Lancaster native Floyd Landis humbly said Sunday: “I happen to be very good at peddling a bicycling. That does not make me in any way better than anyone else.”
Yet, the Tour de France winner may come to most know for pointing to the emperor and declaring that he has no clothes.
Landis is the first athlete to mount a serious defense against doping allegations.
The bicyclist charged with taking the hormone testosterone has raised and spent more than $750,000 on his legal defense even before his first hearing.
He has about 20 witnesses, including experts in mass spectography, prepared to testify at his May hearing that the urine test in question — one of eight taken from him during the Tour —was flawed.
The test documents are riddled with errors, Landis’ friend, Dr. Arnie Baker contends. The sample was contaminated, paperwork has been altered and the urine may not have even been from Landis.
And Baker and Landis maintained the sloppy practices are not unusual for the French national anti-doping lab. They have documents from other cases that show a pattern of incompetence and negligence.
But no other athlete has so aggressively maintained his innocence.
Even if they are innocent, Landis believes other athletes have looked at the cost of defending themselves — Landis expects to spend more than $2 million — and they have accepted the suspension.
Landis faces being stripped of his title and a two-year ban from the sport.
The lack of challenge is why the USADA has 158 notches on its gun, Landis believes.
“Of course, now, they come into it with this arrogant attitude, like we’re just going to stomp all over this guy, like we do every other time. … Sooner or later, they were going to pick the wrong guy,” he said in an exclusive interview.
“How many can you go through before you find a guy who is just not going to take it.”
Landis said Sunday that it was not in his nature to accept the penalty for something that he didn’t do.
Yet, just because he is fighting the charges, that doesn’t mean he will win. In fact, it is an uphill battle with the odds against him.
The rules are written by the prosecution and favor them. Because they have never been challenged, there are few checks and balances, he said.
And, even if he wins at the USADA hearing in California on May 14, he faces a second hearing by the World Anti-Doping Agency and UCI and possibly another by the French anti-doping agency.
If exonerated after the May hearing, Landis doesn’t expect to be racing soon. He would need two or three months to regain his form. He has already pledged to the French that he will not compete in the Tour this year and wouldn’t be ready, even if he could, he said.
Landis said he doesn’t want to go there to race. He wants to go back to the Tour to win.
Having already written off this year, he said it is entirely possible that he would not be allowed to race next year.
“Their tactics are, like they are now, of making it take long enough so that you run out of money or the will to do anything about it,” he said of the process.
And, if he loses two years of racing, does the 31-year-old start again?
“I don’t know. I’m proud of the fact that I made it to the top and I accomplished the goals I’ve accomplished and whatever happens next, whether I race or not, I’ll be satisfied with that,” he said.
He knows well why some athletes have given up.
“It takes a lot of energy. It takes all your energy.
“It takes your whole life. It’s overwhelming,” he said.
Stoically, as his Mennonite forebears, Landis accepts the mantle as a duty. This case has grown bigger than himself and bigger than the sport of cycling, he said. He is fighting on behalf of all athletes.
“You’re given things in life and you deal with them,” he said.
