Floyd Prepares his Suit Against the UCI
Following the announcement by the UCI that it has filed a defamation suit against Floyd Landis, the deposed Tour de France winner says he is ready to fight the case in an effort to expose “the corruption within cycling.”
Cycling’s international governing body, as well as its current president, Pat McQuaid, and his predecessor, Hein Verbruggen, have filed a law suit in Swiss courts, seeking damages from Landis after a year of allegations that the UCI and its leadership had covered up positive doping tests of select riders, particularly at least one from his former teammate Lance Armstrong.
Contacted by VeloNews, Landis said he intends to mount a vigorous defense against the suit, arguing that all of the allegations he’s leveled against the UCI and its former leaders are true, and that the governing body’s suit “will strengthen my resolve to expose them as the criminals that they are.”
While the target of many of Landis’ doping allegations, Armstrong has not filed a suit in U.S. courts. Armstrong spokesman and attorney Mark Fabiani explained that decision to the New York Daily News, suggesting that the former Tour winner had “no intention of wasting any more time or money on Floyd Landis. He is a person who is so discredited already that it would be impossible to discredit him anymore.”
Landis’ charges, however, appear to have been taken seriously by federal authorities, who quickly expanded an already active investigation into doping in cycling to include Armstrong and the management of the former U.S. Postal Service cycling team. One major element of that case is headed by Jeff Novitzky, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Criminal Division investigator, perhaps best known for his work in the sports doping case triggered by the prosecution of those involved with the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO).
The investigation now involves several federal agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and both the civil and criminal divisions of the Department of Justice. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Doug Miller and Mark Williams head the Department of Justice team working with a grand jury empanelled in the case in the Central District of California.
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- groups:
- Cycling
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- tags:
- Doping, UCI, Floyd Landis
