Floyd Landis still professes his innocense
The Frence lab that completed the testing on urine sample A of Floyd Landis after he was declared the winner of the Tour de France a couple of weeks ago, has determined that Landis’s sample B also contains high levels of synthetic testosterone.
Landis still denies that he has done anything wrong and his defense team has offered a couple of explanations, from dehydration to cortosone shots that he takes for pain (he has a very bad hip) and also thyroid medication.
The final decision on the punishment will come from the UCI and then he will be able to appeal what ever punishment is handed down, the expected punishment would be a 2 year ban from the sport. Unfortunately, the biggest disappointment will come when the Tour de France victory is taken away. The Tour de France officials wasted no time, in taking steps to declare the second place finisher the winner of race.
The race director Christian Prudhomme said runner-up Oscar Pereiro, would be declared the winner and he was contacted by Tour de France officials.
Landis’s racing team Swiss-based Phonak reacted very abruptly by firing Landis, who was the team captain only 45 minutes after learning of the results from the sample B testing. Despite the fact that they stood behind another former team member, Tyler Hamilton for two years while he fought allegations of doping.
If Landis ultimately loses all of his appeals he will become the first person to be stripped of his Tour de France victory for doping in races 103 year history.
By belief is Landis is guilty. If the tests weren’t on the up and up, they’d have used it to ding Armstrong years ago. It’s unfortunate.
Comment by Crutnacker — August 6, 2006 @ 2:15 pm
Yes, it is unfortunate, but if it was caused by the Cortosone or the Thyroid meds he should have notified the UCI that he has been taking those meds that could have possibly registered in his urine samples. Athletes know that there is a possiblity that meds can cause positive results.
Comment by Administrator — August 6, 2006 @ 5:26 pm