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Originally Posted by kcchief19
Everything I've seen so far indicates that Tour officials had simply said an unidentified rider had a positive test. The story breaks out today because his team issued a statement saying Landis tested positive, and if the B sample is positive too he will be fired.
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Exactly. Allthough, the wheel starting turning when other national associsations were quick to mention the rider wasn't one of them, narrowing the options down. And coincidentally Landis disappeared without notice to the show-race organizations he was going to attend the past days.
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Originally Posted by kcchief19
The fact that his team has come out clean with this suggests something very fishy to me. So far, there appears to be none of the Lance Defense being played ... I get the impression that his team seems to think he got caught.
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Take into account that Phonak has a precedent with past riders being proven guilty and it should be a bad sign about things to come.
There's also a problem in the fact that the cycling teams decided to sign a collective agreement to suspend any rider who is under investigations, so even if Landis would be found innocent, he'd still have been taken out of races. It happens 'all the time' in cycling the past two years, and, sadly, most of the time the riders are indeed founds guilty of 'cheating'.
Still, I'll live by the rule that people are innocent until proven guilty. And those who put the 'guilty' tag on someone after this first test are usually the same people who claim and try to prove that all cyclists are cheaters anyway. But you made a fair point, Jim, it's not supposed to get into the open.