How is Floyd Landis the Opposite of Bode Miller?

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The fabulous furry Freakonomics brothers said:

“After Bode Miller told 60 Minutes that he often drank the night before ski races, and that he’d even raced while still drunk, he was raked over the coals and forced to grovel and apologize. Now we learn that Tour de France winner Floyd Landis (here’s a recent posting on the subject), who tested high for testosterone after his miraculous comeback stage, drank pretty heavily the night before that stage—“two beers and at least four shots of whiskey,” according to the Wall Street Journal. But instead of being disgraced, Landis may find that his drinking was his salvation: “According to several studies,” Sam Walker wrote in the WSJ, “alcohol consumption can increase the ratio between testosterone and epitestosterone, which occur naturally in the body. Mr. Landis failed the test because it showed an elevated ratio between the two.””

While testosterone can be an aid in training, it is not a night-before performance enhancer, and it is much more useful in sports performance requiring explosive bursts of energy rather than the endurance challenges of the Tour de France. If Landis’ impetuous use of an illegal drug after his disastrous performance in the prior stage had been the explanation of his comeback, I would have expected him to use something like epoeitin instead. And as for the comparison with Bode Miller, Landis drank in despair, he says, for one night when he thought he was washed up. Miller’s debauchery was part of his training regimen, it seems, and one reason for his performance deficits. Why, then, is testosterone among the banned substances, one commenter to this post asks. For part of the answer, listen to the interviews with the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency and tell me if there doesn’t seem to be a veneer of religious zeaoltry and missionary zeal there. [thanks, walker]