Floyd Landis Is Starting a Pro Cycling Team—With the Money He Got From Lance Armstrong
It's not easy to keep a pro cycling team afloat these days. 2018 saw two longtime US teams, Jelly Belly-Maxxis and UnitedHealthcare, fold. But a new North American team has been formed, and you'll never guess who's starting it.
Floyd Landis.
And he's using the money he got from Lance Armstrong to do it.
The lawsuit between Landis and Armstrong dragged on for nearly 10 years. In 2010, Landis, a former winner of the Tour de France-his title was stripped from him after he tested positive for banned substances only days after he won in 2006-wrote an email to USA Cycling notifying them of the systemized doping on the U.S. Postal Service team, implicating himself, Armstrong, other teammates, and team manager Johann Bruyneel.
Then, in the same year (though it wasn’t public knowledge until 2013), he sued Armstrong for defrauding the U.S. government when he and Armstrong were on Postal Service. The federal government jumped in as a co-plaintiff. But it wasn’t until April of this year that the case settled. Landis walked off with $1.1 million-his cut of the $5 million in total that Armstrong paid to his former teammate and the government.
Now, according to a Wall Street Journal article published Thursday morning, Landis is taking that money and starting his own pro cycling team.
Landis, 43, told Wall Street Journal that his motivations were to show that it was never about the money for him-that he wanted to use it to give back to cycling. “Maybe it sounds odd, but it’s some kind of closure for me,” he told Wall Street Journal.
The team will be based in Canada and called the Floyd’s of Leadville Pro Cycling Team after the successful mail-order business Landis started in 2016 that sells cannabidiol (CBD) oil, a derivative of hemp that is claimed to have anti-inflammatory and pain relieving benefits.
The team roster has yet to be announced, but Gord Fraser, a former teammate of Landis’s and sporting director of the now-defunct Silber Pro Cycling team, will manage the team. Both he and Landis hope to recruit a younger squad, and part of the team is likely to come from the former Silber roster.
The Wall Street Journal said that the team expects to start racing in 2019.
Bicycling.com will have more information on this story, including quotes from Landis, at on Thursday morning.
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