And the long-range implications of this scandal threatens not only this Tour de France - as well as every past Tour - but the very framework of competition. Who can you trust? Apparently no one. Certainly not in cycling.

If Landis took performance-enhancing drugs - and let's be clear here, he vehemently claims he did not - could all those rumors about seven-time champion Lance Armstrong and steroids be true?

Remember, before this 103rd Tour de France even started, nine riders were either disqualified or withdrew in disgrace under the cloud of steroid use. Before that, there were five major doping controversies involving the tour in the past 25 years.

Cycling is not swimming alone in this cesspool. Drugs have tainted the results in every major sport from the Olympics to football and baseball. In America, every look at Barry Bonds and his home run records raises eyebrows. Many consider the home run figures produced in the game over the past 16 years to be a farce. But Floyd Landis? He represented one of those once-in-a-lifetime Cinderella tales.

Raised in Pennsylvania Dutch country by religiously devout Mennonite parents, Landis turned his work ethic and passion for bicycling into an obsession while riding in the shadow of the great Armstrong. Nothing could stop Landis, not even a necrotic hip that needs replacing or one of the greatest collapses in Tour de France history. He followed that failure last Wednesday - when he dropped from first to 11th during a disastrous mountain leg - with a phenomenal comeback the following day.

Coincidentally, it was a drug test taken the night after that great ride that showed the spike in Landis's testosterone level when it was compared to his epitestosterone score. The doping agency has stopped just short of calling it a failed test. Landis failure was in the Sample A finding of a two-step test. The Sample B shoe hasn't fallen yet.

Landis hasn't been stripped of anything, yet. But he has been crucified. Even if he is exonerated or comes up with a viable explanation, Landis knows his triumph will never one one he can truly enjoy. "I don't think it's ever gonna go away," he said in a Thursday evening conference call from a secret location in Europe. "This appears to be a bigger story than winning the Tour. I think there is a good possibility that I can clear my name. That's what I want to do."

Within hours of his Phonak team announcing the high testosterone score in the Sample A test, Landis had assembled a team of experts to press his defense and admitted the Sample A score "needed to be explained."

The rider immediately came up with three explanations - medicine he takes for a thyroid condition, the cortisone he takes for his arthritic and deteriorating hip or the Jack Daniels whiskey he shared with his teammates to ease the pain of Wednesday's collapse on the eve of Thursday's great comeback.

Landis swears he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs, but even if he is able to prove that, will the evidence remove the taint. "No matter what happens next, I know it is going to be a long road," said Landis. "My immediate reaction was from a very, very high to a very low. There was no way for me to be able to tell myself that this wasn't going to be a disaster, whether I come out of this proving that I am innocent." An incredible story has become, well, just that.

Clearly, Landis did overcome a lot. Start with the hip that was broken in 2003. It has been steadily degenerating since the crash despite four surgeries. As it stands now, the hip is suffering from avascular necrosis, which means the bone is dying for lack of blood supply. It pains Landis to walk. He is likely facing hip replacement surgery. How can you ride, much less win, with such a hip doubters now ask.

And there is the question of the remarkable comeback. Too good to be possible, much less true?

Three days before the conclusion of the tour, Landis suffered one of the greatest collapses in the storied history of the Tour - plunging from first to 11th place while losing more than eight minutes on the grueling 113-mile uphill leg into La Toussuire. Landis was done, fini!

Then he hatched a plan for the following day. On the 125-mile leg to Morzine-Avoriaz, which was much like the leg of his collapse, Landis reasoned he would break away from the pack on the first climb and ride off into the sunset of the 17th and penultimate major scoring stage.

Advisors and friends advised Landis not to try it. And when he told his Phonak teammates the following morning of his plan for redemption, the gamble was uniformly dismissed as foolhardy ... if not suicidal. But the 30-year-old rider pulled it off in what was regarded as the single greatest stage ride in Tour de France history. Pedaling alone for most of the leg, Landis made up all but 30 seconds of the time he lost the previous day.

"How crazy was that," wondered Armstrong. "Incredibly, unbelievably strong," is how Eddie Merckx, six-time Tour winner, said of Landis' wild ride.

Still, Thursday's epic ride left Landis 30 seconds shy of the lead - ground he successfully made up during Saturday's 34 and a half mile time trial, which allowed Landis to don the famed yellow jersey during the ceremonial final stage into Paris. On the same morning back in Lancaster, Pa., Arlene and Paul Landis, Floyd's parents, rode their bikes to church as they had done for decades as their son became an overnight national hero.

Last Monday morning, on the front page of newspapers across the land, Floyd Landis achieved levels of recognition not even attained by Armstrong, who simply ground down the competition with skill and tenacity over seven straight championships. Four days later, Landis is again making front pages.