perfidy

Today's Onion installment contains an item called "Millions Of Americans Buying Floyd Landis-Inspired Bracelets". I refer to it as an "item" because it's just a picture, rather than even an article with commentary. Fair use, then, dictates that you have to click the link to see the picture. Deal with it, because it's one of the keys to my premise here.

I find the Tour de France, and bicycling generally, to be uninteresting, and couldn't care less that half the field's big names were axed on drug-related charges just prior to the start. I care just a bit more about Floyd Landis' case, primarily because, contrary to all rational indications reported so far, I still think he might be deserving of the, well, whatever it is that a Tour de France winner wins.

He went from a day of abject failure in the Tour to a day of reportedly unprecendented athletic achievement. Or so I've read - I don't know for certain, because, honestly, the Tour interests me not even slightly. Nobody seems willing to claim his pass on the mountain climb was anything other than majestic. And, just in case his reported high-testosterone levels had something to do with it, here are the odd things:

• Only a dumb-ass would shoot testosterone during the Tour de France, where everyone is assumed to be cheating, and is regularly tested like the cheaters they most likely are
• Testosterone isn't fast-acting, and from what I've seen, takes several weeks' lead time to be of any effect
• If, in fact, he did inject testosterone, he's both clinically retarded and likely quite surprised that it didn't kick in to avoid his abject failure of the previous day's ride
• All due respect to the doping agencies and their tests, I wouldn't trust the results of such tests any farther than I could throw a bull by the dick

Why the skepticism on my part about such tests? Other than my general skeptical nature, there was an interesting article in Saturday's WSJ (subscribers only, most likely, but who friggin' knows?) reporting on tests using "Etg Alcohol Testing" (ethyl glucuronide). The article, "A Test for Alcohol -- And Its Flaws".

Boiled down to its basics, the article describes a test that's supposed to get past the problem of detecting weekend binge drinkers during the work week, when they're presumably not tippling. The problem is:

The test "can't distinguish between beer and Purell" hand sanitizer, says H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's center for substance-abuse treatment. His office intends to study EtG and issue a statement on its use in the fall. "When you're looking at loss of job, loss of child, loss of privileges, you want to make sure" the test is right, he says.

I'd hate to have my rights impinged for washing my hands with Purell (not that I do, but that's not the point).

The point is that I think the drug testing zealots spend a lot of time on precision and completely disdain accuracy.

That and, honestly, who gives a shit about cheating in a stupid bicycle race?

[wik] See also this essay on Wired by Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security, explaining, I think, why doping is forever.