Arbitrators Say Landis Is Guilty

Floyd Landis has lost his expensive and explosive doping case. Arbitrators have upheld the results of a test that showed the 2006 Tour de France champion used synthetic testosterone to fuel his spectacular comeback victory in the race.

The decision, handed down nearly four months after a bizarre and bitterly fought hearing, leaves Landis with only one more outlet to possibly salvage his title — an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

According to documents obtained by AP, and to be made public later on Thursday, the vote was 2-1 to uphold the results, with lead arbitrator Patrice Brunet and Richard McLaren in the majority, with Christopher Campbell dissenting.

The decision means that Landis, who repeatedly has denied using performance-enhancing drugs, must forfeit his Tour de France title and is subject to a two-year ban, retroactive to January 30, 2007.

If Landis does not appeal, he will be the first person in the 105-year history of the race to lose the title because of a doping offense.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for all clean athletes and everyone who values fair and honest competition,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency general counsel Travis Tygart said.

It’s a devastating loss for Landis, who has steadfastly insisted that cheating went against everything he was all about and said he was merely a pawn in the anti-doping system’s all-consuming effort to find cheaters and keep money flowing to its labs and agencies.

Landis did not hide from the scrutiny — invited it, in fact — and now has been found guilty by the closest thing to a fair trial any accused athlete will get.

He had been planning a news conference in Los Angeles the day a decision was reached. Details were not immediately available.

In its 84-page decision, the majority found the initial screening test to measure Landis’ testosterone levels — the testosterone-to-epitestosterone test — was not done according to World Anti-Doping Agency rules.

But the more precise and expensive carbon-isotope ration analysis (IRMS), performed after a positive T-E test is recorded, was accurate, the arbitrators said, meaning “an anti-doping rule violation is established.”

“As has been held in several cases, even where the T-E ratio has been held to be unreliable … the IRMS analysis may still be applied,” the majority wrote. “It has also been held that the IRMS analysis may stand alone as the basis” of a positive test for steroids.

The decision comes more than a year after Landis’ stunning comeback in Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour, one that many people said could not be done without some kind of outside help.

Flying to the lead near the start of a grueling Alpine stage, Landis regained nearly eight minutes against the leader, and went on to win the three-week race.

“Well, all I can say is that justice has been done, and that this is what the UCI felt was correct all along,” Pat McQuaid, leader of cycling’s world governing body, told The Associated Press by telephone.

“We now await and see if he does appeal to CAS.

“It’s not a great surprise considering how events have evolved. He got a highly qualified legal team who tried to baffle everybody with science and public relations. And in the end the facts stood up.”

Landis insisted on a public hearing not only to prove his innocence, but to shine a spotlight on USADA and the rules it enforces and also establish a pattern of incompetence at the French lab where his urine was tested.

Although the panel rejected Landis’ argument of a “conspiracy” at the Chatenay-Malabry lab, it did find areas of concern.

They dealt with chain of command in controlling the urine sample, the way the tests were run on the machine, the way the machine was prepared and the “forensic corrections” done on the lab paperwork.

“… the Panel finds that the practises of the Lab in training its employees appears to lack the vigor the Panel would expect in the circumstances given the enormous consequences to athletes” of an adverse analytical finding, the decision said.

The majority repeatedly wrote that any mistakes made at the lab were not enough to dismiss the positive test, but also sent a warning.

“If such practises continue, it may well be that in the future, an error like this could result in the dismissal” of a positive finding by the lab.

In Campbell’s opinion, Landis’ case should have been one of those cases.

“In many instances, Mr. Landis sustained his burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Campbell wrote. “The documents supplied by LNDD are so filled with errors that they do not support an Adverse Analytical Finding. Mr. Landis should be found innocent.”

And in at least one respect, Landis, who spent an estimated $2 million on his defense, was exonerated because the panel dismissed the T-E test. But in the arbitration process, a procedural flaw in the first test does not negate a positive result in follow-up tests.

“An arbitration panel is entitled to rely entirely on the IRMS analysis as an independent and sufficient basis for finding that an anti-doping rule violation has occurred,” the decision said.

In his dissent, Campbell latched onto the T-E ratio test, among other things, as proof that the French lab couldn’t be trusted.

“Also, the T-E ratio test is acknowledged as a simple test to run. The IRMS test is universally acknowledged as a very complicated test to run, requiring much skill. If the LNDD couldn’t get the T-E ratio test right, how can a person have any confidence that LNDD got the much more complicated IRMS test correct?”

It was confusion like this that led to the system receiving the harsh review Landis was hoping for during a nine-day hearing in Malibu in May.

But Landis also took his share of abuse, and ultimately, USADA still improved to 35-0 in cases it has brought before arbitration panels since it was founded in 2000.

This was a nasty contest waged on both sides, with USADA attorneys going after Landis’ character and taking liberties in evidence discovery that would not be permitted in a regular court of law.

Landis accused USADA of using a win-at-all-costs strategy and prosecuting him only to get him to turn on seven-time winner Lance Armstrong, who has long fought doping allegations that have never been proven.

Addressing “problematic behavior on the part of both parties,” the panel wrote it would not revisit the conduct of either side.

“They are just part of the litigation war games the parties counsel engaged in between themselves,” the decision said.

Landis later issued a statement through law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

It said: “After nearly four months of deliberation, the arbitration panel that heard evidence and witnesses during a nine day arbitration in Malibu, California on May 14, 2007 ruled against Floyd Landis, the winner of the 2006 Tour de France.

” The Panel’s decision was 2 to 1 against Mr. Landis, with a dissent by Christopher Campbell. The majority decision came despite serious charges regarding the accuracy and reliability of the test results and the competency of the testing procedures of the laboratory run by the AFLD.

” The decision formally strips Floyd Landis of his victory in the 103rd Tour de France.

” ‘This ruling is a blow to athletes and cyclists everywhere’ ” stated Mr. Landis.
” ‘For the Panel to find in favor of USADA when, with respect to so many issues, USADA did not manage to prove even the most basic parts of their case shows that this system is fundamentally flawed.

” ‘ I am innocent, and we proved I am innocent.’

“The decision of the arbitrators clearly establishes that regardless of the evidence presented by the athlete of the errors of the laboratory, the conflicted and coordinated testimony of the anti-doping community, including heads of other WADA laboratories and experts who receive millions of dollars from USADA, will prevail over the evidence presented by the athlete.

“The majority Panel’s decision is a disappointment, but particularly so because it failed to address the joint impact of the many errors that the AFLD laboratory committed in rendering this false positive.

” To take each of these errors singly, is to ignore the total falsity of the result. The majority panel has disregarded the testimony of Mr. Landis’ experts, who are preeminent in their respective fields, without analyzing the impact of the errors on the final result.

” Mr. Landis now is currently weighing his future legal alternatives in pursuing his