Spinopsys

Perhaps you should read everything before you write up a perspective?

I think that FL trying to equip the public with the info is revolutionary.

You write: “There still exists an exogenous source of testerone in his sample.”

The fact that you can say this means that you simply do not understand how this test works. No test can find exogenous testosterone. The numbers hint that perhaps he has synthetic testosterone.

But then again, one of the points raised in his defense is that the lab test of a negative control sample also hints that it has synthetic testosterone in it.

Take a closer look at what’s going on.

Thanks for commenting Thomas, not sure why but it was placed in moderation.

My phrasing was just that, a turn of phrase, and I accept your specific explanation.

But you know what I mean.

To other visitors I leave this explanation, I always write in broader narratve and not on a specific scientific basis, that I leave to those who would argue how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

That is not to mean that I do not understand the basis on which this is being fought, far from it, I do.

Moving away from Landis for a second I’d like to say that there is clearly something rotten in the state of the sport (well all sport generally) and that rotteness does not lie at the feet of the many ethical technicians etc that fight the good fight, it lies at the feet of athletes that try to game the system to their advantage.

While Operation Puerto has seen outcomes that favour the athletes, anyone who denies that it represents something highly important is on another planet.

Clearly something big is going on, and as is readily obvious in the Landis document dump it very easy to create doubt and suspicion in the athletes favour.

Either way, as I said, it’s now up to the powers that be to decide the future of Landis. Hopefully they will look at the evidence fairly and without malice, which I think is the case despite Landis’ protestations to the contrary.

Will, I’ll reply to your obvious trolling just once.

Have you read what I’ve written?

I’ll repeat slowly.

I said I read the docs (and continue to), no surprises there. And I’ve said that Landis’ document dump is to be commended and is an excellent resource.

End of story.

I agree that sports are dirty, including cycling. And I have no idea if Floyd really doped or not. But your assessment of the anti-doping infrastructure is truly clueless.

Anti-doping efforts are plagued with complicated politics, and power-seeking. Unethical public statements have become the norm. Science is rushed in place with little verification, and why should they bother? The likely outcome of a false accusations is most people believe them anyway, and the career of the accuser gets a big boost.

Operation Puerto is the perfect example. Police and prosecutors who care nothing for cycling are building tremendous careers here, and the outcome in terms of protecting sports has been nil, quite the contrary it has damaged cycling.

WADA is also highly politicized and many observers feel that it’s leader has chosen to build his career on the bones of the sport of cycling, a sport with high international visibility, but low imporance in the olympics (from which WADA is funded).

Thanks again for commenting here Thomas, I read your stuff which is good grist on the topic.

Still, it’s clear that we have generally opposing views on this.

let’s leave it at that and see what the outcome is in a few months time.

Phil, Thanks for the intriguing post. It doesn’t exactly fall under my rubric of crowdsourcing, as originally conceived, but it was great food for thought, and fodder for a blog post (crowdsourcing.com) on how Landis’ effort signifies a novel twist on appealing to the court of public opinion.

Jeff, thank’s for commenting here, yep, it’s true that as it’s presented here it’s not strictly crowdsourcing, but let me explain…………

I was prompted to use the word in my headline because in a forum thread there was mention of a Wiki approach by landis in that he wanted a whole lot of eyeballs to feast on the docs and maybe some smart guys will pick up on something they missed, it’s a bit difficult to find now but I’ll attempt to find the relevant quote.

Because I’m intrigued by the topic I was tempted to do a post on this specifically but needed the time to research it (I’m a working class man) so I thought I’d leave it for another day when time permitted.

Now I don’t have to.

Update to comment. The quote landis used was this.

You called it. Will and I have been reading these from the begining and while you guys are opinionated (as am I) we decided that, if given the info, you would be constructive. We’ll call it the Wikipedia defense, and I would have given everything to you sooner but had a very hard time selling the idea to the lawyers.

In later comments he said that he understood the concept of the “wisdom of crowds” and suggested that it was better to use the available brainpower of readers.

Interesting.