Plausible Deniability

I've often heard the phrase above used in the context with high ranking officials, both military and political, who chose not to maintain full knowledge of certain circumscribed events, therefore, making their statements of "well I really have no knowledge of that matter," seem believable. Afterall, how can you lay full responsibility on an individual if they really didn't know what was going on, whether they chose to be kept in the dark or not?

Now, how does this all apply to the world of professional cycling? It really doesn't. These athletes are as well versed in their physiological makeup (the number of Watts they can produce on certain efforts, what their appropirate cadence should be, etc) as they are in their equipment (riders, LA being one of them, who need their bikes tailored down to the last millimeter).

But there is one thing that most professional cyclists have attempted to thrust into the realm of plausible deniability; the science behind the tests. The latest, and most high profile, cases of Tyler Hamilton, Roberto Heras, and Floyd Landis (is it me, or are Dick Pound and WADA attempting to throw out enough circumstantial evidence against LA by going after his former henchman; in effect, "is it plausible that only the great domestiques surrounding LA doped and he did not?" That's for another post altogether) have all shared this in common. None have admitted any knowledge of their current situations while a bevy of legal eagles and science experts have proferred explanations for finding exogenous materials in their endogenous profile.

This, in turn, has created confusion and a fissure amongst the cycling community, of believers and non-believers. Many still believe in Tyler, and many will likely still believe in Floyd, because of their history, their past exploits, their character, their realization of the consequences of their actions (how could Tyler ever endanger the life of his beautiful wife, Haven, by transfusing someone else's blood), and because they've staunchly denied any knowledge of wrongdoing. Plausible deniability or simply deniability?

Only David Millar (a cheater who I find less reprehensible because of his admittance) has taken a Trumanesque route (The Buck Stops Here). But, had he not been found with vials of EPO in his flat, do you think he would have ever told?

Occam's (Ockham's) Razor
In a nutshell, this principle states that all things being equal, the best answer to a question is usually the simplest one. So what's the simplest explanation for Floyd Landis' positive test?

Straight from Pezcyclingnews.com (Jered Gruber's EuroTrash):
"Over the weekend, L'Equipe reported on just that, an IRMS was done on Landis' sample.

“When a sample shows a testosterone:epitestosterone ratio of more than 4:1, an IRMS test is now used to check for the presence of exogenous testosterone. If Landis’s ‘A’ sample was positive, it means that exogenous testosterone must have been found.”

Definitely not the end of the world for Landis, but it's surely not a boost for his defense.

Michaud Audran added yet another backing to the why in the hell would he take testosterone for Stage 17 hypothesis:

“If you take it before a stage, the only effect is going to be a psychological boost. And why would anyone take it, then go and win a stage, when they know that the stage winner is always tested?

I think that Tour de France riders do take testosterone, but they do it before or at the start of the Tour. They do it to compensate for the muscle they know that they will start losing in the latter stages of the race; by then, they’ve started to exhaust their glycogen supplies, exhaust their fat supplies and they start to use up muscle for energy. A testosterone treatment before the Tour will build up muscle resources to compensate for that."

So although Floyd's body may naturally produce unusually high volumes of testosterone, and on an extremely hard effort like Stage 17 it was likely to produce more, it seems like those pre-Tour preparations caught up to him.

While we still await the "B" sample tests, and possibly a long protracted defense for his title, William Occam is somewhere resting comfortably in his logic.