Floyd Landis, the American cyclist who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title after failing a drugs test, has been convicted by a French court of hacking into the computer records of the laboratory that tested the sample in question.
The 36-year-old, tried in his absence, was handed a 12-month suspended sentence. The state prosecutor had requested a penalty of 18 months, reports the Washington Post.
Prosecutors had maintained that Landis, along with his coach Arnie Baker, had illegally accessed the records of the WADA accredited laboratory in Chatenay-Malabry, operated by France's anti-doping agency, the AFLD, in an attempt to gather evidence to try and clear his name.
The laboratory had discovered that the rider, then with the Phonak team, had unusually high levels of testosterone in a sample taken after he had ridden his way right back into contention on GC with a storming ride to Morzine in the Alps, putting more than 7 minutes into maillot jaune Oscar Pereiro, who would eventually be awarded the overall victory.
Landis finally confessed to his drug-taking last year, and also levelled accusations of systematic doping at members of his former US Postal Service team, including seven times Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong. An investigation into those allegations by Landis and others is continuing in the US.
So using a multi tonne vehicle as a weapon which will clearly seriously injure/kill leads to this pitifull sentence....
Just thinking - Wick and Penzance must have a potentially problematic number of one way hires...
Came to this late; nearly posted the same!
Is there any danger of them actually making a profit any time soon?
Ah but they're only best practice in NL! The UK is a completely different country. We have different laws, hills, narrow streets, weather, people...
Do what the French do....
"A Norfolk mum on a night out caused £53,000 of damage to a 16th-century pub after crashing her BMW into it as she tried to make last orders. "...
Struggling for news content? Only taken two weeks to report on these overgrown hedges, I hope shes still not stuck on the pavement waiting for them...
Accident prevention - TBF that's mostly a task beyond the police (though emergency forces are involved with this). They generally react when...
Possibly some training instead though.