Under oath, cyclist denies doping claim

"Did you take testosterone during the Tour de France?"

"No."

"Any banned substances?"

"No."

With that simple reply elicited by his attorney, Tour de France champion Floyd Landis declared under oath Saturday the position he has maintained for more than nine months, since the day anti-doping authorities accused him of taking synthetic testosterone to win the marquee cycling event last summer.

He denied taking testosterone or any other performance-enhancing substance at any time during a cycling career that began with his victory in a mountain-bike race near his rural Pennsylvania home at the age of 15. Landis, who was raised in a Mennonite household, now lives in Murrieta in Riverside County.

"Why should this arbitration panel believe you?" asked his attorney, Howard Jacobs.

"People are defined by their principles and how they make their decisions," replied Landis, who was wearing a gray suit and gold tie and spoke comfortably, albeit in such quiet tones that spectators in the packed hearing room edged forward in their seats to hear.

"That I earned what I got -- that was satisfying to me about bicycle racing. There wouldn't be any purpose to cheat and win the Tour, because I wouldn't be proud of it and that's just not what the goal was from the beginning."

In his testimony during a public arbitration hearing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Landis, 31, said he was in the room when his former business manager, Will Geoghegan, made an anonymous phone call to former Tour de France champion Greg LeMond on Wednesday night, hours before LeMond was scheduled to testify against Landis.

LeMond said he regarded the call as a threat designed to keep him off the stand. Landis testified that he barely heard Geoghegan's end of the conversation, but did not know to whom he was talking or the subject of the conversation.

Landis testified for slightly more than an hour Saturday, the sixth day of his hearing before a panel of three arbitrators sitting in a moot court auditorium. If the panel upholds the accusation brought by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Landis will face a two-year suspension from competition and the loss of his Tour title. He is scheduled to be cross-examined by agency lawyers Monday.