Tour de France Champ Fights for Title in Pepperdine Courtroom

• Hearing on Doping Allegations and Testing Process Puts Malibu in the World Spotlight

BY HANS LAETZ

More than 75 journalists from around the world are camped out at Pepperdine University Law School this week to see 2006 Tour de France champion Floyd Landis on trial for allegedly cheating during his miraculous bike race victory in Paris.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency has borrowed the school’s Darling Trial Courtroom to conduct a 10-day, trial-like arbitration hearing before a three-judge panel.

Newspapers, sports magazines and broadcast networks from the U.S. and Europe are in Malibu covering a story that might blow the lid off international efforts to police athletes who may be using illegal drugs to juice up their blood before competing.

Landis, who lives and trains in the wine country of Riverside County, arrived at the hearing as it started Monday and said he looks forward to clearing his name. He faced a scrum of reporters and proclaimed that he wants to expose what he called hypocrisy and shoddy science in the international sports world.

“We’re excited, and we’re ready for the whole world seeing what the details are,” the cyclist said as he entered the courtroom.

“We have a very good team, and we have an exceptional case.”

The hearing began with attorneys from the USADA explaining the highly technical scientific tests used to detect drugs that could increase an athlete’s capacity to absorb oxygen in the blood, and illegally increase endurance and stamina through artificial means.

Landis had injured his hip and finished poorly on the next-to-the-last stage of the 26-day bike race across France last summer. At the team dorm that night, he told National Public Radio, “Somehow a bottle of Jack Daniels appeared, and although that’s not the normal procedure before a stage, that’s what happened.”

The next day, Landis accomplished a remarkable feat by winning the final stage. Several weeks later, French newspapers reported that a blood lab there had detected synthetic testosterone in blood samples that were taken just before the final leg.

The French testing agency said the sample showed high levels of the hormone—an accusation that could strip Landis of the title and ban him from cycling competitions for two years.

The cyclist has traveled the nation and worked the Internet in a fundraising effort to help pay for the million-dollar-plus defense campaign he is mounting.

Michael Henson, the executive director of the Floyd Fairness Fund, said Landis “is working for the goal of fair sports and the accuracy of science.”

Henson told reporters that the subjective interpretation of misleading or ambiguous blood tests by laboratories that may have a nationalistic bias is the heart of Landis’ case.

“There is a consistent failure by the anti-doping agencies…that are funded by Congress—to deny him the due process rights he is entitled to,” Henson said just before Monday’s hearing began.

“This was never a positive test to begin with,” Henson said. “The science was extremely sloppy, and most of all, this is a case about science.”

Landis again said he would testify during the hearing.

The large contingent of journalists is expected to generate intensive coverage of the arbitration hearing throughout its duration. The hearing is huge news in France, Germany and other countries where competitive cycling is extremely popular, correspondents said.

The hearing is following U.S. courtroom procedures. Should Landis lose, the panel’s decision can be appealed to an international sports agency.

The Malibu law school, perched on the side of a mountain and overlooking the Pacific Ocean, has no connection to the cycling controversy other than hosting the event, a school official said.

The irony of the world’s reigning cycling chamption defending his title in Malibu may have been lost on those journalists who do not know that last year the City of Malibu refused to allow Pacific Coast Highway to be tied up for the Amgen Tour of California, the biggest bike race in this country.

CAPTION 1. Photo credit, MSN/Hans Laetz
NEWSMAKER—CBS Radio reporter Steve Futterman questions Floyd Landis as the cycling champion arrives Monday at Pepperdine University for a United States Anti-Doping Agency arbitration hearing that could strip Landis of his 2006 Tour de France title over blood doping charges.