Landis says whisky, not testosterone, spurred Tour comeback

Floyd Landis took the stand in his arbitration hearing Saturday in Malibu, Calif., repeatedly denying he'd ever taken testosterone, saying it "wouldn't serve any purpose for me to cheat and win the Tour."

For 75 riveting minutes, Landis gave a detailed breakdown of his career, then outlined the strategy he used for his comeback in Stage 17 of last year's Tour de France — a plan hatched over dinner and whisky the night before.

"It helps with the tactical plan," Landis said, drawing laughs.

Speaking under oath, he said the only banned substance he has taken during his career has been cortisone — medicine he used to treat his injured hip, which had been approved for his use by cycling authorities.

Landis, who is accused of using synthetic testosterone, tested positive after that 17th Tour stage.

He also spoke about allegations that Greg LeMond made two days earlier, acknowledging he was in the room when his former manager, Will Geoghegan, made the call to LeMond threatening to reveal the three-time Tour champion's secret that he had been sexually abused as a child.

"I knew there was a problem," Landis said of his reaction upon realizing Geoghegan had made the call. "I was traumatized having him tell me that story in the first place. There are very few things I can imagine would happen to a person that are worse than that. To make light of that, I can't even put words to it."

Landis spoke in a conversational, matter-of-fact tone, never raising his voice or breaking down. His parents and wife, Amber, watched from behind the defence table — his mom smiling ever so slightly and Amber fiddling with her watch.

The rest of the hearing room was rapt, finally getting a chance to hear Landis speak under oath about the allegations he has denied since news of his positive A sample was leaked 10 months ago.

At the end, lawyer Howard Jacobs asked him why the three arbitrators who will decide his fate — whether he becomes the first Tour de France winner stripped of the title for a doping offence — should believe him.

"They should believe me because people are defined by their principles and how they make their decisions," Landis said.

"To me, bicycle racing was rewarding for the pure fact that I was proud of myself when I put the work into it. As long as I know I earned what I got, that was satisfactory. Obviously, it's fun to win. It's a matter of who I am. It wouldn't serve any purpose for me to cheat and win the Tour because I wouldn't be proud of it. That wasn't the goal to begin with."

Landis described being massively confused when word of the positive test first came out last summer, which led to a debacle of a news conference in Spain.

At that appearance, he explained his positive test came not because of testosterone use but was, rather, something that was produced "by my own organisms."

"I still don't know what that means," Landis testified. "I regret it. It was confusing at that point. I shouldn't have taken the advice of those lawyers. I didn't know what I was doing. As you can see, those guys aren't here today writing statements."