Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)

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LANDIS' LAST CHANCE: RISING

CONCERNS OVER ANTI-DOPING
ARBITRAL PROCEEDINGS

Floyd Landis recently became the first Tour de France champion in the
103-year history of the legendary race to lose his title due to a doping
offense.1 As a result of a two-to-one arbitral ruling in May, Landis lost his
title and was barred from cycling for two years, effective retroactively from
January 30, 2007.2 Throughout the ordeal, which began after a drug test
conducted during the 2006 race showed that Landis had a testosterone-toepitestosterone
ratio more than three times the World Anti-Doping Agency
(WADA) limit, Landis has remained vehement that the French lab that
conducted his urine tests erred.3 Landis' lawyer claims that errors in
identification, quality control, bad chromatography, manual processing, and
deleted data produced flawed test results.4 While the arbitral panel admitted
that the lab's practices were sloppy, it maintained that none of the problems
affected the final test result: that Landis had traces of synthetic testosterone
in his body.5

I. MEDIA EXPOSURE
The United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) case against Landis
was the first of its kind to be open to the news media, at Landis' request.6
As a result of these open proceedings and the significant publicity resulting
from an incident involving a Tour de France champion, Landis' case has
served as an opportunity for athletes, sports fans, and others to voice
concerns that WADA rules and anti-doping arbitral proceedings are
fundamentally flawed.7