Associated Press LONDON -- Helped by a laboratory's big blunder, Tyler Hamilton will be allowed to keep his Olympic cycling gold medal.
The International Olympic Committee dropped its investigation Thursday into a blood test from the Summer Games that showed Hamilton used a transfusion to boost his endurance. The decision was made only because the Athens lab mistakenly put his backup sample in a deep freeze -- not because the IOC believes he was clean.
Hamilton, who declared he is "100 percent innocent," tested positive for blood doping on Aug. 19 after his time-trial victory. But the finding could not be confirmed because there were not enough intact red blood cells in the second sample, the IOC said.
It appears this test is brand new and there may be questions to its reliabilty. Tyler's always been one of the cleanest if unluckiest guys in the sport. Phonak has suspended him for the moment.
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My Dad's been keeping me up to date on this. For everyone whose intersted, here's how the story played out to the best of my knolwedge:
Hamilton takes gold in the Olympic time trial, a great victory for the rather puny American cycling world (compared to Europe's that is...)
In cycling, the winners always take blood tests, to mkae sure they're not "doping". "Doping" usually means taking drugs of some sort to enhance their preformance. The big one latley has been something called "EPO" which raises your red blood cell count, it's what Armstrong has been accused of using. However, not all doping is taking drugs, and it's not what Tyler is accused of. He's accused of getting a blood infusion close to the time of the race, to artificially increase the red blood cell count by simply having more blood (well blood cells anyways).
The test for this type of "doping" is new, and not well tested. The intial results from the olympic committe designated to test this showed inconclusive on Tyler's test, and where thus re-tested. They came up positive for this form of doping. To be officially accused of doping and stripped of you medal however, two tests must confirm this, and the second blood smaple was, well they haven't been very clear on what happened, but basically it was made useless, so they've recently dropped any threat of taking away his gold (and a stage win he took after the olympics in teh grand tour called "Vuelta Espana, or Tour of Spain, one of the three grand tours of cycling).
Before the comitte dropped it's charges (or threats anyways), Hamilton talked to his team manager and agreed that though he would continue being an integral part of desicion making and training, he would be officially suspended from the team, to try and keep Phonak clear of any back lash. At the same time, he has launched his own investighating to clear his name, and made many press statments that he is compoetely innocent of all charges. A scientific review board has been appointed (who will remain anonymous until the findings are released) to try and determine if there was any doping. This was all arranged by Tyler, to clear his name. The comitte is still going to come out with an answer at some point, though I'm not sure if the suspension has ended when the olympic comitte dropped their charges.
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As for my take on it, I think Hamilton is innocent, like AJ, he has proven himself to me as being the cleanest, nicest, most reliable (morally, he's also very unlucky) guy in cycling. His continued and emphatic statments of innocent are convincing because of his past honesty, and his almost herculian attempts to prove beyond a shadow of doubt, his innonce, are pretty convincing. I'll be that this comitte he has set up will turn out both legitimate, and name-clearing results. Besides which, the tests that the olympic comitte ran were not really trust-worthy, nor could they proove it twice.
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Sorry I read before but didn't respond. I don't know about the reliability or nonreliablity of this test, I know nothing about the clinica trial procedures peer reviewed studies on it etc... I'd love to see the hard data on that.
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