Tour de France 2009

Landis loses final appeal

trust but verify | Requiem for a Champion

No one has done a better job following the Floyd Landis case than David Brower, Bill Hue, and a gaggle of interested commenters and guest posters over at Trust But Verify. Today, with the announcement that Floyd Landis has lost his final appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, Hue offers a fitting coda to the Landis circus:

Floyd is my hero because in the face of the biggest travesties of “justice” I have ever seen, he stood proud, determined, true to himself and his family and did not bow to those who define “the game” by making its rules, prosecuting those deemed to violate those rules and then stack the deck with those responsible to judge those “violations”. He made them work for it and we are all the beneficiaries of his efforts even though he ultimately derived no benefit, whatsoever.

I go back and forth on the ultimate question of Floyd's guilt or innocence, but I absolutely agree that the rush by organizers and WADA to be tougher and tougher on drugs has trampled the ideals of fair play, sportsmanship, and athletes' rights. It's unfortunate the riders don't have the leverage to create something akin to the major league baseball players' union.

Landis was also ordered to pay $100,000 toward the US Anti-Doping Agency's legal costs. He is eligible to return to racing in January 2009, just in time for the Tour of California, but I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) he would be subject to the no-UCI-teams-for-2-additional-years proviso (assuming there's still a UCI in 2009).

Also:

Court of Arbitration for Sport: Bulletin | Full decision (.pdf file)

VeloNews | Floyd Landis loses CAS appeal

PodiumCafe | Landis Appeal Decision Open Thread

Landis loses appeal, stripped of title

SI.com | Landis must forfeit title after losing doping appeal

Floyd Landis, who won the 2006 Tour de France with a stunning Stage 17 solo victory, has lost his appeal of a positive doping finding.

Immediately after last year's Tour, Landis was accused of cheating when a urine test suggested Landis had an elevated ratio of epitestosterone-to-testosterone, which should normally be approximately equal. Landis has fought the charge, and still has the option of appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The three-man panel found that the Chatenay-Malabry lab near Paris mishandled Landis's sample, but 2 of 3 panelists felt that a follow-up test with a mass spectrometer was convincing evidence that Landis had used synthetic testosterone. Chris Campbell, who was named by the Landis team and also dissented in the Tyler Hamilton case, was the dissenting voice. “The documents supplied by LNDD are so filled with errors that they do not support an Adverse Analytical Finding. Mr. Landis should be found innocent.”

Pat McQuaid:

“It's not a great surprise considering how events have evolved. He got a highly qualified legal team who tried to baffle everybody with science and public relations. And in the end the facts stood up.”

Right -- we wouldn't want to get science mixed up in all this.

TrustButVerify notes that the suspension is to run through January 29, 2009, which, to me, seems a bit punitive, given that Landis has not competed since the end of July, 2006.

CyclingNews quotes Pat McQuaid that Pereiro will inherit the 2006 Tour title, but I don't think, given the state of relations between the ASO and the UCI, I would take that to the bank. We've already got a Tour without a winner, the 1996 edition, since Bjarne Riis admitted to doping during that Tour. I'm sure the ASO will weigh in shortly.

Also:

USADA | Arbitration Ruling: Floyd Landis AAA Decision (84-page PDF)

USADA | Arbitration Ruling: Floyd Landis Dissent (26-page PDF)

USADA | Floyd Landis Receives Two-Year Suspension For Doping During the 2006 Tour de France (2-page PDF)

cyclingnews.com | Landis' appeal denied, two year suspension levied

VeloNews.com | Breaking news: Landis loses

Landis legal team working with Vinokourov, Astana

ESPN.com | Suh, Jacobs in Paris to research Vinokourov's case

Alexandre Vinokourov, booted from the Tour after a positive test for blood boosting, has turned to a legal team that has spent the past year studying the sport's dope-testing mechanisms.

Maurice Suh and Howard Jacobs are also representing 2006 Tour winner Floyd Landis, awaiting a decision from an appeal of his suspension resulting from a high testosterone-to-epitestosterone measurement after Stage 17 of the '06 Tour.

Vinokourov's B sample is being examined at the Chatenay-Malabry lab, formerly the LNDD.

Jacobs also represented Tyler Hamilton, who was accused in 2004 of the same thing as Vinokourov: Receiving a blood transfusion to improve athletic performance.

Tour organizers to skip No. 1

VeloNews | No No. 1 at '07 Tour

Proving there's no symbolic gesture organizers will skip in their get-tough-on-doping attitude, the Tour will, for the first time in its history, not have a rider wearing the number “1”.

Defending champions are generally accorded the honor of wearing the lowest race number, with their teammates getting numbers 2 through 9, but Floyd Landis is out of cycling and fighting a doping ban.

ASO will merely skip the single digits, and will assign the numbers 11 through 19 to Oscar Pereiro and his Caisse d'Epargne teammates, and 21 through 29 to CSC. Pereiro was the runner-up at last year's Tour.

Landis kicks off "Positively False" book tour

FloydLandis.com | Book Events

Last year's Tour winner, Floyd Landis, is kicking off a book tour, promoting his new book, Positively False, with a book signing in Bryant Park in New York City today. Landis will be interviewed by John Eustice from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m. at the Bryant Park Reading Room.

In the next 3 weeks or so, Landis will visit Lancaster and Philadelphia, PA; Washington, DC; Chicago; Seattle; and Sacramento, San Francisco, Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Riverside, CA, in addition to the 3 New York City-area locations.

Landis is awaiting results of his hearing in front of a US Anti-Doping Agency panel, after returning a high testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio during last year's Tour.

Tour organizers: Bjarne who?

BBC SPORT | Tour takes Riis off winners list

Tour de France organizers are telling the press that Bjarne Riis has been stricken from the Tour winners list after his admission last month that he used EPO for 6 seasons, including 1996, when he won the Tour.

Tour spokesman Philippe Sudres said: "We have removed him from the list because of the doping admission.

"We consider philosophically that he can no longer claim to have won."

Two issues: 1) A quick look at the official Tour website shows that Riis is right there were he's always been, atop the 1996 Tour.

2) Who, then, deserves the win? Jan Ullrich, who was 2nd in '96 riding alongside Riis at EPO-fueled Telekom? Richard Virenque in 3rd, riding for Festina, which gave us the most scandalous Tour since 1904?

The cynic in me wonders if this is a first step toward eventually declaring that the 2006 Tour had no winner. Some Tour officials have already said they don't consider Floyd Landis last year's winner, and now with Oscar Pereiro refusing to take a DNA test to clear up speculation that he's “Urko” in the Operación Puerto athlete files, organizers may prefer to have no winner to having an appointed and controversial winner.

Landis book expected before '07 Tour

IHT.com | Tour de France winner to publish book

Associated Press reports that 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis will publish a book before the Tour kicks off this July.

Landis, facing possible disqualification for a high testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio, is expected to publish Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France in late June, addressing his childhood as a Mennonite, his racing career, and his efforts to clear his name and return to racing.

Last week, Landis agreed not to race in France this year, and he faces a May hearing in front of the US Anti-Doping Agency and June proceedings from AFLD, the French equivalent. He's also 4.5 months into recovery from hip replacement surgery.

The book's available for preorder at Amazon; linked at right.

Landis wins delay of AFLD hearing

SI.com | Anti-doping agency delays Landis decision

Floyd Landis, facing doping hearings from both the US Anti-Doping Agency and the French equivalent, AFLD, traded a promise not to race in France this year for a 4-month delay in the French hearing.

Landis faces a 2-year suspension from racing if he cannot explain a urine test that found an elevated testosterone-to-epitestosterone during the 2006 Tour de France, which Landis won. The AFLD will revisit the Landis case in late June, after the USADA hearing, which is now scheduled to begin May 14th.

It seems a small concession from Landis, who has no team contract and can't race until the USADA decision, but his statement specifically rules out any chance he will race in the 2007 Tour de France.

"He understood perfectly that if he didn't act today, we would start the procedure immediately," [AFLD president Pierre] Bordry said. "We will let Landis defend himself as he wishes before the USADA."

Photo by Flickr user Blind Robert, from a Floyd Fairness Fund fundraiser at Brooklyn Brewery last night. Click through for more.

Also:

IHT.com | Cycling: Landis will skip Tour de France

TrustButVerify | Thursday Roundup

Includes a translation of the full AFLD statement.

Landaluze cleared for LNDD error; hope for Landis?

Eurosport | Landis optimistic after Landaluze case

The Court of Arbitration of Sport yesterday rejected a final appeal by the UCI to sanction Inigo Landaluze for a postive testosterone case, citing malfeasance by the same lab that in July tested Tour de France winner Floyd Landis.

Inigo Landaluze, who won the 2005 Dauphiné Libéré for Euskaltel-Euskadi, was suspended for tests performed during that race. In May 2006, the Spanish cycling federation overturned the suspension (saying it was "not in accordance with all applicable legal requirements"), and the UCI appealed to the CAS.

Here's the CAS press release, but the nut graf is:

It has been indeed established that the person who conducted the analysis of the B sample was also involved in analysis of the A sample, thus in violation of the international standard applicable to the accredited laboratories. The Panel considered that the violation of this technical direction was likely to affect the results of the analyses. The Panel has considered that the non-compliance with this standard constituted a procedural flaw serious enough to cause the invalidation of the anti-doping test.

That's at the same Labaratoire National de Dopistage du Dopage (LNDD) at Chatenay-Malabry that committed a boatload of procedural errors in the Landis case.

I'll give Floyd himself the last word:

Going through what I am now, I feel personally for Landaluze and hope that everyone recognizes that it has taken him 18 difficult months to clear his name from what was revealed to be a grievous error by the LNDD ... The track record of scientific misconduct at Chatenay-Malabry seems to grow by the day.

Landis vs. Lance in Leadville?

Tour de France Champion Floyd Landis to Race 2007 Leadville Trail 100

According to the linked PR Newswire release, Floyd Landis has accepted an invitation to race at the Leadville Trail 100, a 100-mile mountain bike race in Colorado in August 2007.

Landis raced mountain bikes until 1998. His hip resurfacing, in mid-September, went well, and he's been back on the bike, including at a charity event on Sunday remembering his father-in-law and five firefighters who died fighting the Esperanza fire in October.

Former Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has already committed to the 2007 edition of the race.

If the release is on the level, and Landis hasn't been cleared of pending dope charges and resumed road racing, it would be Landis's first race since the 2006 Tour.

It would certainly pump up interest in the race to have two former Tour winners fighting it out on dirt.

Go Clipless was one of the first to report this rumor.