CYCLING/Doping allegations:Floyd Landis says he will spend his last cent in trying to prove himself innocent of cheating and highlight the flaws in cycling's drug-testing procedures. Lawrence Donegan reports
If appearances counted for anything, then Floyd Landis would be arriving in London for the start of the Tour de France in 11 days' time as the pre-emptive favourite, and not as a pariah, to defend his stunning victory of last July. Never has a man looked so innocent: so steady of gaze and sweet of disposition.
As he sat in a lecture hall at Pepperdine University in California last month, looking on as expensive lawyers argued over the positive drug test that transformed his image overnight from yellow-jerseyed hero to bare-faced cheat, he carried the air not of a top-class athlete staring down the barrel of ruination but of a wonderstruck schoolboy let loose for the day in the crazy, crazy world of grown-ups.
"I am looking forward to the hearing, delighted that finally I have the chance to put my case," Landis said before the US Anti-Doping Agency arbitration panel met to decide whether he should be banned for providing a positive A sample for testosterone on July 20th, the day he rallied to win stage 17 of the 2006 Tour - a ride described by some observers as one of the greatest in the race's history.
Landis's carefully nuanced case against the methods employed by the French laboratory responsible for the positive test was submerged by a soap-opera subplot involving his former manager and a plot to blackmail the former tour champion Greg LeMond, who was due to give evidence for Usada.
The cyclist who pleads his innocence has become a target of contempt in recent years, not least because many of the "innocent" have subsequently been exposed as cheats. Landis is aware of this lineage but affects not to care that it now potentially includes his name.
"Before all of this happened I used to put more energy and time into caring what people thought about me but the truth is I'm not going to convince everybody," he says.
"What people think of me personally is meaningless at this stage. They can think what they like. All I care about now is that the next guy who comes along gets the chance to defend himself. As the system stands, an accused person has no chance of proving he is innocent."
As with his generalised pleadings of innocence, it is easy to dismiss this apparent concern as self-serving claptrap. But the charge is harder to pin on Landis than might be thought, not least because he has put his money where his mouth is. The bill for defending himself over the last year stands at $2 million (1.5 million) and is rising. Usada's arbitration panel will deliver its verdict this summer bu+t, assuming it rules against him - and most people, including Landis, assume it will - he will take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
"Most of the money I made as a bicycle racer has gone to the lawyers. By the time we're done every penny will be gone," he says with the matter-of-fact tone of an experienced blackjack player facing up to a bad night at the tables.
"Do I think it's been worth it? Yes, regardless of the result. It is not in my personality to take something like this and not defend myself. Athletes have walked away in the past because they didn't have the resources or the energy to stand up to Usada and Wada (World Anti-Doping Agency) and this laboratory in Paris.
"What people do not realise is these organisations make mistakes but they cover up those mistakes to protect themselves. That's completely unacceptable so, whatever it has cost me personally, of course it has been worth it."
Landis's lawyers spent endless hours at Pepperdine debating the methods used at the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory outside Paris, which delivered the positive result on Landis's A sample, as well as four positive B sample results. Most of the detail was incomprehensible to a lay person. Far clearer and more compelling was their insistence the procedures for dealing with so-called drugs cheats in sport fall short of standards of natural justice that apply in civilian life.
Even the mild-mannered Landis can muster anger against those who leak drugs-test results - "they might as well just set up an open fax line to L'Équipe newspaper" - against cycling's hierarchy - "a bunch of clowns" - and against Dick Pound, the head of Wada, who wrote a newspaper column after the positive test urging Landis to "come clean" and confess - from Landis's viewpoint a bit like the supermarket security guard telling the shoplifter to "fess up" before he has even examined the contents of his pockets.
"Pound is just a loudmouth who just likes to see his name in the paper," Landis says of Wada's esteemed chairman.
But, if Pound has some explaining to do, so too does Landis, not least about his own conduct in the aftermath of last summer's events, which struck some as less plausible than they might have expected from an innocent man. "Shifty" and "evasive" were two of the milder adjectives flying around.
"When news of the positive test came to me I knew how the system worked; I knew it would be kept confidential until we could figure out what the deal was. And that's exactly what happened - it turned up in L'Équipe and the next thing you know I was guilty as charged. The fact is I hadn't even been given details of the test results. I didn't know what was in them. So not only did I not know why I was being accused, I didn't really know what I was being accused of."
But what of his apparent docility under questioning, not to mention his various explanations of what might have caused his positive result, ranging from a natural high level of testosterone to his imbibing a large amount of whisky the night before stage 17?
"People think I should have got angrier. I don't know what to say to that. It was a more stressful time in my life than I can ever remember and people react differently in those kinds of situations. I was angry. But I wasn't angry at the press or the people I was talking to. I was angry at those who had caused it to happen.
"As for the various explanations, I didn't know what had caused the positive test. In the circumstances all I could do was give people details of what I had been doing the day before in the hope there might be something in there," he says, although as those words come out he seems to sense their inadequacy. "The truth is I didn't know what to say. But I couldn't just hide, could I? There was no place to go."
With the Usada hearing behind him and his fate still undecided, Landis finds himself staring into a wide horizon of uncertainty. In the short term he has a book, Positively False, to promote and he expects to be in London next week for Le Grand Depart.
"I'm a cycling fan at the bottom of it all. Despite the people who are in charge, it is still my friends out there racing their bikes," he says, dismissing the suggestion he is intent on embarrassing the race director, Christian Prudhomme, who said last month Landis's name would be erased from the tour's records.
"What is he going to do - sell videos of the race with a black spot over me?" Landis sneers. "How's that going to work?"
This month Landis came 36th in a mountain-bike race in Denver, putting paid to the suggestion he intended to return to his roots as a mountain biker. As for his career on the roads, he sounds like a man whose energies have been utterly spent.
"Why would I want to go back and deal with the people who are running the sport? As I said, they are clowns," he says before coming as close as he has ever come to announcing his retirement from the sport: "If I never race again I am proud of my cycling career. I made it all the way to the top and not many people can say that. Everybody's career ends sooner or later and, if that it how it has to be, then so be it. I have been one of the lucky few." ...
Guardian Service
Landis timeline: a saga of charge, countercharge, leaks and manipulation ... by Shane Stokes
July 19th:While leading the Tour de France, Landis has a bad day, loses 10:04 to his main rivals and falls to 11th overall.
July 20th:Landis breaks clear with 128.5 kilometres to go, finishes 5:42 ahead of closest rival, Carlos Sastre, and moves to within 30 seconds of the yellow jersey.
July 22nd: Landis finishes third in the penultimate-day time trial, overtaking Oscar Pereiro to retake the race lead.
July 23rd: Landis wins the Tour de France.
July 26th:The UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) announces an unidentified Tour rider has tested positive. Landis unexpectedly pulls out of a criterium, sparking speculation.
July 27th:The Phonak team confirm Landis's A sample has tested positive for abnormal testosterone levels. In the next few days Landis claims he has naturally high testosterone.
August 5th:The B sample confirms the A test. Phonak fire Landis. Tour officials say they no longer consider him champion.
August 16th:Landis's father-in-law, David Witt, is found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot. Financial troubles are implicated.
September 27th:Patrice Clerc of the Tour organising company asserts Landis is guilty. Landis has hip surgery.
September 29th:Landis requests a public hearing.
November 14th:It is revealed a hacker has been breaking into the LNDD (Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage) computers and leaking files.
November 15th:The LNDD admits typing errors on a Landis sample. He says this is proof of sloppiness in the French lab.
January 4th:The Floyd Fairness Fund is established, to enable supporters to provide donations to Landis's legal battle.
February: Landis's defence team claims the same LNDD technicians tested his A and B samples, contrary to protocol.
March:Landis's team claim LNDD files were manipulated.
April 11th:The arbitration panel votes two-to-one to analyse the leftover B samples at the same LNDD French lab.
April 23rd:L'Équipe announces synthetic testosterone is found in the B samples. Landis says the lab is unreliable.
May 10th:Landis claims Usada offered him a reduced suspension if he would give evidence against Lance Armstrong.
May 14th: Usada's 10-day hearing begins in Malibu.
May 17th:Greg LeMond testifies Landis's manager called to "intimidate" him about the sexual abuse LeMond suffered as a child. Landis denies involvement and fires his manager.
June: The cycling world awaits the outcome of the hearing.
