Floyd Landis’s doping samples contained synthetic testosterone, indicating the Tour de France champion’s elevated levels were not produced naturally, the head of France’s anti-doping commission said on Saturday.
Pierre Bordry, who heads the French anti-doping council, said the Chatenay-Malabry lab near Paris found that testosterone in the rider’s urine samples came from an outside source.
”I have received a text message from Chatenay-Malabry lab that indicates the ‘B’ sample of Floyd Landis’s urine confirms testosterone was taken in an exogenous way,” Bordry said.
The revelation could damage Landis’s defence prospects. He has claimed the testosterone in his body was ”natural and produced by my own organism”.
The American cyclist’s back-up ”B” sample came back positive on Saturday, confirming the original ”A” test. He could be stripped of the Tour title and banned for two years.
Testosterone, a male sex hormone, helps build muscle and improve stamina. The urine tests carried out on Landis after his victory in the Tour’s 17th stage turned up a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of 11:1 — far in excess of the 4:1 limit.
A report this week in The New York Times cited an unidentified source from the UCI as saying an analysis of Landis’s first sample by carbon-isotope ratio testing had detected synthetic testosterone, which indicated it had been ingested.
Jacques de Ceaurriz, the head of the Chatenay-Malabray lab, said on Saturday the isotope testing procedure involving a mass spectrometer is totally reliable. ”It’s foolproof. This analysis tells the difference between endogenous and exogenous,” he said. ”No error is possible in isotopic readings.”
Landis’s spokesperson Michael Henson said the testing methods — including the carbon-isotope test — cannot prove the existence of synthetic testosterone. ”There is no conclusive evidence that shows that this test can show definitively the presence of exogenous testosterone,” Henson said.
But World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound said the tests were scientifically valid. ”The overwhelming scientific consensus would hold these tests are reliable and what they found is what they found,” he said. ”Had there been any scientific difficulties or technical difficulties, we would have heard about it.”
Pound said confirmation of the synthetic testosterone finding would undermine any Landis defence.
”It’s probably a very good pre-emptive move to close down yet another avenue of complaint or argument,” he said. ”The science is pretty well accepted. The history of these tests is pretty well established. It’s going to be very hard [to contest it].” — Sapa-AP
Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten and sports writer Stephen Wilson in London contributed to this report