Several weeks after testimony concluded, Floyd Landis is still waiting on an arbitration panel to decide his cycling fate. JOHN MARSHALL found him killing time on a bike.
LEADVILLE, Colo.
Floyd Landis (center, in orange) gets ready for the start of the Leadville Trail 100. (AP Photo/John Marshall)
Sitting on a green couch with his leg up on a table and a beer in hand, Floyd Landis looks quite relaxed for someone who just finished a 100-mile race.
Underneath his jeans revealed the reality: blood-soaked gauze wrapped from just above his knee down into his cowboy boots, the result of a crash early in a seven-hour mountain bike race.
But that's the way Landis is; no matter what's going on in his life, he seems to have that calm exterior, like nothing's going on.
Throughout his fight to retain the 2006 Tour de France title -- one that became disputed because of a positive test for synthetic testosterone -- Landis has maintained his innocence, disarming doubters with his matter-of-fact, this-guy's-too-nice-to-lie demeanor.
It was the same way after the Leadville Trail 100 over the weekend. The guy had bandages on his leg, on the tips of his fingers and scrapes down the inside of his arm -- not to mention exhaustion from a 100-mile bike race through the Rocky Mountains -- yet he invited a reporter into his rental home and candidly answered every question thrown at him.
Listen to some of the highlights of the interview in this asap podcast.
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John Marshall is asap's sports reporter, based in Denver.
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