The director of the Tour de France preempted the start of local bicyclist Floyd Landis’ hearing on Monday by announcing the result didn’t matter.
Christian Prudhomme told the German Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung that Landis would be stripped from the official Tour de France record books. The news was reported Saturday in the Austrialian newspaper The Age, http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/six-riders-out-as-drug-scandal-sours-giro-ditalia/2007/05/12/1178899168734.html
Prudhomme’s announcement came three days before Landis begins his week-and-a-half long hearing before the U.S. Anti-doping Agency. Landis, a Farmersville native, is fighting allegations that he took performance-enhancing testosterone during last summer’s Tour de France. He went on to win the race.
If a three-arbiter panel determines Landis took the hormone, he faced being stripped of the Tour title and banned from professional cycling for as much as two years.
Prudhomme essentially made the made the results of the hearing moot by saying that regardless of the outcome, Landis has already been stricken from the winner’s list based on the allegations.
”For us Floyd Landis is not the winner of the Tour de France 2006,” Prudhomme reportedly said.
