Cycling Champ Turns to Net to Battle Doping Charges

Defenders Flock to the Wiki

But it is his use of the Web and wikis to harness the collective wisdom of those interested in the case that has helped him add ammunition to a defense he will take before the USADA on May 14 at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

Baker says the idea for the wiki was hatched during a trip to Los Angeles with Landis, who told Baker he wanted everything done out in the open.

"I'd rather not have it be in the open," Landis says. "I'd rather have [labs, doping agencies] who follow their own rules."

He says he is in a race much different from cycling. "I have to get enough money fast enough, I have to learn everything fast enough and I have to get the best help."

Landis is turning to social networking to turn on the speed.

Being so public is an ironic twist for the 31-year-old Landis who grew up without even a television in a strict Mennonite household in Pennsylvania. Now he is on a bleeding edge of social networking in order to save his career.

While Landis and Baker knew little about the formal definitions of social networking when they started, what they did understand was the global reach of the Internet.

Baker's intent with the wiki defense was to expose the relevant issues within the raw lab documentation from France's Labaratoire National Depistage de Dopage concerning Landis's case. Baker did that by posting the documents on the Internet in October along with a slide show focused on the salient points.

"It counts what the public thinks and how the public views the case," Baker says.

What also counts is the information that has flowed back to Baker and the contacts he has made.

The wiki spawned a phenomenon becoming known as "crowdsourcing," an emerging technique to use one's audience to provide reporting power on a mass scale.

The technique is being explored through a journalism experiment run by New York University and by online sites Talking Points Memo and TPMmuckraker.com.

"Our process has resulted in many people contributing ideas," Baker says. "I'm not a mass spectrometrist, but there are many out there that have contacted us and that has been helpful to gain information and resources."

Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique used to identify chemicals in a substance, such as testosterone in urine.

In addition, Baker says the wiki has brought to him lab workers who have provided critiques of the procedures used by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited labs that tested Landis's urine sample.

"If we wanted to contact an expert to help us, the person we would naturally choose would be someone in a WADA-accredited lab who could give us information about how tests should be done and assess the quality of the documentation. But by WADA's own codes, anyone in a WADA lab is forbidden from assisting the defense," Baker says.

But via the wiki he has been contacted by scientists who work in WADA-accredited labs. "It has given us some direction," he says.

Landis hopes that direction is up and he will know if that is the case come May when he heads to his first hearing.

"Listen, I'd rather be riding my bike," Landis says. "Sometimes you're dealt a bad hand, but I came to play, and I'm not leaving."

Landis hopes his battle will lead to reforms in drug testing and the disclosure of test results within cycling and other sports.

"You can never go back," Landis says. "That is why we are trying to change the system. The way this was dealt with is that I was convicted by the press and the officials before I was ever told what was going on."

His hope is that the social network he and Baker have created will help produce factual answers that reveal what actually did go on.