November 21, 2007 (Lausanne, Switzerland) – Floyd Landis who won the 2006 Tour de France only to have the title stripped from him over a failed doping test, is making a final appeal at the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to regain the title and overturn a two-year doping ban reports BBC.

Landis’ legal team filed a 90-page brief with the CAS, in which Landis announces his full support for drug testing. But, as his lawyers remarked, “To wrongly strip a champion of his victory due to a flawed test result is much worse than to have an athlete cheat his way to victory.” They also termed the case to be a “travesty of justice.”

Landis tested positive for artificial testosterone on the 17th stage of the 2006 TdF where he made a spectacular 120km breakaway, finishing nearly six minutes ahead of his closest rivals. Landis has always denied any wrongdoing and claimed faulty analysis of his samples at the Châtenay-Malabry laboratory in France. Landis appealed to the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) but a panel of three arbitrators ruled against him there in a split decision rendered on September 20.

After the USADA decision, Spain’s Oscar Pereiro (Caisse d’Epargne) was subsequently declared the 2006 Tour de France champion.

The CAS, which is the ultimate body for international sports disputes, has previously dismissed a case against Spanish cyclist Inigo Landaluce (Euskaltel-Euskadi) that is somewhat similar to Landis’. Landaluce (also spelled Landaluze) tested postitive for synthetic testosterone at the 2005 Dauphiné Libéré but the laboratory analysis of Landaluce’s samples violated procedural protocol.