Landis goes public with defense in doping

Floyd Landis took his case to the public Thursday with an online presentation including key elements of his defense against doping charges. Exhaustive as it appeared, his attorney said, "This is by no means everything."\nLandis is scheduled to go before an arbitration panel in January or February and formally appeal doping violations that could cost him his Tour de France and impose a two-year ban. Rather than wait several months to present his defense in a public form, portions of the case were posted on his Web site, www.floydlandis.com.\nIncluded in the multimedia presentation was a PowerPoint presentation prepared by Arnie Baker, a retired doctor and longtime coach and adviser, as well as several hundred pages of documents and a motion to dismiss the charges that Howard Jacobs, Landis' attorney, had filed earlier.\n"It's an unprecedented step, but if the federations are going to keep breaking the rules by leaking results, it's only fair that athletes can respond," Jacobs said. "That's what we're doing."\nThe presentation highlights what are said to be a number of inconsistencies in both the paperwork and the results provided by the French lab that reported elevated ratios of testosterone to epitestosterone in Landis' "A" and "B" samples, as well as the presence of synthetic testosterone.\nThe alleged inconsistencies were part of Jacobs' earlier motion that asked a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency review board to have the case dismissed. That request was denied last month.\nJacobs said Thursday, "There's many more elements to the defense," but declined to elaborate.\nTour de France organizers already have said they no longer consider Landis the champion. They also planned to begin proceedings to formally strip Landis' title when the appeals process is exhausted. Landis' final appeal could be to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.\nLandis' positive test results were reported less than a week after his triumphant July 23 ride into Paris. In the days following the report, Landis contended a number of factors could have triggered the result -- thyroid medication, cortisone injections for a damaged hip, his tendency to produce too much testosterone, even some whiskey he drank the night before his stirring win in Stage 17.\nIn the online presentation, Landis' experts now contend the French lab erred in its analysis, incorrectly labeled samples and ignored the World Anti-Doping Agency testing standards and chain-of-custody protocol, among numerous other mistakes.\n"The whole process has been full of errors," Baker concludes at one point in the presentation.\nUSADA rules prohibit the agency from commenting on an active case, but Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said Thursday about the lab where the tests were performed, "We have no reason to question the conclusions."\nAdded Philippe Dautry, general secretary of France's anti-doping agency, "We only have some vague noises about the arguments from Landis and his attorney. All this is part of an ongoing disciplinary procedure, during which all the elements must be examined"