Cycling
Testing Expert Questions Data in Landis Case; Cyclist's Ex-Manager Enters Rehab
Tuesday, May 22, 2007; Page E02
While Floyd Landis's former manager prepared to enter rehab yesterday, a witness for Landis testified he had grave concerns about the evidence being used to prove the Tour de France champion's positive doping test.
"I'm terribly sorry, but if someone's life depends on it, his career depends on it, you don't go on assumptions," said Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, an expert in the kind of testing that produced Landis's positive results for synthetic testosterone.
TOUR DE FRANCE Floyd Landis's second drug test confirms inappropriate levels of testosterone, setting him up to become the first Tour de France champion to be stripped of his title for doping.
Essay: Driven to win, Landis may lose it all.
If Landis is stripped of the title, runner-up Oscar Pereiro is the likely new winner.
Former riders and cycling fans react to the news about Landis.
QUOTE SHEET"I have never taken any banned substance, including testosterone. I was the strongest man at the Tour de France, and that is why I am the champion." -- Landis, in a statement.
"It goes without saying that for us Floyd Landis is no longer the winner of the 2006 Tour de France." -- Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme.
"Now I consider myself the winner." -- Spanish cyclist Oscar Pereiro, who likely will be named the Tour winner if Landis is stripped of the title.
"God Bless, Went Camping." -- Sign posted in the front yard of Landis' parents, Paul and Arlene, in Farmersville, Pa.
"It'll cause the folks trying to explain this to have to shift their ground from it being due to natural causes or beer or Jack Daniels. There's the usual parade of explanations. I think probably they wish they hadn't made some of them." -- Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
"Obviously, the credibility has been tested for many years. Cycling does have the most stringent testing, it's still not enough for me. There's a code of silence that needs to change. There's a change in Europe with UCI in a positive way. Unfortunately, it took something of this stature to wake people up, with the Tour winner to lose the title." -- Greg LeMond, three-time Tour winner.
"One of the most critical issues facing sport at every level is the issue of doping. Our position on this is unequivocal: If you dope, you are absolutely not welcome on the United States Olympic Team." -- Darryl Seibel, U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman.
"It's awful. It's ugly. It harms the Tour de France and sports in general. In any event, it's all just a circus, and the circus will carry on." -- Jean-Louis Cailhol of Nancy, France.
PHOTOS Photos: Check out the scenes from the start of the race in Strasbourg to the finish line in Paris.
ON OUR SITEFLASHBACK Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France and bids goodbye to competitive cycling.
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Landis contends poor testing methods are responsible for unreliable results that call into question the validity of the positive test from last year's Tour.
"Like shooting fish in a barrel," Meier-Augenstein called the process of trying to analyze what he called sloppy data.
Yesterday's proceedings in Malibu, Calif., began at about the same time Landis's new manager released a letter that was posted on the "Trust But Verify" blog, acknowledging former manager Will Geoghegan is "entering a rehabilitation program today in an effort to address his problems."
Geoghegan called Greg LeMond last Wednesday night and, posing as LeMond's uncle, threatened to reveal the secret that LeMond had been sexually abused as a child if LeMond showed up to testify.
-- From News Services
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