From washingtonpost.com:

Tour de France champion Floyd Landis of the United States has been suspended by his team from cycling competition after testing positive for an "unusual" level of testosterone during the race he won Sunday, the team announced today.

Ah, here we go again.

I really hope Landis wasn't stupid enough to dope and think he wouldn't get caught. Right before the Tour began, nine riders (including TdF notables Ivan Basso and Jan Ulrich) were banished from the race due to a Spanish doping investigation. You think that would be enough to deter cyclists from attempting that crap.

In my opinion, it's even riskier for Americans pull such a trick, as the UCI is convinced we've got EPO in our tap water - as evidenced by the thousands of drug tests Lance has gone through. (And passed every single one of them, I might add.) It doesn't help that our once-golden boy, Tyler Hamilton, was recently sanctioned from international racing for two years after testing positive for blood doping in the Vuelta a España. That scandal was a huge shock to the cycling community, since Hamilton managed to ride his way to a fourth place finish the 2003 Tour with a severely broken collarbone and went on to win a gold in the 2004 Olympics.

What was particularly strange about Hamilton's case was that he was accused of doping using a risky method known as homologous transfusion. "[Homologous transfusion] can be dangerous because of the risk of infection and the potential toxicity of improperly stored blood. Homologous transfusions present the additional risks of communication of infectious diseases and the possibility of a transfusion reaction. From a logistical standpoint, either type of transfusion requires the athlete to surreptitiously transport frozen RBCs, thaw and re-infuse them in a non-clinical setting and then dispose of the medical paraphernalia." (Source: Wikipedia)

Call me lazy, but if I wanted to dope myself, that seems like a really primitive way to do it.

Back to Landis. It's entirely possible that yes, he really was that dimwitted to drug himself and is now joining the midst of other pro cyclists recently caught - Ivan Basso, and more notably, Jan Ulrich. Those proved guilty are banned from cycling amidst humiliation for a number of years. Forget fines, jail time, whatever - simply being blacklisted from international cycling is enough to ruin their credibility for life. Might as well force them to wear a scarlet "D" on their jerseys in case anyone happens to forget how they tried to cheat the system.

Let's hope that this all blows over, Landis is cleared, and we can go back to celebrating an 8 year streak of American Tour de France champions.