An Interview With Floyd Landis

Bicycling.com's Dave L'Heureux sat down with Floyd Landis for a few beers in a local Vail bar after his trying return to racing at the Teva Mountain Games. We talked about getting back on the bike, racing the Leadville 100, disappearing and just riding for a while and what's next for the 2006 Tour de France champ.

Comments

[Dopey]

The guy dopes, and still gets treated like a star. I have no respect for this magazine anymore.

[David L'Heureux]

Hasn't been convicted of anything. And all the evidence was tainted as hell.

So much for a fair trial huh Dopey?

[Bullet Bob]

The science still doesn't add up for me. And I still haven't figured out how to prove a negative. I don't dope personally but I can't prove it.
Convict someone of providing Floyd with testosterone and I will start to look at him with a jaundiced eye. Until then, innocent until proven guilty.

[Alfredo Montañez E.]

Floyd is innocent, and this is the best cycling publication in the world, period.

[barlow]

Of course Floyd's smoke screen of legal maneuvers is meant to prevent definative statements stating he is guilty. The mag should keep printing what is of interest to its readers (you and I).

[kimberly]

The man is spending all his money to prove he is innocent...that has to say something. How about faulty messed up labs in France read up on it, then cast your vote
Dopey

[kimberly]

The man is spending all his money to prove he is innocent...that has to say something. How about faulty messed up labs in France read up on it, then cast your vote
Dopey

[Kevin]

Lets wait untill the final verdict before we throw Floyd away.

[Peter]

The best thing about all these clowns who race professionally and get up to whatever they get up to is - We normal folk can forget all about them and still straddle our 5 year old bikes and climb over a mountain and enjoy cycling as it iwas meant to be. I consider pro racing as a totally separate beast. For the record...what happened to Greg Lamonde in these Landis hearings was wrong. Landis will live with that, Lamonde is a true champion.

[Caleab T. Losee]

There's always so much commotion from both sides. One side hates him for alledgedly doping, and the other side continues to support him citing laboratory mishaps and tainted drug tests. However, I don't think it's too much to suggest that, yes, Floyd doped, but that French officials and lab managers were so zealous in the quest to unseat an American winner of the Tour that they engaged in professional misconduct by trying to set Floyd up. Either way, both parties are guilty. In my heart of hearts, I hope Floyd is found innocent regardless of whether or not he doped. If you consider the notion that the top 20% of professional cyclists dope, as is evidenced lately by the overwhelming number of retired cyclists who are admitting to it, you would have to ask yourself, "was Floyd just that much better of a cyclist?" He doped, just as many of his fellow riders had, and yet, he beat them handily. Call it crazy, but I hope that Tour de France title stays in the U.S. for years to come.

[Rob]

Landis more than likely doped as every winner after LeMond more than likely doped. The lab messed up. If justice is served he will get the two year ban and the lab will be decertified, but do we always seek justice? No, if I received justices all the time I would be in trouble with at the least hundreds of speeding tickets and all those incidents as a teen would come back to haunt me. If the arbitrators follow the rules and not their political ties the case should be thrown out and the lab sanctioned or decertified. Justice would not be served, but the law would be followed. Maybe in 8-10 years Landis will come clean as will the other Tour "winners".

[patricia vitale]

Until Landis is proven guilty, he's innocent. As I have said before, the French just can't stand it that Americans keep besting their own cyclists. Talk about a bunch of bad sports.

[Jaime Alonso]

Floyd is a cheat! Unfortunately because he is an American-cheat, he is clouding many of your intelligent reader's opinions!! You must stand for integrity - no matter where the line is drawn. This is the "true" American way!

[glen]

I watched the entire tour last year and Floyd had two days that stood out, both from his other days, and from the rest of the athletes. One was extremely poor; the other a super-human feat. The performance differences, at that extreme, seem hard to explain. I wish someone could so we could all move on and not tarnish the sport, the race, or the athletes.

[RJ]

Somebody needs to answer a question about the half life of testosterone. The question I want to know is how much residual testosterone should have been in his system if he did dope at the levels reported, and how does that projected level compare to actual results for his next test. If there is a big difference, then I wonder how he could have doped.

[C. R.]

Right on, RJ, I've been asking the same question since Day 2 after the news broke last year, and so far, NO ONE can answer it, even the backers and scientists in FL's camp, so either no one knows or they aren't saying, but you'd think that would be the ONLY question, the rest is just Hooey.

[DOuble D]

Nice comments all around. In talking to Floyd, he seemed like a bit of a tragic, borderline sym-pathetic, figure. He's just a guy who wants to ride bikes, something he's done for the last 15-plus years of his life, and it's all being torn away from him. Maybe it's his fault, maybe he's getting screwed, I still can't figure it. I do know he was a cool, straight-up dude who kicked back with a couple of us from Bicycling, had a few beers and talked fairly candidly abot how he was hanging in there.

[SBN]

Great to hear Floyd kicking back, considering how he's been kicked around. His case has never passed the sniff test. Incompetent at best/ corrupt at worst lab. Walsh and L'Equipe out to get Lance and Landis. Pound out to get everybody in cycling. I'd like to see Greg "the greatest in Le Monde" PROVE he raced clean. The whole mess stinks.

[pedalfreak862]

If you have it set in your mind that he is guilty, nothing will ever change your mind. If you don't like the Mag covering the story, then stop reading it. But if the guy never doped, then who are the dopes. This is a story because it may prove that the system is flawed in some cases and that athletes need protected from it.

[justmissedthepodiumagain]

For a quick and easy look at the science behind the test check out this web site, a little biased but over all pretty good...
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/opinions/testosterone_d13C.html.

[justmissedthepodiumagain]

Sorry here is the link

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/opinions/testosterone_d13C.html

(No period at the end)

[Bryan Walsh]

OK, Lets all agree on a couple of things here. 1-The French haven't won a TDF since Bernard Hinault in the 80's. 2-The French hate Americans in general.3-They were always suspicous of Lance doping from Tour win #1. 4-The French hate Lance Armstong. 5-The French could not prove him guilty. 6-The French want to discredit Lance. 7-The French could not discredit Lance Armstrong. 8-The French are trying to/have discredited Floyd Landis. 9-The French and their labs did the testing of Floyds samples.
10-It is very easy to put the extremely small amount of whatever substance you want to taint a sample either in a container before urinating in it or even sneakier yet, on the lid used to seal it. How about even on the device used to remove an amount of sample before testing.
11-Draw your own conclusions based on these facts.
I believe the only way to stop the tainting of samples is to have several of them taken by multiple independant test labs operated by several different countries. The Tour is not just a race of teams, it is also a race of nations more so than individuals. That in my opinion makes it even more special. I just wish we could really believe in the riders competing fairly. Just my opinions. Please don't be offended.

[Gregg Dickson]

It puzzles me that anyone is waiting for the outcome of the arbitration hearing to decide if Floyd is guilty or not.
Floyd's defense team has already proven publicly that
1) the lab technicians, by their own admission, did not follow the lab's documented procedures for performing the tests
2) the equipment used in performing the tests had NEVER been calibrated
3) the samples were tainted, according to the labs own criteria for contamination
4) both technicians knew it was Floyd's urine when they were testing it
5) both samples were tested by the same two technicians
6) neither of the samples met the lab's documented criteria for a positive test for synthetic testosterone
7) WADA labs in the US and Australia would not have flagged these tests as positive according to their documented test criteria.
So, even if the non-objective, kangaroo court of an arbitration panel votes against him, since they have NEVER decided in favor of an athlete, EVER!
The answer is as obvious as the nose on your face!!
My recommendation is that each of you contact your senators and representatives and demand that the US Goernment withdraw funding for the USADA until they clean up their act and create a fair and equitable system for dealing with athletes suspected of doping.
That is why Floyd wanted to have a public hearing. So that the USADA and WADA's cloak and dagger tactics would be brought out into the light of day for everyone to see. He has been the first athlete, that I know of, who has been willing to risk his professional career and lots of public ridicule in order to bring these agencies to account for their abysmal behavior. Why would a guilty man waste his time on that? Guilty people try to hide their wrongdoing, not broadcast all of the evidence publicly for everyone to see and consider.

[Gregg Dickson]

Glen,
In response to your question, ...One was extremely poor; the other a super-human feat. The performance differences, at that extreme, seem hard to explain.

A single word answer: water

The effects of dehydration are catastrophic. We saw the same thing happen to Lance in 2002. Floyd's comback was nowhere near superhuman. The rest of the riders just didn't believe that he could stay out in the breakaway and therefore didn't push hard enough to catch him. Floyd had one distinct advantage that he explained in his recent book. His team car handed him something like 85 bottles of water while he was on the break. He drank some of them and poured the rest over his head. He was able to keep his body temp much lower than the chasing riders and to stay much better hydrated that them as well.

[Fred L Smith]

If Floyd were French, he would have never been accused.

I have watched the two stages 4 times now and see nothing abnormal. He tanked on one day and came back on the next. He knew this was the last day in his entire life to make his goal possible. He was either going to win the race on that day, or would forever have missed his life long dream. He rode with passion, not drugs.

The Landis team focused on the facts while the accusers focused on everything else.

The same french lad did all of the tests. If they did not want to control the results, then the back up testing would have been done by another lab.

Drugs destroy the body, and methods must be used that prevent even the domestiques from taking them successfully. Testing must be robust, transparent and done before the rider starts the race.

Floyd is fighting for all of the other riders, not himself. He has already been stripped of the massive money he could have made from his extraordinary efforts over the years.

I am selling my Lemond, and will never own another.