There was a great interview with him a couple months ago in one of the bike mags.
I don't think they are actually suggesting that he is a chimera, it is just one of several different scenarios that would throw off the results, and these scenarios have not been addressed in the testing.
Turns out that the test had never been used before. It had one peer review, as opposed to many reviews of most other tests before they are implemented. This peer review stated that there were significant possibilities of false readings and that they suggested that no readings of secondary peaks (other peoples blood factors) below 5% be considered a positive.
Tyler's reading was 1%.
The amount of blood from another person that would have to be injected to result in this reading is about 1.5 ounces.
Not only would that do nothing to enhance performance, but the timing of the positives would have him injecting this stuff during training periods, not racing.
I have no idea if he is/was doing something illegal, but the testing was seriously f'ed up and would never stand up in a court over here.
Not only that, but someone called up the team twice, before both he and Santi Perez came up postive, and said that they were going to pop positive and demanded money to keep it from happening.
There was also the question about hematocrit levels and warnings that people on the team were getting near the limit. Turns out that they were tested at one race and were just fine, and they were tested 2 days later at another race and 3 people on the team had jumped by EXACTLY the same amount and were just under the limit. The chances that 3 people inject some amount of epo and all show exactly the same increase is pretty small.
In fact, Phonak, like many of the pro teams, had their own hematocrit checking equipment, which showed no change in levels, and which they submitted to the authorities. Unfortunately, it wasn't the exact same machine that the authorities use, so they refused to accept the results.
It should be noted that Phonak had protested the official testing results 3 times already last year because of questionable levels. Many of the pro teams have their own machinery and test before every event because it is a widely held belief that the certified machines return bad results on a regular basis.
upshot is that it is a hell of a race between the dopers and the investigators, and it is hard/impossible to tell who is doing what -- BUT before you ruin a guys career, you better have damn good evidence, and I think it is pretty shaky here.
Whit