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Speaking on ESPNews, John Eustice, the network's cycling analyst, said, "If this is indeed true and it all does come out, it'll be the greatest blow the sport has ever, ever, ever had." But he also cautioned that Landis is a long way from being convicted.

"Every time an athlete has disputed a testosterone test," he said, "they have won. So the test is not quite as reliable as everyone thinks."

The winner of each stage is tested, as is the overall leader and several randomly chosen riders. Landis' positive test was on his "A" sample. He won't face discipline from the International Cycling Union unless the backup "B" sample also comes back positive in the next few days. Phonak says it'll fire the rider if that happens.

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Salon Link

Note: I'm surprised testosterone would be the beneficial drug for what is mostly a cardiovascular and muscular endurance event. I could see testosterone being used in the 100 meter spring but in the marathon?

edited to add: we're not sure he's guilty yet.

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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Anabolic steroids have been used to enhance athletic performance since the early sixties, when an American physician gave the drugs to three weight lifters, who promptly jumped from mediocrity to world records. But no one ever took the use of illegal drugs quite so far as the East Germans. In a military hospital outside the former East Berlin, in 1991, investigators discovered a ten-volume archive meticulously detailing every national athletic achievement from the mid-sixties to the fall of the -- Berlin Wall, each entry annotated with the name of the drug and the dosage given to the athlete. An average teen-age girl naturally produces somewhere around half a milligram of testosterone a day. The East German sports authorities routinely prescribed steroids to young adolescent girls in doses of up to thirty-five milligrams a day. As the investigation progressed, former female athletes, who still had masculinized physiques and voices, came forward with tales of deformed babies, inexplicable tumors, liver dysfunction, internal bleeding, and depression. German prosecutors handed down hundreds of indictments of former coaches, doctors, and sports officials, and won numerous convictions. It was the kind of spectacle that one would have thought would shock the sporting world. Yet it didn't. In a measure of how much the use of drugs in competitive sports has changed in the past quarter century, the trials caused barely a ripple.

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