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It is hard to find a silver lining to the media coverage of Floyd Landis’ abnormal test. But we are learning a lot more about Landis. Ian Austen wrote Landis Has a Reputation for Honesty in NYT. “Sitting in a team bus festooned with sponsors’ logos, the pair took turns reading dark, humorous quotations from a book by Jack Handey while listening to Metallica.”

Floyd Landis was on Larry King Live. Lance Armstrong was a call in with support. Sitting with Larry King was Dr. Brent Kay, Landis’ personal physician who is board certified in sports and internal medicine.

LK: How do you explain the high level of testosterone?

Doc K: Well, I think that has been one of the problems is that he does not high level of testosterone. That has not been documented. He has a high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in his urine.

LK: Meaning?

Doc K: Which could be due to an elevated testosterone level. It could be due to a low epitestosterone level. And it could be due to a variety of other factors with handling, with specimen contamination and various other things.

LK: I asked Floyd this. He said it is better answered by you. What does testosterone do for a race driver?

Doc K: For a cyclist it will be my opinion that it will makes it worse.

LK: Worse?

Doc K:  I think that is the crazy thing here. I think everyone really needs to take a step back and look at what we are talking about. Because testosterone is a body building steroid that builds mass, that build mass over long term use of weeks, months or even years. And it is crazy to think that a Tour de France professional cyclist would be using testosterone, particularly in the middle of a race. It is a joke. Ever sports medicine expert, physician, trainer, scientist that I’ve talked to in the last day – really, same opinion. No way. This is a joke.

I want Floyd Landis to remain a great champion and his final week in the Tour de France to remain legendary. I also think that there is some reasons to believe that he did not dope. 

I agree with Dr. Gary Walder that testosterone “doesn’t really compute.” First, it is a drug that “would have no effect on performance”. Though Austin Murphy quotes a Dr. Moosburger that it could help. Second, if he was a user, earlier tests during the Tour and other races would have shown the usage. Third, because Landis had previous won a stage, he knew that he would be tested at the end of the stage in question. Fourth, because of the risk of even accidental contamination, I would think that there would not be any testosterone within a mile of the team or Landis. Fifth, this is a very complicated test says the Donald Catlin who runs the Olympic drug testing lab at UCLA, so it is no slam dunk. Sixth, unlike the media reports of high testosterone, the level was actually normal and the epitestosterone was low. So I would think that scientific studies on the interaction of alcohol and drugs with epitestosteron and the ratio would be examined (see Washington Post comment by jjouet). Seventh, given his thyroid disease and the approved cortisone shots for his failing hip, there is a slime possibility of someendocrine weirdness. Eighth given the fact that several riders were kicked out at the beginning of the race, doping had to be on everyone’s mind. So why risk it?

“Did you do it, bro?” Austin Murphy asks Landis. “No, c’mon man.” Good story by Sports Illustrated writer.

ESPN.com spoke to Dr. Gary Walder of the World Anti-Doping Agency on testosterone and testing.

Q: For a cyclist, what's the benefit of elevated levels of testosterone? Why would a cyclist use it?

A: It's certainly not one of the first-line drugs one thinks of for racing. Steroids can increase strength and improve recovery time and prevent the breakdown of muscle, maybe make him more assertive and aggressive. All of those could have some positive attribute. But most steroids are given in cycles [6-12 weeks] and in context of working out in a gym with weights. It makes no sense to me why an athlete would take testosterone the day of a race when it doesn't work that way. It doesn't make sense in terms of the pharmacology of the drug, and it really doesn't have the attributes that would be attractive to a cyclist -- particularly one running the risk of violating anti-doping regulations.

Everybody knew the spotlight was on cycling. For eight years, the world has been watching cycling particularly closely. It would be the ultimate form of denial, or the ultimate sense of invincibility, to think you're going to evade that. And when the pharmacology of the drug doesn't really, in my judgment, seem like a drug of particular note to a cyclist, it doesn't really compute.

Associated Press has a story quoting Dr. Walder as well.

The webiste site repeats the statement in English, Deutsch and Francais.

The Phonak Cycling Team was notified yesterday by the UCI of an unusual level of Testosteron/Epitestosteron ratio in the test made on Floyd Landis after stage 17 of the Tour de France.

The Team Management and the rider were both totally surprised of this physiological result. The rider will ask in the upcoming days for the counter analysis to prove either that this result is coming from a natural process or that this is resulting from a mistake in the confirmation. In application of the Pro Tour Ethical Code, the rider will not race anymore until this problem is totally clear. If the result of the B sample analysis confirms the result of the A sample the rider will be dismissed and will then pass the corresponding endocrinological examinations.

Please understand that we cannot at this time give you more detailed comments.

MSM, in particular the Washington Post headline writers are getting it wrong when the are telling most readers that “Team Says Landis Tested Positive for High Levels of Testosterone”. If you read the third paragraph of the article it was not high testosterone but the team said “an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio”. ESPN’s cycling commentator John Eustice corrected the subs on Pardon the Interruption to say that “the testosterone levels are actually low… The epitestosterone levels are actually very low.”  ESPN’s home page also got it wrong with their lead “tested positive for high testosterone levels.” I don’t know the science here, but if you are going to report on the fall of a hero, get the story and the science right.

Floyd Landis in the last five stages of the Tour de France has one of the top sport’s  performances of the year. Winning the yellow jersey, then hitting the wall to lose it, then coming back in the mountains to be in a position to win it back in the sprint the following day. Plus, he has a personal story and seems to be embraced by the French though his francais vocabulary est petit.

But does the main stream media (MSM) in America follow this story? Hardly. The Washington Post had their Foreign Service cover the story, not a sports reporter. One of the local TV sports channels didn’t even mention it last night. Most media lead with a story about Barry Bonds not be indicted like the MSM said he would the previous day. So the MSM was the news and not a truly heroic sports story. Jim Caple on ESPN’s Page Two thought this was nuts.  No wonder the term MSM was invented and now it is becoming an unflattering adjective.

Humanized has a demo of an RSS aggregator that keeps adding more content at the bottom of the page without needing to click on a more button. It is an excellent River of News format with Ajax. I just worked on a 1.2.3.4 script and was thinking about slowly showing more and this is a great example.

Every new document type that gains popularity has many cultural impacts. JSON is a data syntax as is XML. JSON on the Web, or: The Revenge of SML on XML.com is a very good summary with lots of links to details.