Landis under microscope, but resolute
Sounding more defiant than the day before, eyes flashing and voice steady, Floyd Landis looked into the cameras Friday and said he would prove he “deserved to win” the Tour de France.
In his first public appearance since a urine test showing a testosterone imbalance cast his title into doubt, the American said his body’s natural metabolism — not doping of any kind — caused the result, and that he would soon have the test results to prove it.
“We will explain to the world why this is not a doping case but a natural occurrence,” Landis said from the Spanish capital.
The day before, in a teleconference from a location in Europe he did not disclose, Landis said he didn’t cheat, but had no idea what might have caused the result on the Tour’s 17th stage, where he staked his stirring comeback in the Alps.
During that Thursday call, Landis sounded downcast and heartbroken, saying he expected to clear his name but never his reputation. His demeanor was decidedly more fiery Friday, when he sat before a buzzing news conference and lashed out at the media for characterizing his plight as a drug scandal.
“I would like to make absolutely clear that I am not in any doping process,” said Landis, wearing a baseball cap turned backward and a white shirt with the name of his Phonak team.
Landis is still awaiting results from a backup sample, which would clear him immediately if found to be negative. But his lawyer, Luis Sanz, said he fully expected the backup test to come back with the same result, because the testosterone imbalance was produced naturally by Landis’s body.
And the 30-year-old cyclist said Friday that he would undergo additional testing to prove that “the levels that I’ve had during the Tour and all my career are natural and produced by my own organism.”
Until those tests are conducted, Landis said, “I ask not to be judged, or much less to be sentenced by anyone.”
But Landis saved his most aggressive tone for the defense of his title as Tour de France champion.
“I was the strongest guy. I deserved to win, and I’m proud of it,” he said.
Landis appeared to lose any chance of victory during a disastrous 16th stage of the Tour, then broke out with one of the greatest performances in history the next day. After winning the 17th stage, he submitted to a drug test — standard for a stage winner — that showed an “unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone.”
“He does not have a high level of testosterone. That’s not been documented. He has a high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in his urine,” Landis’ personal physician, Dr. Brent Kay, said Friday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
“Which could be due to an elevated testosterone level. It could be due to a low epitestosterone level. And it could be due to a variety of other factors with handling and specimen contamination and various other things.”
Kay also said that using testosterone would hurt rather than help a cyclist.
“I think everybody needs to take a step back and look at what we’re talking about. Because testosterone is a bodybuilding steroid that builds mass,” Kay said. “It builds mass over long-term use of weeks, months, and even years.
“And it’s crazy to think that a Tour de France professional cyclist would be using testosterone, particularly in the middle of a race. It’s a joke. Every sports medicine expert, physician, trainer, scientist that I’ve talked to in the last day, have really the same opinion, `No way. This is a joke.’ “
A homecoming parade planned for Landis next week in Ephrata, Pa., has been put on hold pending more test results, organizer Rich Ruoff said Friday. As many as 10,000 people and 500 cyclists were expected at the event.