It was obvious to anyone who saw the 2006 Tour de France, and who understands the sport of cycling, that Floyd Landis was doping.
As to Floyd Landis’ accusations that Lance Armstrong also used performance enhancing drugs; Lance is a special athlete and individual. His cure from what no doubt was terminal cancer and return to the highest levels of his sport is nothing short of miraculous. Having said that, I’ve always believed that he was on some sort of performance enhancing drug.
To win seven Tour de France races in consecutive years after surviving cancer one has to be superhuman. Also, it is important to consider the fact that athletes as talented as Lance, if not more so, such as Jan Ullrich, could never beat Lance in the Tour. Yet Jan Ullrich himself has also been linked to performance enhancing drugs. In other words, if other top athletes were also doping and still couldn’t beat Lance for a seven year stretch, how can this be explained?
Floyd Landis’ allegations, I believe, will shed new light on whether or not Lance Armstrong cheated following his cure from cancer. Again, my belief is that he did. TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Disgraced Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has confessed to using performance enhancing drugs and accused some of the biggest names in the sport, including Lance Armstrong, of also cheating.
Landis, who was stripped of his win of the 2006 Tour de France after failing a doping test, had always protested his innocence but said he had finally decided to come clean.
“I want to clear my conscience,” Landis told ESPN on Thursday after making his confession in a series of emails.
“I don’t want to be part of the problem anymore.”
In the emails, which Reuters has seen and Landis said were also distributed to USA Cycling and the International Cycling Union (UCI), the American provided implicit details of a variety of drugs he had used during his career and who supplied them to him.
He said he witnessed a number of other top riders also using performance enhancing drugs, including his former team mate Armstrong, a seven-time winner of the Tour de France.
Armstrong has never failed a doping test and has always maintained his innocence despite years of accusations.
COVERING UP
He was not immediately available for comment but was expected to face the media after Thursday’s fifth stage of the Tour of California.
Anti-doping officials said they would investigate Landis’ accusations.
“We are very interested in learning more about this matter and we will liaise with the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and any other authority with appropriate jurisdiction to get to the heart of the issues raised,” World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president John Fahey said in a statement.
In his emails, Landis accused UCI officials of covering up an alleged positive test from Armstrong.
UCI president Pat McQuaid responded by questioning Landis’s credibility.
“After going through two or three court cases denying everything, the question is what credibility does he have?” McQuaid told Reuters.
Landis was stripped of his win in the world’s most famous race after returning an abnormal testosterone/epitestosterone ratio.
He denied any wrongdoing and fought a long legal case, which he eventually lost, and was banned for two years.
When his suspension ended last year, he hinted at making a return to the Tour de France in 2010 but in February a French judge issued an arrest warrant against him for suspected hacking into an anti-doping laboratory computer.
French anti-doping agency head Pierre Bordry told Reuters the judge, Thomas Cassuto, believed Landis wanted to prove the laboratory where his samples were tested was wrong.
(Additional reporting by Julien Pretot in Paris, Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles and Gene Cherry in Raleigh; Editing by Jon Bramley)
