Traces of synthetic testosterone were subsequently found in samples that Landis gave to the tour’s doping control and he was stripped of his title and handed a two-year ban.

Almost from that moment Landis has been fighting to get his good name restored without much success. He has maintained his innocence from the first moment and has cited any number of inconsistencies, malpractices and underhanded behavior from the world’s doping organizations during the course of his defense.

It is hard to argue that Landis has been badly treated. The results of his samples were leaked to French newspaper L’Equipe that effectively made Landis guilty with no hope of proving his innocence, he was also, sensationally offered a deal that would see his own ban significantly reduced if he handed over information on drug-taking by Lance Armstrong (who has, I should add, never failed a drugs test in his life).

Maybe in a different era Landis would have been cleared, but by now everyone is far too suspicious. The man was, essentially, broken on the Tour and came back to win, it was an amazing turnaround but just a little bit too far to be entirely credible. It is difficult to see how he managed it without some sort of artificial help, but, at the same time, the organizations who have overseen his ban have acted disgracefully.

It is another problem that the sport has to sort out. The people who are conducting these tests have to adopt a series of protocols that will mean they are above suspicion. They have to have independent adjudicators, they have to have every method possible of showing that they have done everything correctly otherwise these sorts of protests will always happen. Sportsmen and women will always protest their innocence, and it merely drags the sport through the mire even more every time one of these things happens.

I suspect that the drugs testing labs are just so keen to catch people that they perceive to be cheats that they are willing to go too far. Armstrong suffered any number of cases of bad practice; the suspicion was certain authorities were just desperate to prove that he cheated. At any rate, it is damaging what is a remarkable event. In the absence of the greats of recent years, some through retirement, some through drugs suspension, this year’s tour is wide open. For those of you into sports betting, according to online bookies Blue Square, Australian Cadel Evans is a narrow favorite. For me, it doesn’t matter who wins the Tour, or how quickly they do it, so long as it’s clean and the sport can regain some of it’s battered reputation.