."
Why does the heading refer to him as a champion? He is no champion. He cheated and had lost the medal.
actually engaging in it.
As someone who grew up in Floyd Landis' hometown...German Mennonites are not really comparable to Amish when it comes to the use of computers and even some of the Amish themselves have fine computer skills (using them at the library, just not at their home). Landis' could very well have had the same level of exposure to a computer as a child as any other American his age.
Anyone who watched Landis win the TdF and has followed the issue can find much more wrong with the tests than valid with them. He's been using a meter on his bike to measure his power output longer than other riders and he actually used less power in the day of that amazing catch-up ride than he did on many other days. Also, the drug he's accused of using is a blood level drug, one that provides most of the benefit over time and it builds up in the body, yet in the tests two and three days later there is no trace of it in his body at all. Also, only a few of the possible markers were there, most were not. And there's more.
The title is inaccurate, as Landis is not a Tour de France champion. What an athlete is stripped of a title, it means you shouldn't be using that title to describe the athlete any more. Logical, no?
Uh.... I have two state time trial championships, and finished fourth in my class at the American Mountain Bike Championships. Top cyclists are pretty smart people, and you have to be to get your body in the kind of shape to perform at that level.
A friend who has won over 6 state championships says the strongest guys doesn't always with, but the smartest strong guy usually does. He fits that description to a T.
Place nail here >+
Please readjust your thinking about Mennonites... you are so very wrong that you almost circle completely back again.
I will state for a fact that I am Mennonite. I got my first computer when I was 6 (1988) and I am currently employed as a software developer.
Although the Amish and the Old Order are Mennonites (which are among the few sects that have community restrictions on technology) the reverse is not true. It is equivalent to me saying that you are Christian, sometimes mistaken as Mormon. I'm not saying it's impossible for you to be monagamous, but I'm sure you were raised in a polygamous cult.
I will further add to my comment in saying that I do know some Old Order and Amish people, and have had a nice long conversation with an Old Order deacon and teacher who explained that it is not technology that they shun, but anything new that may split their community. They take a very long time to evaluate new techology (usually about 300 years or so) but they do use some modern equipment. The Old Order community that I was on used modern combines (computer controlled) in order to quickly and efficiently harvest their fields.
This is not a sig.
There is a small problem with the French regarding the Tour: They're not thrustworthy in their judgement. If Floyd Landis had been named Richard Virenque the tests would probably have mysteriously disappeared. I'm not saying that he didn't cheat, but the French are very often using double standards regarding cycling...
I guess it has something to do with Armstrong winning the tour 7 times in a row which their own heroes Anquetil and Hinault never could...
You mean like Richard Virenque who was ejected from the Tour in 1998 by French officials in the Festina scandal and who became a virtual pariah in his home country for his continued refusal to admit his guilt?
You don't read about non-Americans being accused of doping because you don't read about cyclists who aren't Lance Armstrong. All successful professional cyclists of the last 3 or 4 decades have been accused / suspected of doping.
If you read the link, the USADA determined nothing. It was the same French lab that is the center of the controversy that tested the B samples.
I followed it closely at the time, but have forgotten the details by now. I'm sure google would be my friend. However, Landis' main complaint was that the lab results were poorly handled, poorly tracked, and altogether lacking a real chain of ownership to show they were even his samples. Furthermore, IIRC, the surprisingly high results for that day were incompatible with samples taken before and after. The kind of doping they accused him of would have left traces in the blood for some time afterwards, long enough for later tests to have shown something, which they didn't. And the samples they used were the backup samples, because they had lost the primary samples.
It smelled pretty bad from what I remember. It didn't mean he hadn't done it, but no court would ever have accepted their evidence, and to strip someone of a Tour de France championship because of it was pretty outrageous. IIRC he had also beaten the French favorite and the French have never taken much to foreigners who do that, especially Americans.
OTOH, I undoubtedly have forgotten a lot of the details, and I just don't care to look them up -- I mainly remember how shoddy their case was, how much it seemed like petty officials running amuck, and especially taking revenge for their gross carelessness and incompetence being shown to the world by some uppity bicycle rider. After all, everyone knows that the true purpose of any bicycle race is the glory of the promoters, not the racers.
Infuriate left and right
It is true that his defense was based upon the lab mishandling the samples, and claiming that there was no proof that the samples that tested positive were his. It is also true that tests before and after the positive test showed nothing. Nothing from before the positive is unlikely, as steroids tend to work based on continuous use, not a single use. Having nothing from samples after seems impossible. Steroids take a while to go out of the system.
There was no French favorite. The highest finishing Frenchman was Cyril Dessel, who moved from 7th to 6th after Landis was removed from the results and was still almost 8 minutes behind of the replacement winner, Óscar Pereiro (Spain).
Landis is no longer appealing the decision, as all of his appeals have been used up. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled against him. That's it. Please note that the rules there are different from the U.S. legal system. This case would have never resulted in a conviction based upon reasonable doubt. There was a lot of very reasonable doubt. I'm still not convinced that he did it.
IIRC he had also beaten the French favorite and the French have never taken much to foreigners who do that, especially Americans.
In that same tour, the French favorite was also beaten by two Spaniards, a German, an Australian and a Russian, a pattern similar to that of the past 25 years or so.
False positives, laboratory fuckups and actual cheating are all much more likely than a French conspiracy against Landis on the basis of him being an American.
Jockeys intentionally apply whips to the horse next to theirs, thus messing with the other jockey whip timing, and their horse will suffer or slow down due to this.
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