Cycling: Landis calls for legalised doping

Floyd Landis. Photo / Getty Images

Disgraced Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has suggested drugs should be legalised in cycling.

The 2006 Tour de France champion, who was stripped of his title after testing positive for testosterone, says legalising doping is the only solution because testers will always struggle to uncover drugs cheats.

Landis says the fight against doping cannot be won.

"You've got to legalise doping. They (the testers) are so far behind in the testing organisations that there's no way to change it now," Landis told Cyclingnews website on Wednesday.

"Just accept that it's here, that it's not going away and that it's just going to get more complicated and the fact that it's not that complicated yet compared to what it will be," he said.

"Ten years from now it's going to be four times as hard as it is now to test for things."

Landis, who last year accused former team mate Lance Armstrong of doping, says the only concern should be the riders' health.

"Since you can't stop it you have to deal with it in rational kind of way," he said.

"You can't stop it and you cant fix it. Monitor it and make sure people don't hurt themselves, but you have to accept it."

Landis raced in last month's Tour of Southland finishing in fourth place.

- Herald online