In Landis' case, German media have on Sunday rumoured the result to be 11:1. "In our medical files appear not only blood levels, but also our testosterone status," said professional cyclists' representative Jens Voigt before the race. "It shouldn't be hard to find out if Landis is telling the truth."
But, much more important than this seems to be that the tests performed on Landis' A sample included an Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) procedure, used to determine whether the testosterone is exogenous (contained within, but originating from outside the body) or endogenous (produced by the body itself). In the case of the American, L'Equipe reported that the analysis found testosterone of artificial origin.
Jose Maria Buxeda, Landis' attorney, contests the detection method via IRMS. "It's not reliable," he told French L'Equipe. "Most laboratories do not use it. In fact, the laboratory of Chatenay-Malabry must be the only one still using it." In the same edition of the paper, however, Christiane Ayotte, director of the anti-doping laboratory in Montreal, Canada, disagrees. "We use the method regularly," she said. "Moreover, more than half of the WADA-accredited labs perform it successfully. I'd even say that an IRMS which gives a synthetic result is very hard to contest. It's not a method that anyone can apply but the LNDD (Laboratoire de Chatenay-Malabry) has totally proven itself in this domain."
It has been pointed out that Landis' thyroid problems, the treatment of his inflamed hip with corticosteroids, as well as drinking alcohol on the night prior to stage 17, could be factors which could have affected his testosterone levels. "As soon as an athlete is controlled positive for testosterone, the same old stories come up," Ayotte continued. "The increase, even if natural, of the ratio testosterone/epitestosterone cannot, in any case, be explained by taking thyroid hormones or corticosteroids. Alcohol can in fact influence it, but only with women, and only for three or four hours."
