Floyd Landis describes how easy it can be to dope

Floyd Landis is an American cyclist who won the Tour de France in 2006 but quickly tested positive and was stripped of his title. Landis went on to defend himself against the charges saying that he was not using testosterone, the drug he tested positive for. Eventaully, Landis became the whistleblower on Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Team, and admitted to doping himself. 

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In an interview with Let’sRun, Landis describes the current state of drug use and drug control. Even in an age where athletes are monitored closely, tested often and doping awareness is a prevalent topic of conversation in athletics, Landis suggests that cheating remains relatively easy to get away with. 

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He told Let’s Run that it would likely be very easy to cheat today. “You could do EPO right now in (low) enough quantities that you could raise your hematocrit from 44 to 50 in a two-week period and have zero risk,” he said. Hematocrit is the ratio of volume of red blood cells to volume of blood. 

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“I know that they can be using EPO and I know that they can be using peptides like growth hormone or there’s all these other insulin growth factors or mitochondrial growth factors. There’s peptides, there’s countless ways you can manipulate peptides that are analogs to growth hormone that’ll have specific effects on you and there’s zero chance of getting caught. Even growth hormone, you’d have to be tested within 20 minutes of using it,” he said.

Floyd Landis' cycling team announces first signings, new team name and bike sponsor https://t.co/IkVW1tWZ5Y pic.twitter.com/x0DhLEPLt5

— Canadian Cycling Mag (@CanadianCycling) December 11, 2018

Landis was also critical of WADA saying, “I wish that the anti-doping agencies would just be honest with how big the problem is.” He believes that anti-doping agencies cover up how big the problem is the preserve their funding. 

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The running community called the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) into question earlier this year following their decision to reinstate RUSADA. The decision followed Russia’s three-year ban from international competition for suspected state-sponsored doping. Canadian Olympian Evan Dunfee said, “This is a sad day for clean sport, bringing the very notion into disrepute. WADA has shown that they will easily bow to the will of political pressure rather than standing up for the athletes they are supposed to protect.”