Floyd Landis (born October 14, 1975) is an American former professional road racing cyclist. At the 2006 Tour de France, he would have been the third non-European winner in the event's history, but was disqualified after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. The competition was ultimately won by Óscar Pereiro.
Landis was an all-around rider, with special skills in climbing, time-trialing, and descending. He turned professional in 1999 with the Mercury Cycling Team, joined the U.S. Postal Service team in 2002, and moved to the Phonak Hearing Systems team in 2005. In January 2010, a French judge issued a national arrest warrant for Landis on computer hacking charges related to the 2006 Tour de France, stage 17 doping allegations.
In 2010 Landis maintained his innocence and mounted a defense. Although his legal team documented inconsistencies in the handling and evaluation of his urine samples, the disqualification was upheld. He was suspended from professional competition through January 30, 2009, following an arbitration panel's 2-to-1 ruling on September 20, 2007. He appealed the result of the arbitration hearing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which subsequently upheld the panel's ruling. In January 2011, he was unable to find a new team, which effectively ended his professional career. On May 20, 2010, after almost four years of contesting the allegations, Landis admitted to doping, and revealed that Lance Armstrong and many other top riders who rode on his team doped as well.
Landis is the son of Arlene Landis and Paul Landis, a truck driver and small business owner in Farmersville, Pennsylvania. He is the oldest of six children. He was raised in a devout Mennonite family and community.
When he was a teenager, he would ride with a friend down to the Conestoga River. He purchased his first bike, a neon-green and orange Marin Muirwoods, for $300 when he was 15.
He entered local bike shop races and won. He wore sweatpants during the races because his religion forbade wearing traditional cycling shorts.
His father was displeased with his son's investment in cycling, and tried to discourage him from racing his bike by giving him extra chores. This left him no time to train during the day, so he would sneak out of the house at night to train, sometimes at 1 or 2 a.m. and often in the freezing cold. When he was the age of 18, Landis won the junior national cross country race held in Traverse City, Michigan.
Landis graduated from Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1994.
Landis won the first mountain bike race he entered. In 1993, he was crowned U.S. junior national champion. He told friends he would win the Tour de France one day. At the age of 20 Landis moved to Southern California to train full-time as a mountain biker. He soon established a reputation for toughness, once finishing a race riding on only his rims. However, his training regimen resembled that of a road biker, and in 1999 he switched to road cycling.
Landis performed well enough on the road that Lance Armstrong recruited him to U.S. Postal and chose Landis to ride alongside him as a domestique during his Tour participations from 2002 to 2004. In each of these Tours, Landis served as Armstrong's lieutenant, or chief domestique, pushing the pace in the mountains to break the pack before Armstrong took off on his own to win the stage. In the 2004 tour Landis led Armstrong and a few of Armstrong's main rivals over the final climb of stage 17, putting on such an impressive display of strength that actor and avid bike-racing fan Robin Williams dubbed him the "Mofo of the Mountains". His performance led some observers to peg him as a possible team leader and future winner of the Maillot Jaune. Landis left U.S. Postal later that year after receiving a better contract offer from the Phonak squad.
In the 2005 Tour de France, Landis finished ninth overall in the General classification, his highest finish in the tour at that time. Landis started the 2006 season strongly, with overall wins in the Amgen Tour of California, and then in the prestigious Paris–Nice, both week-long stage races. Winning Paris–Nice gave Landis 52 points in the UCI ProTour individual competition, starting him off in first place for 2006. Landis achieved another overall win in the Ford Tour de Georgia, which took place from April 18 to 23. In addition to winning the Tour de Georgia time trial. Landis retained his lead through the mountains with a close second-place finish to Tom Danielson on Brasstown Bald.
Landis' performance up to stage 16 of the 2006 Tour and his comeback in stage 17 were particularly noteworthy given his hip ailment, osteonecrosis, which was revealed in an article in The New York Times during the race. This deterioration in the ball joint of his right hip stemmed from diminished blood supply and constricted blood vessels caused by scar tissue. The original injury that led to the formation of the scar tissue was a femoral neck fracture sustained in a bicycle crash during a training ride near his Southern California home in October 2002. Landis kept the ailment secret from his teammates, rivals, and the media until an announcement was made while the 2006 Tour was underway. This same ailment also affected former multi-sport athlete Bo Jackson and American football player Brett Favre.
Landis rode the 2006 Tour with constant pain from the injury, saying "It's bad, it's grinding, it's bone rubbing on bone. Sometimes it's a sharp pain. When I pedal and walk, it comes and goes, but mostly it's an ache, like an arthritis pain. It aches down my leg into my knee. The morning is the best time, it doesn't hurt too much. But when I walk it hurts, when I ride it hurts. Most of the time it doesn't keep me awake, but there are nights that it does." During the Tour he was medically approved to take cortisone for this injury, a medication otherwise prohibited in professional cycling for its known potential for abuse. He called his first place in the General Classification "a triumph of persistence" despite the pain. He was stripped of his win on September 20, 2006.
Landis underwent hip resurfacing on September 27, 2006, receiving a Smith and Nephew Birmingham metal-on-metal hip joint.
On July 27, 2006, the Phonak Cycling Team announced a urine sample submitted by Landis tested positive for an unusually high ratio of the hormone testosterone to the hormone epitestosterone (T/E ratio) after his performance in stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France. Landis denied doping and placed faith in a test using his backup sample. Phonak stated that he would be dismissed should the backup sample also test positive. It did, and Landis was suspended from professional cycling and dismissed from his team. Landis's personal physician later disclosed that the test had found a T/E ratio of 11:1 in Landis, far above the maximum allowable ratio of 4:1.
The test on Landis's stage 17 A sample had been performed by the French government's anti-doping clinical laboratory, the National Laboratory for Doping Detection (LNDD). LNDD is a division of the Ministry of Youth, Sport, and Social Life and is accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). In early August, Landis was found guilty of doping and was disqualified. Second place rider Óscar Pereiro became the race's official winner. The decision of whether to strip Landis of his title was made by the International Cycling Union (UCI). Under UCI rules, the determination of whether a cyclist violated any rules must be made by the cyclist's national federation, in this case USA Cycling, which transferred the case to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
David Witt, a close personal friend who introduced Landis to his future wife (the daughter of Witt's then girlfriend and future wife), shot himself with a handgun in the North Park community of San Diego on August 15, 2006. Landis and Witt met as roommates in 1998 when Landis moved to San Diego. Witt and Landis shared the same cycling coach, and Witt was instrumental in Landis's transition from mountain biking to road bicycle racing. Witt and his wife attended the 2006 Tour de France and were in Paris with Landis to celebrate his victory. Witt's North Park restaurant was adorned with Landis memorabilia, including two of Landis's jerseys. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that a Landis family spokesman read the following from a statement: "Floyd, Amber and the family are devastated by the news of David's death. They loved him dearly, and they miss him. [The Landises] hope their privacy is respected in this time of mourning." Many years later, Landis claimed that Witt may have killed himself because of his knowledge of Landis's doping practices. In a 2010 ESPN interview, Landis acknowledged that Witt knew about Landis doping and said, "I'm not saying that's the reason he's dead, but without that, I don't see why he wouldn't still be here." Even before the USADA's ruling on the matter, the controversy resulted in the disbandment of Landis's former team Phonak.