Cycling in crisis after doping scandal

Tour de France organisers may yet be to officially strip cyclist Floyd Landis of his yellow jersey, but the rest of the sporting world is already passing judgement on cycling's greatest ever scandal.

And the Chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Dick Pound, says the sport is now in such a state of crisis it runs the risk of being dumped from the Olympics.

But the man at the centre of cycling's shame is still proclaiming he's clean.

As Lindy Kerin reports.

LINDY KERIN: Appearing on NBC with his wife Amber, Floyd Landis today declared he'll do everything he can to prove his innocence.

FLOYD LANDIS: I'm saying that there is multiple reasons why this could have happened. One of them I will tell you that did not happen was that I added it myself.

REPORTER: Amber have you sat down with your husband and looked him straight in the eye and said, "Sweetheart did you cheat?"

AMBER LANDIS: I don't need to do that. I know what kind of person he is and I know how he thinks, and I don't have to ask him that. I believe him 100 per cent.

LINDY KERIN: But after a second sample tested positive for the hormone testosterone Floyd Landis could become the first person to be stripped of his title as winner of the world's most famous cycling event.

Landis says he cannot offer any explanation.

FLOYD LANDIS: A lot of things came together on the day after my bad day, which made it look like some kind of superhuman effort, but I will say that if you watch the rest of the race from the beginning to the end, you'll see that I was clearly the strongest guy there from the beginning.

LINDY KERIN: But Dick Pound, the former vice president of the International Olympic Committee and now Chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, is sick of the excuses.

He says the Landis incident has caused enormous damage to the credibility of cycling and has put the future of the sport in doubt.

DICK POUND: The sport has a real problem. I mean the basic facts are the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth place finishers in the Tour de France of 2005 were busted in the Spanish investigation, and now the winner of the 2006 Tour de France has been tested positive for testosterone. So it's an indication that there's a very, very serious problem in cycling.

LINDY KERIN: Dick Pound says the International Cycling Union need to improve testing and clean up the sport or risk it being dropped from the Olympics.

DICK POUND: It's a traditional and an exciting sport. It's one which I think everybody would hate to lose. So we're hoping that finally the cycling authorities will do what they have to do to wrest back control of the sport and to get the doping out of it.

What I'm hoping is that we don't throw out the baby with the bath, that cycling will realise that it has a problem, that it has lost a great deal of credibility, and that it absolutely must do something different from what it's done in the past.

LINDY KERIN: Cycling Australia's Graham Fredericks has rejected the suggestion the sport should be removed from the Olympics. He says cycling is doing all it can to stamp out doping.

GRAHAM FREDERICKS: Dick Pound has a job to do as head of WADA and I understand where his comments are coming from, but if I'm to be critical of all of his comments, I believe he's failed to recognise what our international body has been doing in this area.

I believe there is a lot more work to be done. And look, if those efforts are either not being made, or there is some sense of lack of commitment, or if there doesn't seem to be a turning around, then probably the IOC may have the issue to at least raise that point.

But I go back to the issue that cycling has probably stood up and really gone down the path of investing in trying to eradicate doping from its ranks and I would probably challenge a number of other sports around the world to really be able to stand up and say that they've made that same effort.