[Archaea]

another enthusiast wrote this.

Officially he has never tested positive at all. There are claims, and Hamilton renewed them, that he did test positive in the 2001 Tour de Suisse, which is a race that he used as a tune up for the Tour a few times. The claim is that he paid hush money to the UCI to cover up this result. I am a little skeptical about this claim. First, the supposed hush money was made in two payments. $25,000 at or near the time (and that is really not that much money) and then $100,000 several years later. The latter payment was not covered up, however, but was talked about openly by LA's camp. Indeed it was proclaimed as proof of his commitment to anti-doping efforts. I guess it is possible he would be that cheeky, but that does seem to be pushing it a bit.

Second, the only hard evidence of which I am aware is a letter from the Tour de Suisse in which there was a statement that LA's results (and presumably we are talking about his hematocrit levels) were suspicious. The letter does not say in what way they were suspicious and it is not a claim that they exceeded any limit. This letter was followed by a meeting between the testing lab, a UCI official and Bryneel and LA. That might be seen as suspicious, but it is also something that would happen based on the letter in the complete absence of a positive result.

Moreover, Hamilton claims that LA told him, long after it happened, about the positive test in the Tour de Suisse. I highly, highly doubt that. Even Landis, who was a close confidant of LA, acknowledged how careful LA was and how he never talked openly about these things. Remember Landis' story about how the Team bus would pull over, feigning mechanical problems, so that the team could shoot up? He also says that LA did NOT inject in front of the team, even under those circumstances. Yet we are supposed to believe that LA would jokingly tell Hamilton about some smoking gun evidence against him? I doubt it.

But remember, most of these guys never tested positive, either. Michael Rasmussen was caught based on out of competition failures to appear for tests (which led to other info). Ullrich and Basso were caught through their participation in Operacion Puerto, which was the Spanish doctor doping operation where the investigators found bags of saved blood in the doctor's fridge with the racers' names on it. None of these guys actually tested positive in or after a race. So while the lack of a positive test over so long a period is important, it is by no means dispositive.

At a personal level, I absolutely hate that as a bike fan I have had to learn so much about doping procedures and testing protocols. There is no question it has sucked some of the fun out of the sport for me, whether or not these guys cheated.

I agree with many of his personal observations.