Floyd Landis lost his first appeal before the arbitration panel as you might have already heard:

Floyd Landis will be stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title and must serve a two-year ban from competitive cycling after an arbitration panel ruled Thursday that he used synthetic testosterone. The decision, a 2-1 verdict by a panel that included a former Olympic wrestler, came nearly four months after a nine-day evidentiary hearing, the longest anti-doping hearing in U.S. history.

He still can appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but it is unclear whether he can continue to afford the legal costs to do so.  Interestingly enough, the lone dissent to the decision had this to say:

In his 26-page dissent, arbiter Chris Campbell claimed the French lab "failed to comply with the procedures and methods for testing" and did not follow WADA code.

"The T-E ratio test is acknowledged as a simple test to run. The IRMS test is universally acknowledged as a very complicated test to run, requiring much skill," Campbell wrote. "If the (lab) couldn't get the T-E ratio test right, how can a person have any confidence that (the lab) got the much more complicated IRMS test correct?

I found this reasoning to be be particularly interesting because it's the same line of reasoning I hear quite often from my friend John when talking about counting votes.  If you can't even figure out how many ballots were handed out compared to the number counted (a simple measure), then how can we trust the more complicated matter of determining how many votes went to each candidate?  It's a good point.  The question that came up with another coworker of mine I found to be a bit more troubling though.  He asked whether I thought it was really possible to win the Tour without doping.

How sad is that?  That we need to ask that question.  The Tour de France has been going on for 105 years.  In the early days, there was no such thing as support cars.  Riders carried tools, spare tires, and anything the needed on their body.  Some cyclists would have to do metal work on their bikes in barns with borrowed equipment if they broke!  There were no carbon fiber bikes, or carbohydrate gel packs, or anything else that pro cyclists take for granted today.  It doesn't end with biking either.  I don't know how many times I've heard people seem filled with amazement that people could even live without some of our modern luxuries a hundred years ago.  Man has been around for thousands of years.  You'd be amazed at what we're capable of when we need to be.

If nobody was doping, would the times be as spectacular as they are today?  Who knows.  It might very well change the tactics a bit, and you'd be surprised how that makes a difference on time.  But who cares?  Frankly, I'd rather watch a clean race that ended up two minutes slower over all, then one with a bunch of dopers.  And in that spirit, I'm thrilled to have heard about the Slipstream Sports Team.  They have partnered with the Agency for Sporting Ethics, and will be testing each of their athletes constantly in order to guarantee a drug free team.  They have some major names signed on as well, including Ian McGregor.  They're hoping to get a wild car entry into the Tour de France for next year.  I think it will be great if they make it.