Cheater Redux

Notwithstanding all that fascinating stuff I wrote about hormone ratios, alcohol and legal painkillers, it appears that Floyd Landis may actually have doped. According to published reports, further testing of Landis's "A" sample has revealed the presence of synthetic testosterone.

Synthetic testosterone doesn't just appear in one's blood by accident; the reasonable explanations for the positive test are rapidly melting away. The cyclist's own legal team no longer expects a contrary result from the "B" sample, which is due to be tested soon. What an embarrassment.

We've been in the artificial performance enhancement era in sports for a long time now. "Greenies" (amphetamines) have been a staple of baseball clubhouses for decades. American football players are widely known to have used steroids for nearly the entire of the history of the post-merger NFL. A British cyclist died in the Tour de France in 1967 as a result of amphetamine usage. What is different about the current "era," which is about five years old, is that the wink-and-nod acceptance of days gone by has been replaced by increasingly strict testing and punishment. The NFL, probably the worst offender of all and still holds its cards close to the chest, but will suspend players for the use of illegal substances. Baseball has made significant strides under intense public scrutiny. Cycling and the Olympics have taken the hardest line, yet the problem continues.

The designer drugs developed over the last 15 years have turned the battle for the soul of pure sport into a cloak and dagger pursuit worthy of Cold War spy stories. The drug makers continue to put out products that remain a step ahead of the ability of the authorities to detect their products. With the extraordinary money at stake at every level of professional athletics, the incentive to continue to do so will not abate any time soon, either for the drug maker or the athlete who uses the drug to gain that fleeting moment of glory.