Tour de France winner failed drug test in race
Floyd Landis’ stunning Tour de France victory just four days earlier was thrown into question Thursday when his team said he tested positive for high levels of testosterone during the race.The Phonak team suspended Landis, pending results of the backup “B” sample of his drug test. If Landis is found guilty of doping, he could be stripped of the Tour title, and Spain’s Oscar Pereiro would become champion.
It wasn’t immediately known when the backup sample will be tested.
Efforts to reach Landis were not immediately successful. But Arlene Landis said her son called Thursday from Europe and told her he had not done anything wrong.“He said, ‘There’s no way,”’ she said in an interview with The Associated Press at her home in Farmersville, Pa. “I really believe him. I don’t think he did anything wrong.”
Second-place finisher Pereiro said he was in no mood to celebrate.
“Should I win the Tour now it would feel like an academic victory,” Pereiro told The Associated Press at his home in Vigo, Spain. “The way to celebrate a win is in Paris, otherwise it’s just a bureaucratic win.”
The Swiss-based Phonak team said it was notified by the International Cycling Union (UCI) on Wednesday that Landis’ sample showed “an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone” when he was tested after stage 17 of the race last Thursday.
“The team management and the rider were both totally surprised of this physiological result,” the Phonak statement said.
The 30-year-old Landis made a remarkable comeback in that Alpine stage, racing far ahead of the field for a solo win that moved him from 11th to third in the overall standings. He regained the leader’s yellow jersey two days later.
Landis rode the Tour with a degenerative hip condition that he has said will require surgery in the coming weeks or months.Phonak’s statement came a day after the UCI, cycling’s world governing body, said an unidentified rider had failed a drug test during the Tour.
Phonak said Landis would ask for an analysis of his backup sample “to prove either that this result is coming from a natural process or that this is resulting from a mistake.”
Arlene Landis said it could take two weeks for the results of the backup test to be made public.
“Of course he wasn’t happy about it, but they’re spoiling everything he’s supposed to be doing right now,” she said. “Why couldn’t they take care of this before they pronounced him the winner? Lance (Armstrong) went through this too. Somebody doesn’t want him to win.”
“Why do they put you through two weeks of misery and spoil your crown? My opinion is when he comes on top of this everyone will think so much more of him. So that’s what valleys are for, right?”
This is one of those… “I hear this every year” things. No matter who wins or loses, there is always a doping scandle with the Tour. I thought perhaps it would be over with at the beginning, but I was wrong. If the organizers turn out to be wrong then shame on them… for YET AGAIN spreading a myth that a winner was doing drugs. If it turns out that he did use drugs. I say he’s finished. He’ll never race again, not competitively. It’ll be at least a couple weeks or so before they finish the second test.
Sad news for a great sport. I kind of expected it though.
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