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Laboratory criticized as Landis hearing ends
2007-05-23
Lawyers representing Floyd Landis renewed their attack on the French laboratory that analyzed the Tour de France champion's urine samples before the nine-day public doping ended on Wednesday. Maurice Suh, Landis's chief attorney, said in his closing statement that he had proved that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA's) case against his client was "a disaster." In a sustained attack on the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory (LNDD) outside Paris, Suh said technicians there had made errors in every phase of the testing of Landis's urine, including "rule violations, incompetence and miscalculations." He added: "We believe in clean sports, we believe in clean athletes, we believe in real science. What we do not believe in is incompetent laboratories and cherry-picked data?" Suh laid out what he described as "a chain of errors" by the lab, including poor quality control, bad chromatography and deleted data. However, USADA lawyer Richard Young said the case relied on relatively simple science that proved American Landis had taken the performance-enhancing hormone testosterone during last year's Tour de France. "He cheated the rules of cycling and he got caught," Young added. PANEL DECISION Although the arbitration hearing held at Pepperdine University is now over, the panel is not expected to reach a decision for at least a month. Earlier on Wednesday, British mass spectrometry expert Simon Davis said he was "flabbergasted" by the way LNDD technicians operated. Davis, an observer for Landis when the samples were re-tested at the LNDD in April, said data from the lab had been manipulated and that critical evidence had been removed from the lab's computer hardware. "Frankly, I was flabbergasted when I saw they were reprocessing it manually," he said, referring to how the LNDD technicians had reprocessed the results. Davis said he had expected the re-testing of Landis's samples to be performed on modern software instead of the 10-year-old version used for the initial analysis last year. At issue is whether Landis's remarkable comeback in one of the 2006 Tour's toughest hill-climb stages was the result of his taking a synthetic form of the male hormone testosterone. BUNGLED TESTS Tests performed at the LNDD on a urine sample taken from Landis after the Tour's 17th stage purportedly showed evidence of the synthetic testosterone, but Landis's legal team claim that the French technicians were incompetent and bungled the tests. USADA lawyers say the test results were accurate and that Landis should be punished with a two-year suspension and the loss of his Tour title. It would be the first time in the 104-year history of cycling's most prestigious race that a winner has been stripped of his title. Amid the welter of often tedious scientific evidence given during the Malibu hearing, three-times Tour winner Greg LeMond implied on the witness stand that Landis had implicitly admitted to taking synthetic testosterone. LeMond testified on Thursday that he spoke to Landis by phone shortly after the news that Landis's urine test had proved positive for testosterone, asking him to "come clean" and help the sport of cycling. He said Landis replied: "What good would it do? ... if I did, it would destroy a lot of my friends and hurt a lot of people." LeMond also said he had received a threatening phone call from Landis's former business manager, Will Geoghegan, intimating he would reveal that LeMond had been sexually abused as a child. The Landis camp subsequently fired Geoghegan. Landis, who testified on Saturday and Tuesday, has repeatedly denied taking steroids, saying he would not feel any joy in winning if he had cheated.
Landis faces lengthy wait for hearing outcome (2007-05-25)1996 Tour de France champ admits doping (2007-05-25)Laboratory criticized as Landis hearing ends (2007-05-23)Landis's integrity under fire (2007-05-23)Landis denies doping charges at Malibu hearing (2007-05-20)
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