International Capsules: Report: Landis has filed a whistle-blower suit

AUSTIN (AP) — Former Lance Armstrong teammate Floyd Landis, who has accused the seven-time Tour de France winner of doping while riding for the U.S. Postal Service team, has filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Landis won the Tour de France in 2006 but had the title stripped because of a positive drug test. This spring, he ended years of denials by admitting he took performance-enhancing drugs. He also accused Armstrong and other cyclists of doping.

Citing anonymous sources, the Journal reported in a story posted on its website Friday that Landis has filed a lawsuit under the federal False Claims Act. The law allows Americans to sue on behalf of the government alleging the government has been defrauded.

The Journal says the lawsuit is sealed, so it’s not known exactly what it claims. However, Armstrong won six of his seven Tour victories with the Postal Service team.

The newspaper said the Justice Department is weighing whether to intervene in the suit. As a whistle-blower, Landis could collect 30 percent of any money the government recovers.

Armstrong vehemently denies he used performance-enhancing drugs.

“This news that Floyd Landis is in this for the money reconfirms everything we all knew about Landis,” Armstrong spokesman Mark Fabiani said Friday night in a statement. “By his own admission, he is a serial liar, an epic cheater, and a swindler who raised and took almost a million dollars from his loyal fans based on his lies. What remains a complete mystery is why the government would devote a penny of the taxpayer’s money to help Floyd Landis further his vile, cheating ambitions. And all aimed directly at Lance Armstrong, a man who earned every victory and passed every test while working for cancer survivors all over the world.”

Messages left with Landis’ attorney and the Justice Department were not immediately returned Friday night.

Armstrong also is under scrutiny in a separate federal investigation into cheating in professional cycling. His attorneys met this week with federal prosecutors in Los Angeles.

Officials with the Justice Department’s commercial litigation branch and a Postal inspector have also requested documents from a 2005 arbitration case in which a Dallas promotions company alleged Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs and refused to pay him, the Journal reported. The arbitration panel ruled in Armstrong’s favor in that case.

The Postal Service paid $30.6 million to the team’s management company to sponsor the team from 2001 through 2004, according to a sponsorship agreement reviewed by the Journal.

The contract said “negative publicity” due to “alleged possession, use or sale of banned substances” by riders or team personnel would constitute an “event of default,” as would a failure to take “action” in the event a rider violates a morals or drug clause.

Italy’s Petacchi wins Vuelta stage; Gilbert leads

ORIHUELA, Spain — Alessandro Petacchi of Italy won the seventh stage of the Spanish Vuelta on Friday, while Philippe Gilbert of Belgium maintained the overall lead for the fifth straight day.

British rider Mark Cavendish was second and Juan Jose Haedo of Argentina was third in the same time. Cavendish and the rest of Team Sky were mourning the death of masseur Txema Gonzalez, who died Friday from a bacterial infection contracted during the race. He was 43.

Petacchi, who rides for the Italian Lampre-Farnese team, easily won the sprint finish of the 116-mile ride from Murcia to Orihuela in 4 hours, 36 minutes, 12 seconds.

The 36-year-old Petacchi won his 20th Vuelta stage, his first coming in the Spanish classic in 1996. He won it in 2000.

Petacchi has been linked to blood doping in Italy. Although he did not test positive, the investigation involves wire taps and testimony.

Petacchi could receive a life ban if found guilty because it would be his second doping offense. He previously served a nine-month ban for excessive use of an asthma drug.

“I’m immensely happy because I’ve spent more time between the Tour de France and the Vuelta with my lawyers than my family, who I dedicate this victory to,” Petacchi told Europa Press.

Gilbert finished 13th in the same time to keep the leader’s red jersey and a 10-second advantage over Spanish duo Joaquin Rodriguez and Igor Anton. The Pharma-Lotto cyclist’s time through seven legs is 27:12:38.

Frank Schleck of Luxembourg stayed 50 seconds behind while defending champion Denis Menchov trailed Gilbert by 1:11.

The mountainous eighth stage Saturday is a 118-mile ride between Villena and Xorret de Cati.

Sky pulls out of Vuelta after masseur's death

Drug Testing

WADA reports breakthrough in gene doping tests

LONDON — Two groups of scientists have developed tests for gene doping in what the World Anti-Doping Agency hailed Friday as a major breakthrough in fighting the next frontier in cheating in sports.

Scientists in Germany said they have come up with a blood test that can provide “conclusive proof” of gene doping, even going back as far as 56 days from when the doping took place.

And a U.S.-French research team has devised its own method for detecting genetic doping in muscles.

The discoveries raise the possibility that a valid gene-doping test can be implemented by the 2012 London Olympics.

“This is a really significant and major breakthrough,” WADA director general David Howman told The Associated on Friday in a telephone interview. “This is a project we’ve been engaged in since 2002. Now we’ve reached the situation where we’re pretty certain that it can be detected.”

Gene doping is the practice of using genetic engineering to artificially enhance athletic performance. It is a spinoff of gene therapy, which alters a person’s DNA to fight disease. The method is banned by WADA and the International Olympic Committee.

WADA funded $2 million in research projects to devise reliable tests, which have taken about four years to develop. Researchers said the tests can detect gene doping directly through blood samples.

“It’s not through markers, it’s through actual detection,” Howman said. “There’s a significant difference there. Using the marker method is more a probability approach, whereas the method these researchers have come up with is stone cold dead, 100 percent.”

Howman said the tests must still go through a scientific validation process but should be implemented “within two years.”

Asked whether they would be ready in time for the London Olympics, he said, “It’s certainly possible.”

In any case, samples will be stored so they can retested later, Howman said.

While experts say they don’t believe gene doping is being abused yet by athletes, they suspect it’s only a matter of time.

Howman said WADA has information that some hospitals around the world are offering genetic transfers to patients.

“I think we’ve had sufficient anecdotal information to say it’s happening, but whether it’s happening across the world of sport is another issue,” he said.

In Germany, scientists at Tuebingen and Mainz universities said they found a “relatively low-cost method” for detecting gene doping through conventional blood samples. They said it had previously been thought that gene doping could only be detected through costly indirect molecular tests.

The findings were published in the online edition of the scientific journal “Gene Therapy” on Thursday.

The study said the test provides clear “yes or no answers” on whether DNA in blood samples has been transferred into the body to create performance-enhancing substances such as the endurance-boosting hormone EPO.

“The body of a gene-doped athlete produces the performance-enhancing hormones itself without having to introduce any foreign substances to the body,” Prof. Perikles Simon of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz said. “Over time, the body becomes its own doping supplier.”

Foreign genetic material was inserted into the muscles of laboratory mice, triggering excess production of a hormone that creates new blood vessels. Two months later, researchers could still differentiate between the mice that underwent gene doping and those that didn’t.

The detection method was then backed up in tests on 327 blood samples taken from professional and recreational athletes, the researchers said.

“At the very least, the risk of being discovered months after the gene transfer has taken place should deter even the most daring dopers,” Simon said.

Meanwhile, a separate study by scientists from the University of Florida and Nantes University in France was reported in “Molecular Therapy,” the official journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy.

The test also detects gene doping through blood. The researchers showed that monkeys genetically doped with EPO have an altered form of the substance in their blood. The EPO gene was injected into the monkeys’ muscle, believed to be the most likely target for gene dopers.

The research found that the EPO protein produced in the muscle could be easily differentiated, “providing hope that gene doping may not be as difficult to detect as thought, at least when muscle is used as the target tissue,” the study found.

-- Stephen Wilson

Track & Field

Commentary: David Rudisha, star of 2012 Olympics?

PARIS — The track at the Beijing Olympics belonged to Usain Bolt. At the London Games in 2012, he may have to share the glory with David Rudisha.

Bolt, the showman, will always be the bigger star. His events, the 100 and 200, have more glamour, more pulling power than Rudisha’s discipline, the 800.

And Bolt, of course, is already a multiple Olympic champion. But Rudisha is the Next Big Thing.

The 21-year-old Kenyan proved that not once but twice on consecutive Sundays this August by rewriting the 800-meter world record that had gathered dust since 1997.

Like Bolt, Rudisha is forcing us to reconsider where the boundaries of human possibility lie in his discipline. It is surely only a matter of time until he becomes the first human to complete two circuits of the track in under 1 minute and 41 seconds. He’s only a whisker away now: the ink drying on his shiny new record reads 1:41.01.

The biggest parallel with Bolt is in style. Both men are simply thrilling to watch because of the muscular power when they run, like the smooth pumping of steel pistons in an ocean liner’s boiler room. A consequence of their long, loping and controlled strides is that their rivals look jagged and frenetic in comparison, as if forced to try too hard to keep up.

Perching uncomfortably on the crossroads between sprints and middle distance makes the 800 a monstrously difficult race. Its unique combination of distance and speed taxes both the aerobic and anaerobic systems in the body — essentially its methods for creating energy — to the absolute limit. Runners must be both quick and enduring, powerful but not too heavy — physical qualities that do not always come together and which require very different types of training to hone.

Yet Rudisha, like Bolt in his events, makes it look so laughably easy. The way his manager tells it, he always has.

James Templeton was first alerted to Rudisha by another Kenyan runner, Japheth Kimutai, in an April 2005 phone call.

“I’ll never forget the conversation,” he says. “He said, ‘Oh, JT, oh, you are going to be a happy man.’ ... I said, ‘What’s up?’ He said, ‘We’ve found the guy we’ve been looking for.”’

“That day he ran his first 800 and he ran 1:49 on a sluggish dirt track with his long stride. Japheth was well aware then that this kid had greatness in him.”

To truly be considered great, Rudisha now needs gold medals — from the Olympics and world championships — around his neck. As much as these things can be planned, it was smart of Rudisha to brush Wilson Kipketer’s world record out of the way this year so he can focus next year solely on the worlds and, in 2012, the Olympics.

Motivation won’t be a problem. Rudisha flopped at the 2009 worlds, a semifinal victim of inexperience and cold, rainy weather. Before that, a pulled calf muscle kept him from the 2008 Beijing Games.

“It took him a long time to get over that,” Templeton says. But, looking ahead to the coming two years, the manager adds: “In some ways, that disappointment could have worked out for the best.”

At 6-foot-2, Rudisha is taller than previous record holders Kipketer and Sebastian Coe. And his apparently level head should help him cope with the heightened expectations that his world record will generate.

Templeton gives credit to Rudisha’s coach, Colm O’Connell, for his graceful running style.

“He’s always saying, ‘I don’t want to see you thrashing about. You must be fast but controlled,”’ he says.

Rudisha turned a corner a year ago in Rieti, Italy, when he ran 1:42.01 in strong gusts, breaking Sammy Koskei’s 25-year-old African record. Afterward, sitting in doping control while flags crackled in the wind outside, Rudisha said to his manager: “I know now I can run 1:40.”

The key to unlocking that uncharted territory could lie on the final bend and finishing straight, what Templeton calls “the hanging-on part” of an 800, when the body is heading for exhaustion. On his record-setting runs, Rudisha blazed those 200 meters in 26.55 and 26.43 seconds but believes he can shave those times down, says Templeton.

On lap 1, “he’s just sort of doing a strong lope. The hard work is on the second lap, where you are digging in,” he says.

“Digging in” doesn’t really do justice to the elegance of Rudisha running at full tilt, his long stride eating up the track. For such a thing of beauty, London 2012 could prove the perfect stage.

John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester@ap.org.

Justin Gatlin wins 100 meters in 10.15 in Padua

PADUA, Italy — Justin Gatlin clocked 10.15 seconds to win the 100 meters at a meet near Venice on Friday in the last race on his return from a four-year doping ban before he goes back to the United States to prepare for the indoor season.

The time was slightly off the 10.09 he recorded in Rovereto on Tuesday, when he finished behind Jamaican winner Johan Blake. This time, the 2004 Olympic champion soundly beat runner-up Michael Frater of Jamaica, who crossed in 10.27.

Gatlin also posted victories at three minor meets in Estonia and Finland since being cleared to compete again.

British hurdler gets 2-year ban for doping

LONDON — British hurdler Callum Priestley has been handed a two-year ban for failing an out-of-competition drugs test.

UK Athletics says Priestley tested positive for prohibited substance Clenbuterol in South Africa in February. His suspension will run until February 2012.

UK Anti-Doping chief executive Andy Parkinson says Priestley’s ban “should act as a warning to all athletes that there is no hiding place from their responsibilities.”

Priestley, who won the 60-meter hurdles at the British world indoor trials in February, is ineligible for selection for the London Games in 2012 or any future Olympics.

Slovak shot putter Haborak banned for life