**** Breaking News: Hamilton Tested Positive? ***

Originally Posted by davidbod

Whatever the case may be, the simple way to figure this out would be to draw blood at regular intervals, say weekly, over the period in which the suspected transfused blood cells die out. Testing these samples should then show a gradual decay in the second cell set until they all die out.

Under the above testing if the second cell set does gradually die out and go away then I don't think anyone could say he didn't dope. If they don't go away, and over a significant period of time the same test results come back, then I would say the test is invalid.

This leads to another question which is, since the two sample sets are displaced in time, you would expect that the test results for each would show a difference in the decay of the transfused cell line. I wonder if there is any evidence that this has occurred or not?

Originally Posted by meehs

I mean no offense to anyone but I really doubt that a bunch of people on an internet forum are going to unearth a flaw in the testing methods that somehow slipped by the experts. Or develop an improved testing method that the experts missed. I mean c'mon! Do you really think you're going to come-up with something that the experts didn't see? And this chimera theory? Are you kidding me? Yeah, okay chimeras do exist but they're very rare and in this case it just happens to be a professional cyclist where a much more plausible explanation would be that he's getting transfusions.

I'm a big fan of Tyler Hamilton but if you take a step back (instead of drowning in the details) the reality of it is that three of four samples taken from TH have tested positive with the fourth sample being unable to be tested. Do any of you really believe that "flase positives" could possibly explain this? Combine that with his comment that the news hit him "like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky" despite the fact that it has been reported that he had been warned on two previous occasions that his samples had displayed some mysterious results and it becomes plainly obvious (and unfortunate) that there's something very fishy going on. We'll see how it pans-out.

Originally Posted by meehs

it has been reported that he had been warned on two previous occasions that his samples had displayed some mysterious results and it becomes plainly obvious (and unfortunate) that there's something very fishy going on. We'll see how it pans-out.

Originally Posted by gntlmn

I've heard this mentioned a couple of times elsewhere about Tyler having been previously warned. Do you have the specifics on that. I wonder if you can share them with us. I am very interested in exactly what events Tyler had suspicious test results. I think it would help us to understand better what's going on with him.

Thanks! By the way, if Tyler had suspected tampering, all he would have had to do would have been to get a test again right after the Vuelta B result became known. Then he would have been able to say, "hey, my result is negative. That makes a true positive highly unlikely in the Vuelta due to the rate of decay of the suspect red blood cells--90 to 120 days." That he didn't do this makes his story unbelievable.

Originally Posted by Perro Loco

Evidently it was mentioned in L'Equipe on 9-23 or 9-24
It was passed along in the following article
http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,...category_id=441
It was also mentioned on the website cycling4all.com- a website that tends to have the latest most accurate transfer news etc.
Other than these two articles I have heard nothing more of this, which I find surprising. I am not sure how sensationlistic L'equipe tends to be as I am barely able to read french. Maybe someone could clue us in.

Originally Posted by Perro Loco

Evidently it was mentioned in L'Equipe on 9-23 or 9-24
It was passed along in the following article
http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,...category_id=441
It was also mentioned on the website cycling4all.com- a website that tends to have the latest most accurate transfer news etc.
Other than these two articles I have heard nothing more of this, which I find surprising. I am not sure how sensationlistic L'equipe tends to be as I am barely able to read french. Maybe someone could clue us in.

Originally Posted by gntlmn

It sounds like Hamilton was on something when he went up Dauphine Libere. The press said that Armstrong had failed only a short time before the Tour de France on that mountain, but his time was his best ever. That just tells you something about Mayo's and Hamilton's performance that day, having finished 1, 2 and considerably ahead of Lance. It's interesting that the both of them performed miserably at the TdF. I couldn't figure out at the time how Hamilton had managed to pull off such a strong performance up DL. Now I think I know why.

Originally Posted by Saucy

I am still very sceptical about that L'equipe article. First off, it says that Tyler was warned about blood abnormalities. But my understanding is that the test that caught Tyler was only first used at the Olympics. So how were any abnormalities detected at these earlier events? Unless the abnormalities were in relation to other doping testing procedures??

Also, the wording of that one article seemed a little suspicious. Since when is the UCI "yellow carding" cyclists?! Like its a football game! That made me laugh. The whole wording and scenario just seems odd to me.

Originally Posted by Perro Loco

I wish someone could report if this article exists and provide at least a loose translation. Both sources- Joe Lindsay and Cycling4all -have been very reliable in the past. I think the yellow card wording was the reporters own interpitation- tying to sum it up in short order.
Regarding the testing, if this is true I suspect it had to do with tradional measuring of hematocrit and +/- reticulocytes. An increase in hematocrit over a week long race or significant differences in hematocrit from the tour of romadie and dauphine or big jumps in reticulocytes (young red blood cells).