This just in … According to the Associated Press, Floyd Landis has lost his United States Anti-Doping Agency arbitation case  challenging his positive doping tests at the 2006 Tour de France. Hence, Landis must surrender his 2006 TdF title and is banned for two years, retroactive to Jan. 30, 2007.

It wasn’t a decisive defeat. The three-man panel voted 2-1  in favor of upholding the positive doping tests, and the panel found serious issues with the French lab in conducting the tests on Landis’ A-sample, which showed a high level of   testosterone to epitestosterone — 11-1.  That positive led to a more advanced carbon-isotope test on Landis’ B-sample, which found evidence that he had  snythetic testosterone in his system in his stunning and decisive victory in Stage 17 of the 2006 TdF.

Lead arbitrator Patrice Brunet and Richard McLaren wrote the majority opinion. According to the AP,  the majority ruled that despite the lab’s errors in conducting the A-sample tests, arbitration rules allow that the B-sample can stand on its own and since that sample found the synthetic testosterone, it was evidence that Landis had doped.

Landis had argued that the errors in the A-sample should mean that the tests on the A-sample should be thrown out, and hence the B-sample as well. In the dissent,  arbitrator Christopher Campbell reasoned that  the French lab couldn’t be trusted to perform the more complicated carbon-isotope test on the B-sample after botching the simple tests on the A-sample so badly.

Landis still has one more avenue to potentially clear his name. An appeal to the Court of Arbitration for sports.