The panel of arbitrators who heard Lancaster County-native Floyd Landis’ doping case have concluded that he took testosterone to enhance his performance in the 2006 Tour de France.
The Associated Press reported getting an advance copy of the U.S. Anti-doping agency finding. The news broke just before 2 p.m. today.
Landis, of Farmersville, may still appeal the decision to the international Court of Arbitration of Sport. He stands to lose his title as tour winner and faces a two-year ban from competition. That ban is retroactive to Jan. 30.
Landis has been out of competition since the end of July 2006, four days after standing on the podium in Paris, when news of the “adverse analytical finding” leaked to the French sporting press.
During a 10-day hearing in May, at the Pepperdine University Law School in Malibu, Calif., Landis’ defense team effectively poked holes in the evidence presented by the French lab. But, the arbitrators found the testosterone-to-epitestosterone test was unreliable, two of the three panel members maintained that carbon-isotope ration analysis (IRMS) was accurate and was enough to support their guilty finding.
The third, panelist, Christoper Campbell, whom Landis had appointed, contended that if one test couldn’t be trusted, then the lab could not be trusted to do the more complex IRMS test.
“Also, the T-E ratio test is acknowledged as a simple test to run. The IRMS test is universally acknowledged as a very complicated test to run, requiring much skill. If the LNDD couldn’t get the T-E ratio test right, how can a person have any confidence that LNDD got the much more complicated IRMS test correct?,” Campbell wrote in his dissent.
