Floyd Landis

Floyd Landis

Personal information
Full name	Floyd Landis
Date of birth	October 14, 1975 (1975-10-14) (age 34)
Country	United States
Height	1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
Weight	68 kg (150 lb; 10.7 st)
Team information
Current team	OUCH Pro Cycling Team
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	All-rounder
Professional team(s)1
1999-2001 2002-2004 2005-2006 2009-	Mercury Cycling Team US Postal Service Phonak Hearing Systems OUCH
Major wins
Paris-Nice (2006) Tour de Georgia (2006) Tour of California (2006)
Infobox last updated on:
25 January 2009 1 Team names given are those prevailing at time of rider beginning association with that team.

Floyd Landis (born October 14, 1975) is an American cyclist, from California, best known for being disqualified after finishing first in the 2006 Tour de France for a doping offense. He currently rides for UCI Continental team OUCH Pro Cycling Team. He is an all-around rider, with special skills in climbing and time-trialing, and is extremely good on the descent. Landis turned professional in 1999 with the Mercury Cycling Team. He joined the US Postal Service team in 2002, and moved to the Phonak Hearing Systems team in 2005.

In 2006, Landis won the first edition of the Tour of California, before going on to finish first in the 2006 Tour de France. He was stripped of his Tour de France victory and fired from the Phonak team after a drug-control test demonstrated the presence of a skewed testosterone/epitestosterone ratio during Stage 17.^[1]

Landis maintained his innocence, and he mounted a vigorous defense. Although Landis' legal team documented inconsistencies in the handling and evaluation of his urine samples, the disqualification was upheld.

He was suspended from professional competition, through 30 January 2009, following an arbitration panel's 2 to 1 ruling on 20 September 2007. Landis appealed the result of the arbitration hearing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which subsequently upheld the panel's ruling.^[2]

During the 2008 season, Landis worked as an advisor for Rock Racing. After completion of the suspension, Landis joined OUCH Pro Cycling Team, his first race, following his suspension, was the 2009 Tour of California.

Biography

Floyd Landis is the second child and oldest son of Paul and Arlene Landis. His childhood home is located in the unincorporated village of Farmersville in West Earl Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.^[3]

Landis used his first bike to ride while out fishing with his best friend but quickly learned to enjoy riding for its own sake. At one point, he became determined to ride in a local race. Landis showed up wearing sweatpants because his religion forbade wearing shorts; he won anyway. More wins followed as Landis continued to enjoy the sport. Disturbed at his son's participation in what he considered a "useless" endeavor, Landis' father tried to discourage him from racing his bike by giving him extra chores. This left him no time to train during the day, so he would sneak out of the house at night to train, sometimes at 1 or 2 a.m. and often in the freezing cold. Landis' father, a devout Mennonite,^[4] received a tip that his son had been going out at night. He did not appreciate his son's passion for cycling and thought that he might be getting into drugs or alcohol. He often followed Landis at a distance to make sure he was not getting into trouble. Today, Landis' father has become a hearty supporter of his son and regards himself as one of Floyd's biggest fans.^[5][6]

"Master of the Mountains"

Landis won the first mountain bike race he entered. In 1993, he was crowned junior national champion. He told friends he would win the Tour de France one day. At age 20, Landis moved to Southern California to train full time as a mountain biker. He soon established a reputation for toughness, once finishing a race riding on only his rims.^[7] However, his training regimen resembled that of a road biker, and in 1999 he switched to road cycling.

Landis performed well enough on the road that Lance Armstrong recruited him to U.S. Postal and chose Landis to ride alongside him in three straight Tours de France (all of which Armstrong won) from 2002 to 2004. Landis often pushed the pace in the mountains to break the pack before Armstrong made his final move. In the 2004 tour, Landis led Armstrong and a few of Armstrong's main rivals over the final climb of stage 17, putting on such an impressive display of strength that comedian and avid bike-racing fan Robin Williams dubbed him the "Mofo of the Mountains." Landis' performance led some observers to peg him as a possible team leader and future winner of the maillot jaune. Landis left US Postal later that year after receiving a better contract offer from the Phonak squad.

Landis at the 2006 Tour of California

In the 2005 Tour de France, Landis finished ninth overall in the General Classification, his highest finish in the tour at that time.

Landis started the 2006 season strongly, with overall wins in the Amgen Tour of California, and then in the prestigious Paris-Nice, both week-long stage races. Winning Paris-Nice gave Landis 52 points in the UCI ProTour individual competition, starting him off in first place for 2006. Landis continued his display of strength with another overall win in the Ford Tour de Georgia, which took place from April 18 to April 23. In addition to winning the Tour de Georgia time trial, Landis managed to retain every second of his lead through the mountains with a close second place finish to Tom Danielson on Brasstown Bald, the most difficult climbing stage of the tour.

Hip ailment

The powerful performance of Landis up to Stage 16 of the Tour de France and his comeback in Stage 17 is particularly notable given his hip ailment, osteonecrosis, which was revealed in an article in The New York Times during the 2006 Tour de France.^[8] This deterioration in the ball joint of his right hip stemmed from diminished blood supply and constricted blood vessels caused by scar tissue. The original injury that led to the formation of the scar tissue was a femoral neck fracture sustained in a bicycle crash during a training ride near his Southern California home in October 2002. Landis kept the ailment secret from his teammates, rivals, and the media until an announcement made while the 2006 Tour was underway. This same ailment also affected former multi-sport athlete Bo Jackson and American football player Brett Favre.

Landis rode the 2006 Tour with the constant pain from the injury, which he described thus: "It's bad, it's grinding, it's bone rubbing on bone. Sometimes it's a sharp pain. When I pedal and walk, it comes and goes, but mostly it's an ache, like an arthritis pain. It aches down my leg into my knee. The morning is the best time, it doesn't hurt too much. But when I walk it hurts, when I ride it hurts. Most of the time it doesn't keep me awake, but there are nights that it does."^[9]

During the Tour, Landis was medically approved to take cortisone for this injury, a medication otherwise prohibited in professional cycling for its known potential for abuse. Landis himself called his win "a triumph of persistence" despite the pain.^[10] Landis underwent successful hip resurfacing surgery on September 27, 2006.

Doping case

On July 27, 2006 the Phonak Cycling Team announced Floyd Landis had a urine test come back positive, having an unusually high ratio of the hormone testosterone to the hormone epitestosterone (T/E ratio) after the epic performance in Stage 17.^[11] Landis denied having doped and placed faith in a test using his backup sample.^[12] Phonak stated that he would be dismissed should the backup sample also test positive. It did, and Landis was suspended from professional cycling and dismissed from his team.^[13] Landis's personal physician later disclosed that the test had found a T/E ratio of 11:1 in Landis, far above the maximum allowable ratio of 4:1.^[14][15]

The test on Landis's Stage 17 A sample had been performed by the French government's anti-doping clinical laboratory, the National Laboratory for Doping Detection (LNDD). LNDD is a division of the Ministry of Youth, Sport, and Social Life and is accredited by WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency.^[16]

Landis was eventually found guilty of doping and was disqualified. The second place rider, Óscar Pereiro, became the race's official winner. The decision of whether to strip Landis of his title was made by the International Cycling Union (UCI).^[17] Under UCI rules, the determination of whether or not a cyclist violated any rules must be made by the cyclist's national federation, in this case USA Cycling, which transferred the case to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).^[17][18][19]

Landis was also banned from the sport for two years, dated retroactively to January 2007. Even before the USADA's ruling on this matter, the controversy resulted in the disbandment of Landis's former team, Phonak.^[20]

On September 20, 2007 Landis was found guilty of doping by a 2-1 vote of the hearing committee, with Patrice Brunet and Richard McLaren in the majority, and Christopher Campbell dissenting. Landis appealed the decision of the committee to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. ^[21]. The hearing ran from March 19 to March 24, 2008 in New York. The decision was announced on June 30 2008 ^[22] with the result that the conviction and ban were upheld. In September 2008 Landis moved in U.S. federal court to vacate the CAS arbitration award, contending that the procurement of the award was tainted by partiality and conflicts of interest. Additionally, Landis contested the $100,000 US "costs" award, characterizing it as a disguised punitive award.^[23] The parties agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice in December 2008, finally ending the litigation surrounding the doping case. ^[24] On April 14, 2009 the French newspaper L'Express reported information that had been obtained from hacking into the French national laboratory for doping detection was sent to a Canadian counterpart lab from a computer registered to Arnie Baker, Landis's ex-coach. ^[25] On August 25, 2009 The New York Times reported, "No evidence has surfaced to connect Mr. Landis or Dr. Baker to the hacking, and each has denied any involvement."^[26]

Return to cycling

His two-year ban ended in early 2009; Landis returned to cycling with the OUCH Pro Cycling Team in the Battenkill Professional Invitational on April 19, 2009. ^[27]

Major results

References

See also

• List of doping cases in cycling
• List of sportspeople sanctioned for doping offences

External links

	Wikinews has News related to this article:
Landis fails drug test; could lose Tour title Landis' fate to be announced Monday Court decision means Floyd Landis loses Tour de France title

• Floyd Landis' Website
• WADA Memo on Landis Decision July 9, 2008
• Sex, drugs and sports: Prostaglandins, epitestosterone and sexual development
• Floyd Landis profile
• Trust But Verify: News, Research and Commentary about the Floyd Landis doping allegations.
• Detecting doping in sports
• Do non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs influence the steroid hormone milieu in male athletes?
• False-Positive T/E and CIR Results: Floyd Landis, Mennonites, & Sitosterolemia
• The Floyd Landis Sports Doping Case: As Seen Through the Eyes of a Mythical ASCLDLab Inspector