Floyd Landis lost his final chance to retain his 2006 Tour de France title Monday, the last step of a long, multimillion-dollar process that poked holes in the anti-doping establishment but ultimately left the cyclist as just another convicted cheater. A three-person panel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, upheld a previous panel's decision, ruling his positive doping test during the Tour two years ago was, indeed, valid. Landis also must pay $100,000 toward the legal fees of the US Anti-Doping Agency. “I am saddened by today's decision,” Landis said in a statement. “I am looking into my legal options and deciding on the best way to proceed.” In its 58-page decision, the CAS panel said the lab that analyzed Landis' positive test results used some “less than ideal laboratory practices, but not lies, fraud, forgery or cover-ups,” the way the Landis camp had alleged. In the end, the panel saved its harshest criticism for Landis, who it said essentially tried to muddle the evidence and embarrass the French lab, and continued on that course even after the evidence was shown not to exist. “Appellant's experts crossed the line, acting for the most part as advocates for the Appellant's cause, and not as scientists objectively assisting the Panel in the search for truth,” the decision read. USADA welcomed the decision. “We are pleased that justice was served and that Mr. Landis was not able to escape the consequences of his doping or his effort to attack those who protect the rights of clean athletes,” said USADA chief executive officer Travis Tygart. The decision comes just six days before the start of the 2008 Tour. Landis won the 2006 edition after a stunning comeback in Stage 17, a rally that turned out to be fueled by synthetic testosterone. The ruling upholds Landis' two-year ban from cycling, which is due to end Jan. 29, 2009, though at this point, the ban wasn't the real issue. Landis hoped to be exonerated and to get his title back. He also wanted to use the protracted case to shed light on procedures at USADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency, which he says are unfair and rigged against athletes who often don't have the resources to fund their defense. “That's always been part of the system, that they've always had more resources than the athlete. This is the first time it's even been close,” Landis' attorney, Maurice Suh, said in an interview last year. Bankrolled through several private sources, including a fundraising campaign he launched on his own, Landis forced a case that cost more than $2 million - a burden on him, but also a strain on the bottom lines of both USADA and WADA, which shared the cost of prosecuting the case. After his unprecedented public hearing at his first arbitration case last May, the arbitrators upheld his doping ban but scolded USADA and the labs it uses for practices that were less than airtight. That appeared to give Landis the opening he needed to justify an appeal to CAS. The hearing took place in March in New York, and was considered a “trial de novo” - not technically an appeal, but a chance to have the case heard anew. Although the CAS panel agreed with the idea that the lab was less than perfect, the evidence presented over the five-day hearing didn't change the final outcome.
