Farmersville native Floyd Landis this week filed his promised appeal to the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Landis is appealing the ruling of an arbitration panel that found in late September that Landis had used artificial testosterone during stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France. Landis subsequently won the three week race. After the ruling, Landis was stripped of his title.
Landis has always maintained his innocence. During the 10-day hearing in California in May, his attorneys presented an extensive case showing the mishandling of his urine samples by the French testing lab. The three-member arbitration panel’s 2-1 ruling acknowledged that mistakes were made by the lab, but held the findings still showed doping.
In his appeal, Landis will likely again make his case against the lab. And, he will be hoping the case has already been made.
A year ago, the high court threw out charges against Spanish bicyclist Inigo Landaluze, winner of the 2005 Dauphine Libere race, over procedural errors. Landaluze also tested positive for testosterone use and - as with Landis - his defense showed that technicians at the same French lab tested both the A and B samples of his urine. Having the same technicians handling both samples is a violation of testing protocols.
Although the international panel stopped short of declaring Landaluze innocent, the violation was significant enough to cause the panel to reject the case and clear the rider.
Along with formally filing the appeal, Landis also this week selected as his appointed arbiter on the three-member panel Jan Paulsson of Sweden. Paulsson was the chairman of the three-member panel which heard the Landaluze case.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency selected New York attorney David Rivkin as its panelist. The panel chairman will be David Williams of New Zealand.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport is not expected to hear the case until at least March. A decision likely would not be issued until May, a court spokesman said.
If Landis is cleared, the court would reinstate his title and lift a two-year ban on international road racing imposed by the U.S. panel. That two-year ban was due to expire anyway in January 2009, seven months after the Swiss court is expected to making its ruling.
