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Nearly four years after he began waging a costly, draining and ultimately losing battle to discredit his positive test for synthetic testosterone at the 2006 Tour de France, Floyd Landis told ESPN.com on Wednesday that he used performance-enhancing drugs for most of his career as a professional road cyclist, including for the race whose title he briefly held.
In a lengthy telephone interview from California, Landis detailed extensive, consistent use of the red blood cell booster erythropoietin (commonly known as EPO), testosterone, human growth hormone and frequent blood transfusions, along with female hormones and a one-time experiment with insulin, during the years he rode for the U.S. Postal Service and Switzerland-based Phonak teams.
Landis confirmed he sent e-mails to cycling and anti-doping officials over the past few weeks, implicating dozens of other athletes, team management and owners and officials of the sport's national and international governing bodies. ESPN.com is seeking further evidence and comment from those individuals.
Landis' doping conviction cost him his Tour title, his career, his life savings and his marriage. He said he knows his credibility is in tatters and that many people will choose not to believe him now. He added he has no documentation for many of the claims he is making about other riders or officials, and that it will be his word against theirs.
However, Landis said he decided to come forward because he was suffering psychologically and emotionally from years of deceit, and he has become a cycling pariah with little to no chance of ever riding for an elite team again. Prior to speaking with ESPN.com, he said he made his most difficult phone call -- to his mother in Pennsylvania to tell her the truth for the first time.
"I want to clear my conscience," Landis said. "I don't want to be part of the problem anymore.
"With the benefit of hindsight and a somewhat different perspective, I made some misjudgments. And of course, I can sit here and say all day long, 'If I could do it again I'd do something different,' but I just don't have that choice.'"
Landis said he takes full responsibility for having doped and added he was never forced or threatened.
"I don't feel guilty at all about having doped," Landis told ESPN.com. "I did what I did because that's what we [cyclists] did and it was a choice I had to make after 10 years or 12 years of hard work to get there; and that was a decision I had to make to make the next step. My choices were, do it and see if I can win, or don't do it and I tell people I just don't want to do that, and I decided to do it."
According to Landis, his first use of performance-enhancing drugs was in June 2002, when he was a member of the U.S. Postal Service team. The World Anti-Doping Agency's statute of limitations for doping offenses is eight years, and Landis said that, too, is part of his motivation for divulging his inflammatory information.
"Now we've come to the point where the statute of limitations on the things I know is going to run out or start to run out next month," Landis said. "If I don't say something now, then it's pointless to ever say it."
Landis, who began his career as a top mountain biker, had kept detailed training journals since he was a teenager. He said he continued the same methodical record-keeping once he started using banned drugs and techniques. Landis said he spent as much as $90,000 a year on performance-enhancing drugs and on consultants to help him build a training regime. Landis said he has kept all of his journals and diaries and has offered to share them with U.S. anti-doping authorities in recent meetings. He added that he has given officials detailed information on how athletes are beating drug testing.
As for his own positive test, Landis still maintains the result was inaccurate and he had not used synthetic testosterone during the 2006 season -- although he now admits he used human growth hormone during that time. At this point, he does not want to dwell on any of the issues he and his lawyers hammered at during his case, he said.
"There must be some other explanation, whether it was done wrong or I don't know what," he said.
"The problem I have with even bothering to argue it is [that] I have used testosterone in the past and I have used it in other Tours, and it's going to sound kind of foolish to say I didn't."
Landis exhausted most of his own savings in fighting his case, which cost an estimated $2 million. He also raised funds for his defense in a well-publicized effort. He said he would pay those donors back if he could, but does not have the money. He said he did not level with the people close to him, but declined to say whether he informed his lawyers of his past drug use.
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