Professional bicycle racing is one of the very few sports I follow religiously. All my spare time in July is spent following the Tour de France. It’s only in the last few years that coverage has even been available on American television. But there’s much more to pro cycling than the Tour.

Cycling as a sport is suffering from a serious image problem because of all the doping. But they’re suffering even worse because of their response to the problem. They way they handles the various issues this year sure didn’t help.

Floyd Landis, the winner of the Tour de France this year, was accused of doping by the race authorities. He’s alleged to have far more testosterone in him than he’s allowed to. He claims he’s innocent and is mounting a defense.

Frankly, the offense he’s accused of doesn’t make much sense. The substance the lab detected isn’t a performance enhancer under those conditions. His samples before and after the problem sample were clean.

As part of his defense, he and his team [*] have created a Powerpoint presentation describing the problems with the testing procedures. All I can say is “wow.” I work in the medical lab business, and if one of our labs made even half this many mistakes and tried to pass it off as good work, they’d get their license pulled and we’d probably see someone doing a perp walk.

If he’s guilty, okay. Fine him, take back his title, disgrace him, kick him out of cycling. But it’s looking more and more like his only offense is being American, and a winner.

[*] By his team, I mean “his doctors and lawyers.” His racing team, Phonak, dumped him like a hot potato as soon as he was charged. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, and I’ll never buy a Phonak hearing aid until they apologize publicly to him and his fans. And yes, I’m a hearing aid user and I buy a new one every five years or so.