The French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) will rule today whether to ban Floyd Landis from racing in France for up to two years after his positive doping test at last year's Tour de France.
The nine-member panel, headed by AFLD president Philippe Bordry, will meet in Paris, and Bordry insisted Landis will receive a fair hearing.
"It's not because someone is positive that he must be automatically suspended," Bordry said yesterday. "The rights of the defense are very important."
Landis' urine sample after a Tour de France stage win was found to contain elevated testosterone to epitestosterone levels. He risks being the first rider in the 104-year history of the race to be stripped of his title, and Tour director Christian Prudhomme has said the Tour no longer considers him the winner.
The US cyclist was not expected to attend the hearing and may instead be represented by a lawyer.
Under French law, the AFLD has the right to "sanction by one or two years suspension on French soil," Bordry said.
That would exclude Landis from this year's Tour, and other events such as Paris-Nice and Paris-Roubaix.
"The college [AFLD] will pronounce itself freely," Bordry said. "We are applying French law."
Bordry said Landis was informed in September that he would face an AFLD hearing.
"When the result of the `B' sample confirmed that of the `A,' we told him that he was entering into the French disciplinary process," Bordry said.
At today's hearing, Landis' lawyer can argue a final time before the panel -- which includes French magistrates -- before the AFLD meets to decide its verdict.
"All the perspectives exist," Bordry said. "The college is serene."
Last week, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) vice president Jean-Francois Lamour -- also France's sports minister -- requested a postponement of the hearing.
Lamour said on Friday that it would be "preferable" to wait until after next month's hearing on the case by the US Anti-Doping Agency, which has yet to begin -- leading to critical comments from Prudhomme, who feels the case is dragging on.
Lamour was expressing his own opinion as a WADA official, and not as a French minister.
"He intervened as a member of WADA," Bordry said. "That's good, because it would be strange that a minister demands not to apply French law."
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed