Strange saga of Floyd Landis

Olympic speedskaker Cindy Klassen is the athlete Mennonites love to claim right now. Floyd Landis, not so much.

Landis’ conservative Mennonite upbringing became a key part of his backstory when he won the 2006 Tour de France, cycling’s most prestigious race.

In 2006, a ruling against Landis by the Court of Arbitration for Sport appeared to be the final word in his strange saga of being stripped of the Tour de France title for breaking anti-doping rules.

This week the Landis story took another weird turn. A French judge issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with alleged computer hacking at a French lab that held the data implicating Landis of cheating.

Landis continues to deny all the allegations. But his defense, and defenders, appear to have lost a lot of steam. “Trust But Verify,” a blog sympathetic to Landis that collected information and commentary on his case, closed Dec. 31, 2008.

A little over a year ago, a San Diego Union-Tribune story chronicled Landis’ “downward spiral,” including financial troubles and the break-up of his marriage.

He's a “Mennonite kid from Pennsylvania,” the reporter wrote, whose “life careen[ed] off a mountain road in a tangle of handlebars and spokes.” — Paul Schrag