The New York Times


August 5, 2006
Backup Sample on Landis Is Positive
By JULIET MACUR

Nearly two weeks after Floyd Landis’s improbable ride to victory in the Tour de France, he learned that his title might not be his to keep.

The International Cycling Union announced early Saturday morning that Landis had officially failed a drug test from the race. In response, his Swiss-based Phonak team fired him. Landis also may become the first Tour champion in the race’s 103-year history to be stripped of his title because of doping allegations.

Landis’s test result was released at about 4:45 a.m. Eastern time, after the French national antidoping lab finished testing a second urine sample Landis provided after his dramatic performance on Stage 17 of the Tour. Testing on the first sample found synthetic testosterone in Landis’s urine, as well as a ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone nearly three times the limit allowed by World Anti-Doping Agency rules.

In a statement, the cycling union said the second test result, or B sample result, “has confirmed the result of an adverse analytical finding notified by the anti-doping laboratory of Paris on 26th July, following the analysis of sample A.”

The statement also said: “In accordance to the anti-doping rules, the Anti-Doping Commission of the UCI will request that the USA Cycling Federation open a disciplinary procedure against the rider.”

Landis, the third American to win the Tour, has denied taking performance-enhancing drugs, and has said his testosterone level is naturally high. In the week after his Tour victory, he said that the testosterone in his body was “natural and produced by my own organism.” He said he deserved to win cycling’s most prestigious race.

“I was the strongest man in the Tour de France, and that is why I am the champion,” said Landis, 30, in a statement sent Saturday by Michael Henson, his spokesman. “I will fight these charges with the same determination and intensity that I bring to my training and racing. It is now my goal to clear my name and restore what I worked so hard to achieve.”

His team, Phonak, a hearing-aid company, said it would not help Landis in that fight. Within an hour of the drug-test result, the company posted a statement on their Web site that said: “Landis will be dismissed without notice for violating the team’s internal Code of Ethics. Landis will continue to have legal options to contest the findings. However, this will be his personal affair and the Phonak team will no longer be involved in that.”

Not long ago, Phonak had been proud that Landis had worn the team’s yellow and green jersey. Landis’s improbable performance on Stage 17 of the Tour set up a victory that seemed plucked from a storybook.

The year after Lance Armstrong’s record seventh victory in the Tour, Landis, one of Armstrong’s former teammates, rode in that stage with the spotlight to himself. With gritted teeth and a degenerative hip injury, he traversed three Alpine passes so fast that he went from 11th place to 3rd over all, just 30 seconds behind the leader. He endured a miserable outing the day before, falling more than eight minutes behind and presumably out of contention for the title.

His subsequent victory seemed to erase the dark cloud that had hung over the Tour after a doping scandal tainted its start. Nine riders, including three favorites, were kicked out of the race after they or their teams were implicated in a drug investigation in Spain.

But three days after Landis’s victorious ride down the Champs-Élysées, that cloud returned. His urine sample tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

If Landis’s B sample had been negative today, the matter would have ended immediately. Instead, the positive result has trigged a doping case against Landis. That case now will be referred to USA Cycling, then the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which will