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sandranian · Site Admin

It's our own "Festina Affair"!

From the Wall Street Journal:
***********************************
SPORTS

MAY 20, 2010, 4:43 A.M. ET.

Cyclist Floyd Landis Admits Doping, Alleges Use by Armstrong and Others

By REED ALBERGOTTI And VANESSA O'CONNELL

Floyd Landis, the American cyclist whose 2006 Tour De France victory was nullified after a positive doping test, has sent a series of emails to cycling officials and sponsors admitting to, and detailing, his systematic use of performance enhancing drugs during his career. The emails also claim that other riders and cycling officials allegedly participated in doping, including seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.

It's unclear how many emails Mr. Landis sent. Three emails, which are dated between April 30 and May 6, have been reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Landis copied seven people on these three emails, including officials with USA Cycling and the International Cycling Union. Three people who have seen the emails and spoken to Mr. Landis about them say they are authentic.

Mr. Armstrong did not respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday evening. Mr. Armstrong has faced a number of doping accusations during his career, which he has denied. He has never been sanctioned.

Mr. Landis's charges couldn't be independently verified. Mr. Landis did not respond to a request for comment.

In the emails, he expressed frustration about the inability of antidoping officials to clean up the sport.

After the Tour De France stripped Mr. Landis of his 2006 victory for testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone after one crucial stage of the race, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency gave him a two-year ban from the sport. From the moment the positive test was revealed, Mr. Landis has denied publicly ever using performance enhancing drugs.

The emails are particularly focused on American riders. Mr. Landis said in them that during his career, he and other American riders learned how to conduct blood transfusions, take the synthetic blood booster Erythropoietin, or EPO, and use steroids. Mr. Landis said he started using testosterone patches, then progressed to blood transfusions, EPO, and a liquid steroid taken orally.

In one of the emails, dated April 30 and addressed to Stephen Johnson, the president of USA Cycling, Mr. Landis said that Mr. Armstrong's longtime coach, Johan Bruyneel, introduced Mr. Landis to the use of steroid patches, blood doping and human growth hormone in 2002 and 2003, his first two years on the U.S. Postal Service team. He alleged Mr. Armstrong helped him understand the way the drugs worked. "He and I had lengthy discussions about it on our training rides during which time he also explained to me the evolution of EPO testing and how transfusions were now necessary due to the inconvenience of the new test," Mr. Landis claimed in the email. He claimed he was instructed by Mr. Bruyneel how to use synthetic EPO and steroids and how to carry out blood transfusions that doping officials wouldn't be able to detect. Mr. Bruyneel and Mr. Johnson could not be reached for comment.

In the same email, Mr. Landis wrote that after breaking his hip in 2003, he flew to Girona, Spain—a training hub for American riders—and had two half-liter units of blood extracted from his body in three-week intervals to be used later during the Tour de France. The extraction, Mr. Landis claimed, took place in Mr. Armstrong's apartment, where blood bags belonging to Mr. Armstrong and his then-teammate George Hincapie were kept in a refrigerator in Mr. Armstrong's closet. Mr. Landis said he was asked to check the temperature of the blood daily. According to Mr. Landis, Mr. Armstrong left for a few weeks and asked Mr. Landis to make sure the electricity didn't go off and ruin the blood. George Hincapie, through a spokesman, denied the allegations.

In the email sent on April 30 to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Landis said that in 2006, after leaving the U.S. Postal Service team for a team sponsored by Swiss hearing aide manufacturer Phonak, he said he told Andy Rihs, the team's owner, that he had been involved in a blood doping program in the past with his old team and wanted to continue doing so with Phonak. He said Mr. Rihs, who is the chairman of Sonova Holding AG, the Switzerland-based parent company for Phonak, agreed to pay for the same doping operations at Phonak. After Mr. Landis's positive test—which was for testosterone and not blood doping—the team disbanded in 2006. Mr. Rihs and a Sonova spokesman could not be reached for comment.

In addition to these allegations, Mr. Landis's emails called current anti-doping efforts "a charade," detailed how to use EPO without getting caught and claimed he helped former teammates Levi Leipheimer and Dave Zabriskie take EPO before one Tour of California race. Mr. Leipheimer and Mr. Zabriskie could not be reached for comment.

Write to Reed Albergotti at reed.albergotti@wsj.com and Vanessa O'Connell at vanessa.o'connell@wsj.com

sandranian · Site Admin

ESPN.com: Cycling

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Updated: May 20, 4:51 AM ET
Landis comes clean on PED use

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Bonnie D. Ford
ESPN.com

Nearly four years after he began waging a costly, draining and ultimately losing battle to discredit his positive test for synthetic testosterone at the 2006 Tour de France, Floyd Landis told ESPN.com on Wednesday that he used performance-enhancing drugs for most of his career as a professional road cyclist, including for the race whose title he briefly held.

In a lengthy telephone interview from California, Landis detailed extensive, consistent use of the red blood cell booster erythropoietin (commonly known as EPO), testosterone, human growth hormone and frequent blood transfusions, along with female hormones and a one-time experiment with insulin, during the years he rode for the U.S. Postal Service and Switzerland-based Phonak teams.

Floyd Landis says he used performance-enhancing drugs for most of his career as a professional road cyclist.

Landis confirmed he sent e-mails to cycling and anti-doping officials over the past few weeks, implicating dozens of other athletes, team management and owners and officials of the sport's national and international governing bodies. ESPN.com is seeking further evidence and comment from those individuals.

Landis' doping conviction cost him his Tour title, his career, his life savings and his marriage. He said he knows his credibility is in tatters and that many people will choose not to believe him now. He added he has no documentation for many of the claims he is making about other riders or officials, and that it will be his word against theirs.

However, Landis said he decided to come forward because he was suffering psychologically and emotionally from years of deceit, and he has become a cycling pariah with little to no chance of ever riding for an elite team again. Prior to speaking with ESPN.com, he said he made his most difficult phone call -- to his mother in Pennsylvania to tell her the truth for the first time.

"I want to clear my conscience," Landis said. "I don't want to be part of the problem anymore.

"With the benefit of hindsight and a somewhat different perspective, I made some misjudgments. And of course, I can sit here and say all day long, 'If I could do it again I'd do something different,' but I just don't have that choice.'"

Landis said he takes full responsibility for having doped and added he was never forced or threatened.

"I don't feel guilty at all about having doped," Landis told ESPN.com. "I did what I did because that's what we [cyclists] did and it was a choice I had to make after 10 years or 12 years of hard work to get there; and that was a decision I had to make to make the next step. My choices were, do it and see if I can win, or don't do it and I tell people I just don't want to do that, and I decided to do it."

According to Landis, his first use of performance-enhancing drugs was in June 2002, when he was a member of the U.S. Postal Service team. The World Anti-Doping Agency's statute of limitations for doping offenses is eight years, and Landis said that, too, is part of his motivation for divulging his inflammatory information.

"Now we've come to the point where the statute of limitations on the things I know is going to run out or start to run out next month," Landis said. "If I don't say something now, then it's pointless to ever say it."

Landis, who began his career as a top mountain biker, had kept detailed training journals since he was a teenager. He said he continued the same methodical record-keeping once he started using banned drugs and techniques. Landis said he spent as much as $90,000 a year on performance-enhancing drugs and on consultants to help him build a training regime. Landis said he has kept all of his journals and diaries and has offered to share them with U.S. anti-doping authorities in recent meetings. He added that he has given officials detailed information on how athletes are beating drug testing.

As for his own positive test, Landis still maintains the result was inaccurate and he had not used synthetic testosterone during the 2006 season -- although he now admits he used human growth hormone during that time. At this point, he does not want to dwell on any of the issues he and his lawyers hammered at during his case, he said.

"There must be some other explanation, whether it was done wrong or I don't know what," he said.

"The problem I have with even bothering to argue it is [that] I have used testosterone in the past and I have used it in other Tours, and it's going to sound kind of foolish to say I didn't."

Landis exhausted most of his own savings in fighting his case, which cost an estimated $2 million. He also raised funds for his defense in a well-publicized effort. He said he would pay those donors back if he could, but does not have the money. He said he did not level with the people close to him, but declined to say whether he informed his lawyers of his past drug use.

Bonnie D. Ford covers tennis and Olympic sports for ESPN.com.

sandranian · Site Admin

Here is the text of one of the Floyd Landis emails (source: Cyclingnews.com)
************

2002: I was instructed on how to use Testosterone patches by Johan Bruyneel
during the During the Dauphine Libere in June, after which I flew on a
helicopter with Mr Armstrong from the finish, I believe Grenoble, to San
Mauritz Switzerland at which point I was personally handed a box of 2.5 mg
patches in front of his wife who witnessed the exchange. About a week
later, Dr Ferrari performed an extraction of half a liter of blood to be
transfused back into me during the Tour de France. Mr Armstrong was not
witness to the extraction but he and I had lengthy discussions about it on
our training rides during which time he also explained to me the evolution
of EPO testing and how transfusions were now necessary due to the
inconvenience of the new test. He also divulged to me at that time that in
the first year that the EPO test was used he had been told by Mr Ferrari,
who had access to the new test, that he should not use EPO anymore but he
did not believe Mr Farrari and contin
ued to use it. He later, while winning the Tour de Swiss, the month before
the Tour de France, tested positive for EPO at which point he and Mr
Bruyneel flew to the UCI headquarters and made a financial agreement with
Mr. Vrubrugen to keep the positive test hidden.

2003: After a broken hip in the winter, I flew to Gerona Spain where this
time two units (half a liter each) were extracted three weeks apart. This
took place in the apartment in which Mr. Armstrong lived and in which I was
asked to stay and check the blood temperature every day. It was kept in a
small refrigerator in the closet allong with the blood of Mr Armstrong and
George Hincapie and since Mr. Armstrong was planning on being gone for a few
weeks to train he asked me to stay in his place and make sure the
electricity didn't turn off or something go wrong with the referigerator.
Then during the Tour de France the entire team, on two different occasions
went to the room that we were told and the doctor met us there to do the
transfusions. During that Tour de France I personally witnessed George
Hincapie, Lance Armstrong, Chechu Rubiera, and myself receiving blood
transfusions. Also during that Tour de France the team doctor would give my
room mate, George Hincapie an
d I a small syringe of olive oil in which was disolved andriol, a form of
ingestible testosterone on two out of three nights throughout the duration.

I was asked to ride the Vuelta a Espana that year in support of Roberto
Heras and in August, between the Tour and the Vuelta, was told to take EPO
to raise my hematocrit back up so more blood transfusions could be
performed. I was instructed to go to Lances place by Johan Bruyneel and get
some EPO from him. The first EPO I ever used was then handed to me in the
entry way to his building in full view of his then wife. It was Eprex by
brand and it came in six pre measured syringes. I used it intravenously for
several weeks before the next blood draw and had no problems with the tests
during the Vuelta. Also during this time it was explained to me how to use
Human Growth Hormone by Johan Bruyneel and I bought what I needed from Pepe
the team "trainer" who lived in Valencia along with the team doctor at that
time. While training for that Vuelta I spent a good deal of time training
with Matthew White and Michael Barry and shared the testosterone and EPO
that we had and discu
ssed the use thereof while training.

Again, during the Vuelta we were given Andriol and blood transfusions by the
team doctor and had no problems with any testing.

2004: Again the team performed two seperate blood transfusions on me, but
this time Bruyneel had become more paranoid and we did the draws by flying
to Belgium and meeting at an unknown persons appartment and the blood was
brought by "Duffy" who was at that time Johans assistant of sorts. The
second of which was performed on the team bus on the ride from the finish of
a stage to the hotel during which the driver pretended to have engine
trouble and stopped on a remote mountain road for an hour or so so the
entire team could have half a liter of blood added. This was the only time
that I ever saw the entire team being transfused in plain view of all the
other riders and bus driver. That team included Lance Armstrong, George
Hincapie and I as the only Americans.

2005: I had learned at this point how to do most of the transfusion
technicals and other things on my own so I hired Allen Lim as my assistant
to help with details and logistics. He helped Levi Leipheimer and I prepare
the transfusions for Levi and I and made sure they were kept at the proper
temperature. We both did two seperate transfusions that Tour however my
hematocrit was too low at the start so I did my first one a few days before
the start so as to not start with a deficit.

2006: Well you get the idea....... One thing of great signigicance is that
I sat down with Andy Riis and explained to him what was done in the past and
what was the risk I would be taking and ask for his permission which he
granted in the form of funds to complete the operation described. John
Lelangue was also informed by me and Andy Riis consulted with Jim Ochowitz
before agreeing.

There are many many more details that I have in diaries and am in the
process of writing into an intelligible story but since the position of USA
Cycling is that there have not been enough details shared to justify calling
USADA, I am writing as many as I can reasonably put into an email and share
with you so as to ascertain what is the process which USA Cycling uses to
proceed with such allegations.

Look forward to much more detail as soon as you can demonstrate that you can
be trusted to do the right thing.

Floyd Landis
_____________

scozim

I saw this today on the Road Bike Action website. Wonder why he all of a sudden gets a dose of honesty. Was the guilt just too much to bear?

Wisey

"Insert Circus Music now."

verktyg

Several people that I know of where on the US Olympic Cycling Team in the 1960 Rome Olympics. A number of them stayed in Italy for a year or more after the Olympics and joined top Italian amateur teams.

What they said was the team members were lined up at the beginning of the season and told that anyone who wanted to dope should "stand over there" and those who didn't were to stay in the non-doper group.

The US riders said that doping back then was that open! It was a lot less sophisticated too. I don't think that any of the US riders joined the doping group.

Floyd, I'm disappointed in you! Now I feel foolish for defending you!

sandranian · Site Admin

From the New York Times: Signs of more to come (of course).

*********************
May 20, 2010
A Disgraced Rider’s Admissions, and Accusations
By JULIET MACUR
VISALIA, Calif. — The cyclist Floyd Landis was once a commanding presence at the Tour of California, an eight-day race that attracts some of the world’s top riders. With keen skill and unmatched toughness, he won in dominating fashion four years ago and went on to become the Tour de France champion — a title that was stripped from him for doping.

Now, with a reputation as a pariah and his personal life and career at a low, Landis has unexpectedly returned to the sport’s spotlight at the race, which began Sunday. This time, it is for saying that he and many top American cyclists — including several racing here — were involved in systematic doping.

Until now, the 34-year-old Landis vehemently denied using performance-enhancing drugs, but in e-mail messages in recent weeks to cycling officials, he not only detailed his own doping practices, but he also said he watched Lance Armstrong and others inject the blood-booster EPO and use blood transfusions for increased endurance. He said some riders also took steroids and human growth hormone.

Landis did not return phone messages left for him. He acknowledged to ESPN.com that he had no documentation to prove his claims, but said he had kept a journal. He said he wrote the e-mail messages because “I want to clear my conscience,” adding, “I don’t want to be part of the problem anymore.”

It all put a pall over Stage 5 of the Tour of California, which was further darkened when Armstrong crashed, injuring his elbow and requiring eight stitches for a cut below his left eye. He abandoned the race.

Before racing began on Thursday, Armstrong described Landis as a broken man with no credibility. “I would say I’m surprised, but I’m not,” Armstrong said as he stood with the team manager, Johan Bruyneel, at his RadioShack bus. “He has no proof,” Armstrong said. “It’s just our word against his, and we like our word. We like where we stand.”

Armstrong said Landis had been sending him e-mail and text messages for the past couple of years suggesting that he would go public with accusations about him, and that the messages recently reached “a fever pitch.”

Bruyneel, who was also implicated in the e-mail messages, said Landis had asked him “for money, basically a lot of money” and a job on the team in exchange for his silence.

He added that Landis was looking for money to pay legal bills that were accumulating after he tested positive at the Tour de France. “Threatened, blackmailed, whatever you want to call it,” Bruyneel said.

When asked if he contacted the police about the threats, Bruyneel said no. He said that Landis had a volatile personality and that he should “seek professional help, and by that I don’t mean lawyers.”

Landis, who now races with the lower-level OUCH-Bahati Foundation Pro Cycling team, has struggled to keep his life on track since testing positive for a synthetic form of testosterone at the 2006 Tour de France.

Not only was Landis’s cycling career crumbling, but less than a month after the Tour, his father-in-law, a close friend, committed suicide. Landis campaigned for donations from fans to help finance his $2 million fight against the United States Anti-Doping Agency, only to end up losing. He served a two-year suspension. His marriage fell apart. No top team would sign him.

This February, a French court issued an arrest warrant for him in connection with a computer hacking case involving the national antidoping lab.

Landis, known as a wisecracking eccentric, moved into a cabin in the Southern California woods, said two former teammates, who didn’t want their names published because they had been told not to talk to reporters.

Some of Landis’s friends had not spoken to him in years, said Allen Lim, an exercise physiologist on Armstrong’s RadioShack team. In his e-mail messages, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Landis said Lim had helped him cheat; Lim called the allegations “crazy,” and said he would never work with a rider who used performance-enhancing drugs.

Some of Landis’s closest friends in the sport were those he implicated: Armstrong; the United States road-racing champion George Hincapie; the three-time Tour of California champion Levi Leipheimer; and the five-time United States time trial champion David Zabriskie, who is second over all at the Tour of California. In a statement sent by his team, BMC Racing, Hincapie said he had “earned the respect of my peers and a reputation for working hard, honestly and honorably.” He added, “I’m really disappointed to hear these accusations.”

Jonathan Vaughters, the manager of Zabriskie’s Garmin-Transitions team, said Landis “had his demons,” but he could not explain why Landis made his allegations.

Armstrong said he saw Landis every day of last month’s Tour of the Gila in New Mexico, and “not a word” was said. But away from the race, Landis was sending e-mail messages to Steve Johnson, the chief executive of USA Cycling, telling him, “It’s up to you to demonstrate your true colors.” Johnson did not return phone and e-mail messages.

In his messages, Landis echoed what the retired United States Postal Service rider Frankie Andreu and an anonymous teammate told The New York Times in 2006 when they admitted using the blood-booster EPO leading up to the 1999 Tour de France, Armstrong’s first of seven Tour victories.

Landis said he began doping in 2002, with Bruyneel instructing him how to use testosterone patches. That year, he said, the Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari — who worked closely with Armstrong — helped Landis execute blood transfusions, a practice that boosts oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Landis said he and Armstrong had discussions about the need for doping.

The next season, Landis said Armstrong asked him to keep an eye on his apartment in Girona, Spain, where he said bags containing his blood and that of Armstrong and Hincapie were kept in a refrigerator. “I was asked to stay and check the blood temperature every day,” Landis wrote, adding that Armstrong asked Landis to make sure the electricity did not go out so the blood would not go bad.

In the 2003 Tour, Landis said, he had transfusions and saw Hincapie, Armstrong and another Postal Service teammate, José Luis Rubiera, receive the same treatment. Every two to three nights, he said, he and Hincapie used a syringe containing olive oil and an ingestible form of testosterone.

Landis said he and his teammates received a transfusion on the team bus in 2004. “The driver pretended to have engine trouble and stopped on a remote mountain road for an hour so the entire team could have a half liter of blood,” he wrote.

Landis’s messages recounted helping Leipheimer and Zabriskie use EPO before the Tour of California several years ago.

Among the others Landis implicated were Andy Rihs, the former owner of the Phonak racing team who now runs BMC Racing; Jim Ochowicz, president of BMC Racing; John Lelangue, team director of BMC Racing; Matt White, a race director of the Garmin-Transitions team; and Michael Barry, a rider on Team Sky.

Antidoping officials are trying to corroborate the information through interviews with athletes and trainers. They will retest frozen blood and urine samples taken at the time, said people briefed on the matter.

Federal authorities have also taken interest in Landis’s e-mail messages. They want to talk to distributors, particularly trainers and doctors, who may have provided drugs. The federal agent Jeff Novitzky, who led the investigation in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroids case, has been briefed and has spoken with Landis, people with knowledge of the situation said. Landis has agreed to cooperate, they said.

Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, said he felt sorry for Landis. “The fact is that we caught Floyd Landis and, at the end of the day, we continue to catch guys that beat the system,” he said. “It strikes me that with Landis, it’s just a last roll of a desperate man. It’s unfortunate. He’s turned on us.”

Wisey

It's just business. If you can't make as much money as you desire then you use drugs. If you get caught, then you have donations and write a book. When that stops, you do something else..... Expect another book from Floyd. Perhaps he could call it "The Real Truth....... no really, no I'm serious...." Twisted Evil

It's just about money, I think. Pity.

sandranian · Site Admin

Wisey

vested interest? The mainstream press just repeat the words of the (specialists) cycling press, who have an interest in keeping the whole sport running smoothly without another disasterous episode like we have seen in the past drug scandels. Lance is good for the sponsors, and the sponsors are good for the media.

sandranian · Site Admin

Honestly, I wonder if the sport could withstand it if all of the allegations were true. It may all come crashing down.

David Walsh's latest article claims that Armstrong's ex wife Kristin is working with federal prosecutors in their investigation. If that is true, and what Landis claims really happened, then the Feds have first-hand eye-witnesses. You don't lie to the Feds....

Wisey

sandranian · Site Admin

[quote="Wisey"]

sandranian · Site Admin

Well...the UCI just confirmed one part of Landis' story...well, almost. The UCI did accept a large wad of money from Armstrong: $100,000 payment from Armstrong to UCI for "rider development". The money was promised in 2002 and paid in 2005.

UCI says it was a conflict of interest and wouldn't have accepted the money from an active rider if it had to do it all over again.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/mcquaid-acknowledges-accepting-armstrong-donation-a-mistake

"The donation that Lance Armstrong made to the UCI in 2005 has caused a stir. Following recent statements made by Floyd Landis, that the money was used to cover up a positive doping test result of the seven-time Tour de France winner, high-profile sports officials have declared that while they did not think this was true, the nature of such a donation should have been made clearer to the public."

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/schenk-uci-needs-more-transparency

And in related news, another cyclist tested positive for EPO: "Spanish media reports say Olympic silver medalist cyclist Antonio “Toni” Tauler tested positive for a banned blood booster before the World Track Championships in March."
http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news?slug=ap-doping-tauler

Wisey

Every low paid worker in the Government department where I work know that you cannot accept gifts, and all offers of gifts must be formally declared. Is the UCI such an amateur organisation, or are they just bone stupid?

Break out the hand cuffs, I say. Twisted Evil