This essay is probably the best-written item I've read so far about the latest Floyd Landis crap, even though there are sections I don't agree with (particularly the "burn it all down" summation). Here's a chunk that jumped off the page for me, though:
But when you train and race at that level, you literally make yourself sick with training. Hematocrit is suppressed, hormone levels drop, and the doctor comes in to bring you back up to normal health. The biggest risks appear to come when you go over the top, and try to turn your mule into a race horse. But for those guys, they have mechanics to tune the bikes, so why not doctors to monitor their health?
I had a mini-debate with a Huffington Post commenter who questioned my "tell tale signs of doping" observation. The commenter wrote that it's mainly the domestiques who are doping -- the grunt riders who shlep water bottles and ride in the wind for the team leaders. Obviously these riders aren't showing the visual signs of doping -- they're not going off on big mountain attacks or miraculously recovering following an epic loss. They're probably the ones who, as the article describes, are doping just to stay alive -- literally.
But the most egregious cheaters are the ones who use drugs to become super-human. You can always pick them out of the field, mainly because they're not in the field -- they're off on an attack in the mountains the day after trouncing Olympic and world champions in a long time trial (Stefan Schumacher, for example).
Whether doping or not -- guilty or innocent -- my rule of thumb with this sport remains to apply guilt when there's official evidence and to give the benefit of the doubt when there's not. Innocent until proven guilty. I think that's fair. At the same time, I'm not naive. I knew Schumacher had to have been doping in the 2008 Tour, but I was willing to wait until he was nabbed before I went around the tubes with my conspiracy theories. As for the domestiques who are doping to survive, as long as they're not going above and beyond the baseline levels of performance, I'm willing to give them plenty of latitude because it doesn't necessarily present a deceptive facade in the drama and the competition.
Adding... I'm reading the details of Landis' email here. Why would Lance advise the use of testosterone patches in 2002? Like other transdermal patches, they apparently leave a very noticeable mark on your skin from the adhesive. From what I understand, there was a gel-based testosterone commercially available as far back as 1999, and it apparently leaves no visible trace on the skin. Also, Landis writes:
There are many many more details that I have in diaries and am in the process of writing into an intelligible story...
Why not just turn over the diaries as written?