Floyd Landis: submit YOUR questions for an exclusive Sporting Intelligence interview

The 2006 Tour de France winner became a subscriber to this site after starting to read the "Skyfall" series about British cycling's rise, about which he has profound doubts

The phenomenal response to the recent “Skyfall” series about advancements in British cycling since the millennium - and the questions over how Team Sky’s glories and GB track dominance happened - have culminated in an interview opportunity with Floyd Landis where you, the Sporting Intelligence readers, will be posing the questions.

Landis, of course, won the 2006 Tour de France (below) before being stripped of that title for failing a drug test. For years, he continued to claim to be clean, before telling the truth in a series of events that made him the key figure who exposed compatriot and former team-mate Lance Armstrong as someone who doped to win a record seven Tours de France.

Landis celebrates winning the 2006 Tour de France

You’ll almost certainly know Landis’s background already, but for readers who aren’t cycling aficionados or are perhaps too young to remember what happened in the TdF in 2006, I can recommend these two background reads, just for starters, in The Atlantic from 2018, and via Sports Illustrated in 2016.

This short email / post today is an invitation for paying subscribers to submit your questions for Landis in the comments section below, by the end of this coming weekend (deadline midnight on Sunday 11 August), ahead of me asking Landis your questions - and speaking to him about much more - next week.

I’m sure there will be more questions that I will have time to ask, but I’ll get through as many as possible. But first a bit of background.

The first part of “Skyfall” was published last month and you can read it here: 'Living a lie' - exposing the dark underbelly of British cycling's golden age. 

Part two is here: Injections at Windermere, drugs in the fridge, and lies about coming clean. 

Part three is here: Drugs at the TdF, backstabbing, lies, cover-ups, omertà. 

Part four told the story of British Cycling's nandrolone mystery before London 2012 Olympics, which only became public when I reported it a decade later.

Part five is here: Naming names, Jiffy-gate revelations and the Sutton tapes.

After part one was published, my mind was slightly blown when I received the following message on WhatsApp.

Landis had asked a mutual acquaintance for my phone number because he had subscribed to this site to read this series. I didn’t know Floyd, and had never never met him or spoken to him, but I called him because I was fascinated to hear his perspective.

We talked for 20 minutes and he echoed a famous line from Jacques Anquetil, the first man to win the Tour de France five times: “You don’t win the Tour de France on bread and water.”

Lots of you told me you wanted to hear more from him. So many people contacted me, via the comments and tweets and messages and emails, that it was a no-brainer to ask Floyd if he was up for this. We’ve spoken a few times since and he has a lot to say.

About how good it was, ultimately, to come clean.

About how he fervently believes that coming clean would be immensely powerful, and helpful, for riders who are still lying about their own pasts.

About Cannabidiol, aka CBD, a subject area we both know well, albeit from different angles.

And much more.

So please submit your questions in the comments below.

Thanks again for your support, without which this Substack could not continue.

And hopefully, following other feedback and new information as a result of the “Skyfall” series, there will be more, and significant, developments in that story in the months and years ahead.