Landis Fails Drug Test

Tour de France winner Floyd Landis today kicked off another cycling drugs scandal after testing positive for testosterone.

"The Phonak cycling team was notified yesterday by the UCI [cycling's governing body] of an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio in the test made on Floyd Landis after stage 17 of the Tour de France," said Phonak in a statement.

"The team management and the rider were both totally surprised of this physiological result."

Phonak added that Landis would ask for the analysis of his back-up sample "to prove either that this result is coming from a natural process or that this resulting from a mistake." The rider has been suspended pending the results. If the second sample confirms the initial finding Phonak confirmed he will be fired from the team.

On the eve of this year's Tour, pre-race favourites Ivan Basso of Italy and Germany's Jan Ullrich were forced to pull out and were suspended after being implicated in a doping investigation in Spain. Ullrich, winner of 1997 Tour, and Basso both denied any wrong-doing, but Ullrich was later sacked by his T-Mobile sponsor while his team-mate Oscar Sevilla and manager Rudy Pevenage were suspended.

Nine riders were pulled out of the Tour because of the investigation, including the whole of the Astana team as five of their riders were on a list provided by Spanish police. The peloton was reduced from 189 to 176 riders.