Landis takes case to public

Cyclist again asserts his innocence

Floyd Landis took his case to the public Thursday with an online presentation that included key elements of his defense against doping charges. Exhaustive as it appeared, his attorney said, “This is by no means, everything.”

Landis 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 result in a two-year ban. Rather than wait several months to present his defense in a public form, portions of it were posted on his web site, www.floydlandis.com.

Included 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 – filed earlier by Landis’ attorney, Howard Jacobs – to dismiss the charges.

“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.”

The 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.