Floyd Landis' defense that his drug tests weren't handled properly doesn't negate the findings, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chairman Dick Pound said on Sunday.
Pound said that despite Landis' contention that the test procedures were less than perfect, there was no escaping the fact that banned substances were found.
By a 2-1 decision on Thursday, an arbitration panel upheld Landis' positive doping test from last year's Tour de France. The decision means Landis is no longer the race champion and faces a two-year ban from cycling, retroactive to Jan. 30.
In its 84-page decision, the majority found the initial screening test to measure Landis' testosterone levels -- the testosterone-to-epitestosterone test (T-E test) -- was not done according to World Anti-Doping Agency rules.
But the more precise carbon-isotope ratio analysis, performed after a positive T-E test is recorded, was accurate, the arbitrators said, meaning "an anti-doping rule violation is established."
"I think if you read it carefully you'll see that maybe some of the early stages of this thing were not as precise and crisp as they could have been, what they found is synthetic testosterone," Pound said. "You can run but can't hide."
Landis' attorney, Maurice Suh, said on Friday that Landis needed time to consider his options, which include an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and even possible litigation outside the anti-doping system.
"For the moment we just have to say that they speak for themselves and you can interpret them as well as we can," Pound said of the results. "Our policy is that if there is an appeal, we're probably going to get involved one way or another and therefore it's better if we don't say anything until the delay for appeal has expired or an appeal has been filed."
Pound made his comments at a press conference following weekend meetings of WADA's executive board.
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