Landis Juicing it up?
by RL PolicarMan, what a blow to the American cycling community…I’m sure you all know by now that Landis was accused of juicing because he had too much testosterone in his body.
Did it ever occur to anyone maybe since the fella is an American he naturally has bigger balls than the French or Italian riders?
Just to be clear, he’s not accused of having too much testosterone. He’s accused of having an improper balance (ratio) of testosterone to epitestosterone.
There are two ways for an imbalance to occur. One is to have too much testosterone, the other is to have too little epitestosterone. Epitestosterone levels can be depressed in several ways: alcohol, stress, or cortizone shots. Cortizone shots that, for example, might be taken for a bum hip.
Anyone know if Cortizone (a steriod) is allowed to be taken during the Tour? If not, then really bad mistake, if yes, is it easy to ditect that it was Cortizone and not some other steroid? I’ve already rubbed this victory into the faces of all the frenchies I know (i saw that with a smile, they are actually good friends)..
Gordon, from what I’ve read, Landis had a special exemption from the UCI for cortisone shots in his hip (similar to the asthmatics that have exemptions for steroid inhaler use).