Floyd Update
Okay, so I've had a chance to read the Powerpoint presentation that Floyd and his team presented to the ADRB, and to browse through some of the paperwork used to process Floyd's samples.
First of all, I don't know enough about the process to say with 100% certainty that the claims Floyd are either legit, and if so whether they exonerate him or not.
However, within the realm of what I do know about the process though, the claims he makes cast the whole testing procedure into serious doubt.
Throughout the documents, Floyd's sample is referred to using 4 different identification numbers. The lab's identification number is mislabelled in one spot, and unidentified alterations have clearly been made to Floyd's sample number.
In addition, the A sample is tested a second time to confirm the result of the first test. The confirmation test returned a similar T/E ratio. However the results that are similar relative to one another, but the absolute results are significantly divergent, to the tune of ~300%.
I could theoretically interpret these results as meaning Floyd had a 3.5 : 1 , or a 28 : 1 T:E ratio, just as easily as he had 11.5 : 1 as the lab reported.
I certainly do agree with some of the conclusions drawn in the report, and even regarding the ones I'm not confident in, I don't have much more confidence in the conclusions the lab drew from the same information. There's more to the report, but suffice to say it makes adherence to lab procedures, and interpretation of results seem somewhat loose.
More than likely, I won't ever truly know whether Floyd won the Tour while doping, but I do know that whether he was clean or not, this whole debacle is a shame. If he was clean, it's a crime that the career and reputation of such a talented rider have been dragged through the mud. If he was doping, it's my opinion that Floyd was the strongest rider in the Tour anyhow, and would have won the Tour clean if he'd played his cards right.
First of all, I don't know enough about the process to say with 100% certainty that the claims Floyd are either legit, and if so whether they exonerate him or not.
However, within the realm of what I do know about the process though, the claims he makes cast the whole testing procedure into serious doubt.
Throughout the documents, Floyd's sample is referred to using 4 different identification numbers. The lab's identification number is mislabelled in one spot, and unidentified alterations have clearly been made to Floyd's sample number.
In addition, the A sample is tested a second time to confirm the result of the first test. The confirmation test returned a similar T/E ratio. However the results that are similar relative to one another, but the absolute results are significantly divergent, to the tune of ~300%.
I could theoretically interpret these results as meaning Floyd had a 3.5 : 1 , or a 28 : 1 T:E ratio, just as easily as he had 11.5 : 1 as the lab reported.
I certainly do agree with some of the conclusions drawn in the report, and even regarding the ones I'm not confident in, I don't have much more confidence in the conclusions the lab drew from the same information. There's more to the report, but suffice to say it makes adherence to lab procedures, and interpretation of results seem somewhat loose.
More than likely, I won't ever truly know whether Floyd won the Tour while doping, but I do know that whether he was clean or not, this whole debacle is a shame. If he was clean, it's a crime that the career and reputation of such a talented rider have been dragged through the mud. If he was doping, it's my opinion that Floyd was the strongest rider in the Tour anyhow, and would have won the Tour clean if he'd played his cards right.
