Winner of Tour De France Fails Doping Test

The winner of the most closely-fought Tour de France in years, America's Floyd Landis, was yesterday embroiled in new drama after it was revealed that he tested positive for the male hormone testosterone during the race. If the result is confirmed by a B test, he will become the first winner in the 103-year history of the race to be disqualified for doping.

Landis's apparent positive test was a fresh blow for the world's greatest cycle race, and potentially a fatal one as it came just weeks after the three favourites for the 2006 Tour, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Francisco Mancebo, were expelled before the start due to their implication in a Spanish police inquiry into blood doping.

"After what we went through at the start of the Tour, this is a catastrophe," said Patrick Lefevere, head of the body that represents professional cycling teams. It is also potentially embarrassing for London, which will host the start of next year's Tour on the initiative of the mayor Ken Livingstone.

In this year's race, Landis did not merely win the yellow jersey, but triumphed in the battle for hearts and minds in a way that eluded his predecessor, the seven-times champion Lance Armstrong. Having fought against a rigid Mennonite upbringing merely to race his bike, he was also fighting the pain from an injured hip.

Landis turned round an apparently impossible situation on the final mountain stage of the race with an audacious escape over 80 miles and five Alpine passes that had race followers comparing him to the legendary Eddy Merckx. His triumphant gesture, a punch in the air, could have been premature as this was the stage on which there seems to have been too much testosterone in his system.

Landis has requested that a second test be carried out on his control sample, and his team Phonak said that further medical tests might be requested. No indication was given as to the length of the procedure, but other cases involving testosterone have taken months to decide.

Should he be disqualified then it is likely the second-placed rider Spain's Oscar Pereiro would be made the winner.