Tour de France winner Landis gives positive drugs test

LONDON - Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has given a positive drugs test for the male sex hormone testosterone, his Phonak team said overnight.

"The Phonak Cycling Team was notified yesterday by the UCI of an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio in the test made on Floyd Landis after stage 17 of the Tour de France," Phonak said in a team statement.

The International Cycling Union earlier announced that a rider had failed a drugs test.

The union said its anti-doping rules did not allow it to make his name public at thd time, although it added his team and national federation had been informed.

"The adverse analytical finding relates to the first analysis," the union said. "It will have to be confirmed either by a counter-analysis required by the rider, or by the fact that the rider renounces [his right] to that counter-analysis."

The test was conducted at an anti-doping lab in Chatenay-Malabry, outside Paris, from a sample taken during the Tour.

The Tour was hit by a doping scandal on the eve of the prologue when pre-race favourites Ivan Basso, of Italy, and German Jan Ullrich were forced to pull out and suspended after being implicated in a doping investigation in Spain.

Ullrich, winner of the 1997 Tour, and Basso denied any wrongdoing.

Ullrich was later sacked by his T-Mobile sponsor, and teammate Oscar Sevilla and manager Rudy Pevenage were suspended.

Nine riders, including Francisco Mancebo, who was fourth in last year's race, were pulled out of the Tour because of the investigation.

The entire Astana-Wuerth team had to withdraw because five of their riders were on a list provided by Spanish police.

- REUTERS