Appeal Dropped By Floyd Landis

US cyclist Floyd Landis has dropped an appeal of a suspended sentence that was imposed by a French court over a shady espionage operation for hacking the computers of an anti-doping laboratory.

 

A one-year suspended jail sentence was received by Landis and his former trainer Arnie Barker in November 2011 after they were found guilty by a French court of fraudulently receiving documents from the official LNDD anti-doping agency. Landis appealed against the verdict though Barker accepted it. Two former EDF executives responsible for security of the group were also found guilty.

 

The disgraced cyclist who has previously admitted to using performance enhancing drugs and accused Lance Armstrong of using and promoting the use of performance enhancing drugs had been accused of using a hacker to get documents from the LNDD. Landis was stripped of his title as winner of the 2006 Tour de France. His lawyer Emilie Bailly said Landis had been "ruined by the different legal procedures and does not have the means" to come to France for facing the judges at Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris.

 

Last year, the court fined French state energy giant EDF 1.5 million euros ($2 million) in the same trial for using the consultancy to spy on environmental campaigners Greenpeace. It was admitted by EDF that it hired the consultancy to "monitor" Greenpeace but said it was unaware that Quiros had hacked into the computer of the group's former head of campaigns for France, Yannick Jadot, in 2006.

Armstrong Must Come Out Clean, Says Former Teammate

The man who helped tip the bucket on Lance Armstrong's doping network, Tyler Hamilton, hopes Armstrong clean as the damning evidence continues to pile up.

Hamilton won an Olympic gold medal before handing it back after himself admitting to doping and said he may likely have been "prepared to go to the grave" with his own secrets before being caught. Hamilton said there is probably a lot of money at stake if Lance comes out and tells the truth but he will lead a happier second half of his life by coming out clean.

Hamilton said he frequently used performance enhancing drugs and avoided testers and added that the reputation of cycling has taken a big hit with the Lance Armstrong doping scandal but things had improved. Tyler Hamilton further added that authorities should provide some kind of amnesty for those willing to accept their past wrongdoings. "But if there's some way to continue in the sport, like maybe serve a small penalty, come clean - which will be good for the future of the sport - and then be able to continue after a small penalty then I think that will encourage a lot of people to come out. "If we get a lot more people to come out, then moving forward the sport's going to be in a lot better place. We can't move 100 per cent in the right direction unless we know exactly what happened in the past."

Hamilton also reaffirmed his admiration for Aussie Tour de France champ Cadel Evans and said, "We were never teammates, you know I raced alongside of him for quite a long time and some of my ex-teammates, George Hincapie being one of them, had told me that Cadel was a super hardworker obviously, but he was clean."