November 15, 2006 – According to a report today in Le Monde, the French laboratory that found Floyd Landis to have an abnormally high testosterone count at the 2006 Tour de France made an error in labeling his urine sample.

The Châtenay-Malabry laboratory released its test results just after Landis won the Tour for his Phonak team. The results showed Landis had an abnormally high testosterone count and that some of this was synthetic testosterone.

Le Monde reports that Landis’ B sample was identified with the number 995-474 whereas the laboratory counter analysis minutes give it the number 994-474. This administrative error does not mean that the B sample came from someone other than Landis, but Landis’s lawyers plan to use this mistake with the cyclist’s defense on November 17 in Tucson, Arizona.

The same laboratory was the target of cyber piracy in recent weeks. Laboratory documents, some of which seem to make reference to similar labeling errors, were sent to organizations such as the International Olympic Committee, the UCI, and the Amaury Sport Organisation, which owns the Tour de France.

Landis’s spokesman, Michael Henson, said that attributing the cyber attack to Landis or his team was “without foundation, false and irresponsible.”