This is from my first post on this topic: Are all the riders on performance enhancing drugs and only some of them get caught?
It seems that "American Hero" Floyd Landis tested positive after his "miracle" stage 17 win. I had a feeling something was fishy since the day before he barely finished the stage. Here is eurospot.com's report:
Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has given a positive drugs test for the male sex hormone testosterone, his Phonak team said on Thursday. The failed drugs test was returned following last Thursday's Alpine Stage 17 to Morzine, won by the American in breath-taking fashion after a 130-km solo run.
"The Phonak Cycling Team was notified yesterday by the UCI of an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio in the test made on Floyd Landis after Stage 17 of the Tour de France," Phonak said in a team statement.
The team said that Landis would be removed from competitive races until the situation was clarified and stressed that, if the B sample analysis confirmed the A sample test, the rider would be sacked. Landis won the Tour de France on Sunday after an unconventional three-week race that was dubbed by many as the best in years.
The American had lost the yellow jersey in Stage 16 when he cracked in sensational style, losing ten minutes to his principal rivals on the ascent to La Toussuire.
But a day later, at Morzine, Landis performed the impossible in what was seen as one of the Tour's most staggering comebacks in history after he moved back into GC contention with his first ever career stage victory.
"Worst case scenario"
Speculation started to spread of 30-year-old Landis's involvement in the failed test after the American failed to turn up to two scheduled criterium races in the Netherlands and in Denmark this week.
Following the UCI declaration on Wednesday night that one rider had tested positive, president Pat McQuaid was quoted as having said: "It's the worst case scenario."
The Irishman was right: Landis's positive test is the final blow for a Tour hampered by drug allegations before it had even started.
Following the implication of 56 riders in the Spanish doping affair, Operacion Puerto, in the build up to the race - which induced the suspensions of race favourites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich - Landis's implication is an indictment to the hopeful claims that the 2006 race would be wholly "clean".
The latest uproar now means that the last event of each major Tour has been blighted by scandal.
The 2005 Vuelta a Espana "winner" Roberto Heras tested positive for EPO and had his title taken away, while May's Giro d'Italia winner Ivan Basso was suspended from this year's Tour following his reported involvement with the Madrid-based Spanish doping ring.
It is not the first time that Swiss team Phonak have been dragged through the mud of doping: in 2004 the team's leader Typer Hamilton, the Olympic time-trial champion, was banned for two years for blood doping.
Both Phonak and Landis are said to be shocked at the result of the test. A statement read: "The team management and the rider were both totally surprised of this physiological result.
"The rider will ask in the upcoming days for the counter analysis to prove either that this result is coming from a natural process or that this is resulting from a mistake in the confirmation."
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