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Landis looking for spectacle-filled doping hearing

Tour de France champion Floyd Landis wants his upcoming doping hearing to be a spectacle filled with big-time surprises and unseemly revelations, one that shines a harsh light on the anti-doping movement and ultimately clears him of wrongdoing.

Those prosecuting him are hoping for business as usual -- a dry, detailed accounting of the science that led to Landis being accused of using banned synthetic testosterone during the Tour.

The public arbitration hearing starts on Monday and the stakes are higher than just the possible two-year ban Landis could face if he loses. He would be the first rider in the Tour's 104-year history to be stripped of the title and he says he'll retire if he loses and can't get the result overturned in appeals.

But the 31-year-old cyclist doesn't think he's going to lose. And he wants to use the 10-day hearing to deliver a knockout to the US Anti-Doping Agency, the group underwritten by the US government and the US Olympic Committee that Landis claims is fundamentally corrupt.

"If they lose this, they cease to exist. I don't see any other way," Landis said. "It would be no point in them going on.

"They've made such bold statements about how sure they are that this is the truth that there would be no point in ever accusing anyone again after I demonstrate that I'm innocent," he said.

Despite a positive test for elevated levels of testosterone to epitestosterone after his stirring comeback victory in Stage 17 of last year's Tour, Landis insists he never has used performance-enhancing drugs.

About 20 percent of the cases that have begun with an "adverse" drug test have been thrown out early in the process because of lack of evidence. But the US doping agency does not lose cases when they reach the arbitration stage.

Since being founded by the US Olympic Council in 2000, the doping agency has tried 34 cases in front of a panel of three arbitrators much like the one that will preside over Landis' hearing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

The doping agency's record: 34-0.

"I've often said I wish the public could be a fly on the wall to see how fairly the process was conceived," said Gary Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Association.
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