Presumptive 2006 Tour winner Floyd Landis was fired by Phonak today after the test of his B-sample came back positive for a high testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio.
Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour, said "It goes without saying that for us Floyd Landis is no longer the winner of the 2006 Tour de France."
Landis repeated his assertions that he is innocent, and that he'll contest the results in any way available:
"I will fight these charges with the same determination and intensity that I bring to my training and racing. It is now my goal to clear my name and restore what I worked so hard to achieve."
Phonak offered a short statement outlining the dismissal, and saying Landis's defense is now "his personal affair." The team promises a press conference "in the next couple of days."
1 comment:
I'm quite surprised that the results became available to the public so fast. The samples found positive were from stage 17, one of the hardest stages.
Taking directly from Landis' quotes
"I put in more than 20,000 kilometers of training for the Tour. I won the Tour of California, Paris-Nice and the Tour de Georgia. I was tested eight times at the Tour (de France); four times before that stage and three times after, including three blood tests. Only one came back positive.
"Nobody in their right mind would take testosterone just once; it doesn't work that way."
Landis is an excellent biker, there no doubt about that, but when the stage is one of the toughest one might just take testosterone to get that extra push in performance. Not to cheat, or just to cheat one and hope nobody will find out...when the price and fame is on the line, it could be a tough choice.
Sometimes I really wish these athelets who take performance enhance drugs would just come out clean and tell the world they made a mistake. It only makes you look worse to deny it when the whole world pretty much decided that you're guilty.
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