Innocent man or drug cheat?

When Floyd Landis won the Tour de France in Paris last July, a quarter of a million people lined the Champs-Elysees to watch him. Last week, his presence in Borrego Springs, a sparsely populated community in the Southern California desert, caused barely a flicker.

Not that Landis is complaining. "I like it here," he said. "Nobody knows about what I'm supposed to have done. I'm anonymous and, right now, that's as good as it gets."

It was the first time the American had returned to this remote corner of the United States since his victory in the Tour de France collapsed around him when, two days after being hailed as the champion, he tested positive for illegal levels of testosterone.

Landis was branded a drugs cheat, sacked by his Phonak team and had his winner's cheque for around £300,000 withheld. Nearly three weeks later, on August 15, his father-in-law and close friend, David Witt, shot himself dead in a San Diego car park.

Family and friends insist the furore over the Landis doping case played no part in Witt's suicide. He was known to have been worried about his restaurant business and the debts he had incurred in trying to take it upmarket. But Landis cannot rid himself of guilt and the belief that he may have played a part, however small, in his father-inlaw's death.

"I don't know why he did it," he said. "But I'd be deluding myself if I thought the dope case did not play a big part in his stress. He was a good friend long before he became my father-in-law.We used to cycle together, we even came out here, to Borrego Springs, to train.

"He was in the Champs-Elysees the day I won the Tour and he was at the victory party.

"I didn't talk to him the week before he died. I feel really bad about that but I was completely consumed by the accusations levelled against me. Maybe, if I had, he would have said something about how he felt. Now it"s too late and we'll never know why.

"It's been the toughest few months of my life. One moment I've realised a lifelong dream in Paris, the next I've become one of the biggest doping stories of all time. But if it"s been hard for me, it's been a great deal harder for my family."

Three days after Witt's death, random dope testers knocked on the door of the Landis family home in California.

"My wife, Amber, answered the door and almost had a total breakdown,"

Landis said. "She started to scream and cry, telling them that they had ruined her life.

"I apologised to the man because he was only carrying out his job. He told me that he'd been asked to do a random drug test on me the day after David died and his death became national news. The man told me he refused to visit me then but had to come two days later. I asked him to let my family have some dignity. We still had to go through with the funeral."

On the face of it, the Landis case appears straightforward. People were already questioning how he had transformed himself from a beaten man after the Tour's 16th stage into one capable of an almost superhuman achievement in winning the 17th.

Eight members of the now disbanded Phonak team had previously been banned for doping offences and Landis added to that shameful tally when his ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was recorded at 11:1, way above the highest permitted ratio of 4:1.

Landis, predictably, denies his guilt, although he understands why the global public remains sceptical.

"I don't fault people for believing I must be guilty," he said. "If I were looking in from the outside, I'd be feeling exactly the same way. But I'd like to be given a fair trial and the evidence to be considered with an open mind."

His defence rests on his claim that three out of four testosterone tests used on his sample were negative and that the one positive test could have resulted from laboratory error.

The Landis defence team also say that the test considered by the World Anti-Doping Agency to be the best indicator of long-term testosterone use was negative. The testers at France's national anti-doping laboratory have already owned up to an error in recording the identification number of Landis's B sample, writing the figure 995-474 as 994-474.

Landis did not help his cause in the days following news of his positive drug test by citing a whole host of excuses, from the whiskey he said he had consumed the night of the 16th stage and the cortisone injections he was allowed for a hip injury (the joint was replaced in September) to his thyroid medication and even naturallyproduced testosterone.

Last week he said: "It was a mistake to come out with those things but I"m not an expert and I'm very unhappy that I've had to become one."

But what about the history of drug use within the Phonak team? Landis said: "I hardly knew most of those guys. I don't know whether they did it or not. But I do know that people have assumed doping was a team policy because of the numbers involved. I'd only been there two years but if it was a team policy, and as eight guys lost their jobs, their salaries and their reputations, don't you think someone would have been embittered enough to take the team down with them?"

The aspect about the positive test that rankles most with Landis is not a scientific one. It would, he says, have been absurd to have taken a large dose of testosterone in order to win the 17th stage because stage winners on the Tour are always tested.

"The chances of me getting away with it would be zero," he added. "Even if I had taken that course,would I then be so useless in the Press conference and so devoid of explanation? Wouldn't I have my defence all worked out? This must make me the dumbest person on the whole planet. The accusation, in reality, is that I"m an idiot."

Landis says his defence has already cost him $150,000. His hearing, due to be heard in January in Malibu, has been put back by at least a month. Landis is not optimistic about the eventual outcome.

"The sport doesn't want me to win and it's going to be very difficult to do so," he said. "Even if I do, people will believe I've got off on a technicality. I want people to understand the true, scientific reasons behind my innocence, not a technicality.

"If I lost, I'm not sure I could carry on. I wasn't the highest-paid cyclist and it's looking like this might cost me $500,000. I think the authorities know I'll run out of money. They've said they'll appeal if they lose the hearing and that might take another year.

"If I'm banned for four years and stripped of my title and prize-money, I'll never race again. My desire for it would have been obliterated."

Whatever the results of the American's case, he admits his sport is in deep trouble.

"How can cycling win?" he said. "Either the winner of its greatest race is a cheat or the credibility of the system is in tatters if I'm found innocent. Neither is a great result."

At that point, Landis bursts out laughing. "I may never get my prize money and I may lose my title as Tour de France champion, but there's one thing they'll never get from me," he said.

"I have the yellow jersey at home and that's where it's going to stay for the rest of my life."