Floyd Landis doping case
Encyclopedia
Doping (sport)
The use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport is commonly referred to by the term "doping", particularly by those organizations that regulate competitions. The use of performance enhancing drugs is mostly done to improve athletic performance. This is why many sports ban the use of performance...
scandal that featured Floyd Landis
Floyd Landis
Floyd Landis is an American retired cyclist who after initially being awarded victory in the 2006 Tour de France was stripped of his title for a doping offense. He was an all-around rider, with special skills in climbing and time-trialing, and is also known to be a very fast descender.Landis...
, the initial winner of the 2006 Tour de France
2006 Tour de France
The 2006 Tour de France was the 93rd Tour de France, taking place from July 1 to July 23, 2006. It was won by Óscar Pereiro following the disqualification of apparent winner Floyd Landis....
. After a meltdown in Stage 16, where he had lost ten minutes, Landis came back, superhumanly, if suspiciously in Stage 17 riding solo and passing his whole team. However, a urine sample taken from Landis immediately after his Stage 17 win has twice tested positive for banned synthetic testosterone
Testosterone
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...
as well as a ratio of testosterone
Testosterone
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...
to epitestosterone
Epitestosterone
Epitestosterone is a natural steroid, an inactive epimer of the hormone testosterone. Structurally, it differs from testosterone only in the configuration at the OH-bearing carbon, C17...
nearly three times the limit allowed by World Anti-Doping Agency
World Anti-Doping Agency
The World Anti-Doping Agency , , is an independent foundation created through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee . It was set up on November 10, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland, as a result of what was called the "Declaration of Lausanne", to promote, coordinate and...
rules. The International Cycling Union
Union Cycliste Internationale
Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland....
has formally stripped him of his 2006 Tour de France title. Second place finisher Óscar Pereiro has been officially declared the winner. The only previous Tour de France winner to be disqualified was 1904 Tour de France
1904 Tour de France
The 1904 Tour de France was the second Tour de France, held from 2 July to 24 July. With a route similar to its previous edition, 1903 Tour de France winner Maurice Garin seemed to have repeated his win by a small margin over Lucien Pothier, while Hippolyte Aucouturier won four of the six stages...
winner Maurice Garin
Maurice Garin
Maurice-Francois Garin was a road bicycle racer best known for winning the inaugural Tour de France in 1903, and for being stripped of his title in the second Tour in 1904 along with eight others, for cheating.-Origins:Garin was born the son of Maurice Clément Garin and Maria Teresa...
.
Prelude
Landis was wearing the maillot jaune prior to Stage 16, but then lost eight minutes and seemed finished. However, Landis spectacularly came back in Stage 17, winning the stage and cutting his deficit to leader Óscar Pereiro to half a minute. Overtaking him after the Stage 19 time trial, Landis was celebrated as the winner of the 2006 Tour de France.Doping accusation
On July 27, 2006, four days after Tour had finished, 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. Landis denied having doped and placed faith in a test using his backup sample. 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. Landis's personal physician Arnie Baker later disclosed that the test had found a T/E ratio of first 12:1, later 11:1, in Landis, far above the maximum allowable ratio of 4:1. 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 AgencyWorld Anti-Doping Agency
The World Anti-Doping Agency , , is an independent foundation created through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee . It was set up on November 10, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland, as a result of what was called the "Declaration of Lausanne", to promote, coordinate and...
. The B sample confirmed the A sample, and also tested positive for an unnatural source of testosterone.
Following the reported positive drug test on his A sample, Landis suggested that the results had been improperly released by the UCI. On August 9, 2006, UCI president Pat McQuaid rejected the claim, saying, "We acted correctly. We informed the team, the rider, and the federation that there had been an irregularity. Then we issued a press release saying that an unnamed rider had been found positive in the Tour. Landis's team published his name, two days later... I have full faith in that laboratory, and there are stringent measures kept in place by the anti-doping agencies to ensure they proceed correctly."
Landis has written a book titled Positively False which contains his personal account of the case and in which he maintains his innocence.
USADA Arbitration
On May 14, 2007 an arbitration hearing began between the USADA and Landis regarding the doping allegations. On September 20, 2007, the arbitrators found Landis guilty of doping."Whisky defense"
On August 1, 2006 the New York Times reported that according to a source at the UCI Landis's urine test had revealed synthetic testosterone in his body.Despite this, Landis claimed his innocence: "We will explain to the world why this is not a doping case, but a natural occurrence" and that the testosterone in his body was "natural and produced by my own organism." The variety of explanations offered up by Landis provided fodder for many skeptical columns by sports journalists and inspiration for satirists such as late-night national TV show host David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...
, who presented the "Top 10 Floyd Landis Excuses" on his show. Several experts have refuted Landis's assertions. Landis at first blamed consumption of whisky
Whisky
Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Different grains are used for different varieties, including barley, malted barley, rye, malted rye, wheat, and corn...
for his unusual results. This approach was widely ridiculed. Prof. Christiane Ayotte, director of Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
's anti-doping laboratory, said that "In 25 years of experience of testing testosterone ... such a huge increase in the level of testosterone cannot be expected to come from any natural factors." David Black, a forensic toxicologist for Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
-based Aegis Sciences, said, "There are not hundreds of plausible explanations. If the tests were so unreliable that there were hundreds of possible reasons, there would be no point in performing the tests."
Landis later backtracked from some of the assertions, saying, "The whisky idea was not mine and the dehydration was a theory from the lawyers I hired in Spain to represent me".
On September 8, 2006, Landis's attorney announced that he would formally request that the case be dropped on the grounds that LNDD's 370 page report revealed inconsistencies in the way the samples were handled.
Exogenous testosterone
On August 1, 2006, media reports said that syntheticOrganic synthesis
Organic synthesis is a special branch of chemical synthesis and is concerned with the construction of organic compounds via organic reactions. Organic molecules can often contain a higher level of complexity compared to purely inorganic compounds, so the synthesis of organic compounds has...
testosterone had been detected in the A sample, using the carbon isotope
Isotope
Isotopes are variants of atoms of a particular chemical element, which have differing numbers of neutrons. Atoms of a particular element by definition must contain the same number of protons but may have a distinct number of neutrons which differs from atom to atom, without changing the designation...
ratio test, CIR, conducted at LNDD. The presence of synthetic testosterone means that some of the testosterone in Landis’s body came from an external source and was not naturally produced by his own system. These results conflict with Landis's public assertion that it was a natural occurrence.
The CIR test is used to distinguish between testosterone produced naturally by the athlete's body and synthetic testosterone introduced from an outside source. The test is performed by Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry
Isotope Mass Spectrometry
Isotope-ratio mass spectrometry ' is a specialization of mass spectrometry, in which mass spectrometric methods are used to measure the relative abundance of isotopes in a given sample.-Introduction:...
(IRMS). According to Gary I. Wadler, M.D., a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the carbon isotope ratio test needs to be done only once, on either an A or on a B sample, particularly if the athlete’s T/E ratio is high as in Landis's case.
It has been suggested that Landis may have been using testosterone over the long term but either masking it or diluting it to avoid detection. The positive test result would therefore have been from a mistake with the alleged doping program on one day.
Landis gave a total of eight samples during the 2006 Tour de France. As part of its prosecution, USADA had remaining "B" portions of the other samples tested by the French laboratory. Four of those samples also showed the presence of synthetic testosterone.
Appeals
On September 11, 2006, Landis asked a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) review board to dismiss the doping charges against him. Landis's request was made on the basis that the A and B urine samples from stage 17 of the Tour de France do not meet the established World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) criteria for a positive doping offense. Landis's lawyer said in a statement: "The single testosterone/epitestosterone analysis in this case is replete with fundamental, gross errors." The lawyer also claims that the positive finding on the B sample came from a sample number not assigned to Landis.The review board notified Landis on September 18 of its recommendation that USADA proceed with the disciplinary process. Howard Jacobs
Howard Jacobs
Howard L. Jacobs is an attorney in the United States from Westlake Village, California, who has represented 75 or more athletes in cases, mostly about performance enhancing drugs.-Clients include::* Basketball player, Diana Taurasi, in 2011,...
, attorney for Landis, requested an open hearing by the American Arbitration Association to contest potential sanctions against the athlete.
Arnie Baker
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 BakerArnie Baker
Arnie Baker is a bicycle coach, racer, and writer.He has coached road and mountain bike racers to several Olympic Games, more than 120 U.S. National Championships and 40 U.S. records...
, Landis' former coach. The French police later invited Landis and Baker to attend a court hearing to answer questions regarding the issue. On July 31, 2009 the New York Times featured an article on corporate spying in France. The article stated that,"No evidence has surfaced to connect Mr. Landis or Dr. Baker to the hacking, and each has denied any involvement."
Verdict
On September 20, 2007, Landis' doping accusation was upheld by an arbitration panel deciding between him and USADA and Landis was banned for two years. In response to this, International Cycling UnionUnion Cycliste Internationale
Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland....
formally stripped him of his 2006 Tour de France title and second place finisher Óscar Pereiro was officially declared the winner. The only previous Tour de France winner to be disqualified was 1904 Tour de France
1904 Tour de France
The 1904 Tour de France was the second Tour de France, held from 2 July to 24 July. With a route similar to its previous edition, 1903 Tour de France winner Maurice Garin seemed to have repeated his win by a small margin over Lucien Pothier, while Hippolyte Aucouturier won four of the six stages...
winner Maurice Garin
Maurice Garin
Maurice-Francois Garin was a road bicycle racer best known for winning the inaugural Tour de France in 1903, and for being stripped of his title in the second Tour in 1904 along with eight others, for cheating.-Origins:Garin was born the son of Maurice Clément Garin and Maria Teresa...
.
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.
Landis agreed not to participate in any racing in France in 2007 to allow him to postpone a hearing of his case there for as long as possible. On December 19, 2007, the French Anti-Doping Agency found him guilty of doping, and issued a two-year suspension, which bars him from racing in France until early 2009. He has not, so far, appealed that decision, though it is likely that he was waiting for the result of his first Court of Arbitration for Sport appeal before doing so.
After this verdict, Landis tried to reverse this decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport
Court of Arbitration for Sport
The Court of Arbitration for Sport is an international arbitration body set up to settle disputes related to sport. Its headquarters are in Lausanne and its courts are located in New York, Sydney and Lausanne, Switzerland...
. On June 20, 2008, he lost this appeal. 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. In December 2008 Landis and the USADA reached a settlement and agreed to withdraw the case with prejudice, leading some to believe that the USADA waived the $100,000 fine in return for the cessation of litigation. Regardless of the reasons for dismissing the case, litigation is now complete and final.
Reaction among cyclists
After Landis' A sample tested positive for testosterone, retired American cyclist and three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMondGreg LeMond
Gregory James LeMond is a former professional road bicycle racer from the United States and a three-time winner of the Tour de France. He was born in Lakewood, California and raised in Reno, Nevada....
doubted whether additional doping tests would reverse Landis's earlier results. He stated,
On July 28, 2006 Landis appeared on "Larry King Live
Larry King Live
Larry King Live is an American talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was CNN's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly....
" to explain his situation and reiterate his innocence.
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong
Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist who won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times, after having survived testicular cancer. He is also the founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research and support...
phoned the show to express support for his former teammate. Armstrong expressed skepticism of the French laboratory that conducted Landis's drug test, noting it is the same laboratory involved in some of the doping allegations against him. Armstrong has continuously expressed support for Landis and stated his conviction that the process is biased against athletes.
Fellow professional and 10 time Tour de France cyclist, Australian Stuart O'Grady
Stuart O'Grady
Stuart O'Grady OAM , nicknamed Stuey, is an Australian professional road bicycle racer on UCI ProTeam , who started as a track cyclist. He and Graeme Brown won a gold medal in Men's Madison at the 2004 Summer Olympics...
, left no doubt as to his view in an interview for the Australian 60 Minutes program televised on 22 July 2007. The reporter Liz Hayes asked O'Grady: "Would anyone have picked that — that the winner of last year's race was a drug cheat?" O'Grady replied,