He is $1.1 million richer, with a new business and a young daughter. But can Floyd Landis finally find peace? (2024)

A few months ago, I visited Floyd Landis in Leadville, Colorado, where he has lived for the last several years. Leadville sits between theMosquito Rangeto the east and theSawatch Range to the west. It is the highest incorporated city in the United States with an elevation of 10,152 feet, about 4,000 feet higher than Alpe d’Huez, the iconic cycling climb where Landis held the yellow jersey after Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France, an event he won only to have his title stripped shortly afterward because of a positive drug test.

Wearing a shirt advertising Floyd’s of Leadville, a retail cannabis shop, Landis met me for breakfast at a restaurant, followed by an afternoon meeting over beers at a local bar. We later had dinner at Treeline Kitchen, a popular restaurant that was packed with people on the main street in Leadville’s small downtown. We were joined there by three of Landis’ friends, and over IPAs and chicken burgers they jumped from topic to topic, talking cycling and politics and “The Big Lebowski” and the cannabis business.

Landis appears in good shape; he still cycles for an hour or two a couple days a week. He has ridden the Leadville 100 but doesn’t every year. He laughs a lot during the conversation and frequently brings up his partner, Alexandra, and their three-year-old daughter, Margaret. He seems happy, and that is no small development in Landis’ life. I have interviewed him before – we once even rode together (more on that later) – and it sometimes seemed as if misery was slowly consuming him, like a peloton gradually reeling in a spent rider.

Landis needed his hip replaced after having his Tour de France title stripped, among other physical ailments. Worse than that, his father-in-law committed suicide in 2006. Landis started drinking more heavily (mostly whiskey) and also became dependent on Vicodin and opioids. In 2009, he got divorced. After years denying he doped while riding — even writing a book about it — he came clean and then blew the whistle in 2010 on Lance Armstrong and the rest of the U.S. Postal Service cycling team. Armstrong fought back with his trademark vengeance.

“There were some years where I was just trying to get through life,’’ Landis says. “I didn’t really have anything going on. I don’t know. I felt shamed, embarrassed. I didn’t like being out in public.’’

But now?

“I’m good. I still have ups and downs but everybody has those, right? I think about (the doping scandal) a lot less now. It was all I thought about for years. The whole incident, cycling – now I’ll go weeks at a time without cycling crossing my mind. I think for me that’s better.”

His focus on his cannabis company helps. Among the products his store sells is a yellow jersey with the slogan, “Relax and Recover,’’ which is what Landis appears to be doing over dinner.

“At 42 years old, I like just quality time with the few close friends that I have. That makes me happy,’’ he says. “Half the time I might be bitching about cycling but when you have good food and nice people around with good conversation — it’s the best you can hope for.’’

Landis was at home in Leadville two weeks ago when he got the news: The U.S. Justice Department settled a civil fraud action filed against Armstrong, Landis’ former teammate on the U.S. Postal Service cycling team. Landis, who filed the original lawsuit in 2010, which the government then joined, is considered a whistleblower for revealing the doping that Armstrong and others did and received $1.1 million of that settlement and another $1.65 million to cover his legal fees.

“It’s been such a long time, I guess probably I just felt relief that it was resolved. I just wanted it to be over. I’m sure Lance did too,’’ Landis says. “To me, it’s closure more than anything, not money. I’m sure Lance is relieved, too. It went on for so long. Eight f*cking years.”

What will he do with the money? Pay some bills. Probably put the rest into his cannabis business.

The settlement marks the end of the long, contentious battle between Landis and Armstrong, which has been written about in books and chronicled in a documentary, but it seems like separate battles continue for each man. There is Armstrong, doing his podcast and interviews, seeking redemption or something like it. His life can feel like a crisis-management show running on a loop. Then there is Landis, fighting for nothing more than another day.

In the recent book “Ventoux,” Armstrong told author Jeremy Whittle that he goes to therapy about once a week. Landis once went to therapy as well. “I got there just because I was too f*cking weak to kill myself,” he says.

He adds: “I think cycling tends to attract people who are dealing with depression because in some sense it helps you manage. A bike ride is exhilarating. You get endorphins from these feelings and someone can get addicted to that feeling.

“In bike racing, you have a lot of down. Even if you’re one of the best bikers in the world, you lose a lot of races. So you have a lot of time when you just wrestle with yourself or whatever. When you’re already dealing with those extreme ups and downs and then something happens like what happened to me…”

I went on a ridewith Landis though Seattle in July 2007 for a story. It was roughly one year after his vacated Tour and Landis was in town to promote his ill-titled book, “Positively False.” Early in the ride, we started up the incline leading up to Magnolia Hill, and I turned my bike slightly, lost momentum and tipped over (I had just only recently gotten into cycling).

Landis rushed over and asked if anything was hurt. He pointed out that my water bottle had fallen off my bike and was rolling down the hill. He quickly rode down the hill, grabbed the bottle and rode it back up to me.

In one of our Leadville discussions, I ask Landis if he remembers that – he did – and I asked how Armstrong would have reacted. “He probably would have attacked (you on the climb),” Landis says with a laugh. Scott Thomson, one of Landis’ friends and business partners, adds: “(Armstrong) probably would have said, ‘Well that’s the end of that interview.’”

Despite being teammates, Landis and Armstrong never got along, even before the lawsuit.

“He’s just way too intense. Not a pleasant guy. He’s not happy,’’ Landis says. “I’ve never seen him really laugh or be happy. He’s always had to control the situation. It was always stressful around him. Even at dinner, you were always on edge. You had to pay attention to him. If he said something that probably didn’t sound like a joke to you but you were supposed to laugh, you better laugh or you’re doing all the worktomorrowand then you’re going to get fired. It was all about his success. There was nothing else on that team that mattered.”

Despite that, Landis was conflicted about exposing Armstrong and the others for doping.

“In the beginning, not just Lance, all the other guys, these were my colleagues, I spent 10 years racing with them, so if I turn them in with the story I’m going to hurt a bunch of people who I don’t think deserve it any more than I do,” he says.

In hindsight, he somewhat wishes he hadn’t blown the whistle, even considering the $1.1 million coming his way. “At this point, having seen the way it actually went, it probably wasn’t even the right thing to do, honestly. I should have just let it be. Because it didn’t solve anything. It just harmed a bunch of people and nothing changed.

“It didn’t really help me. It just added another four or five years of public abuse, and at the end of the day, here we are.”

Landis grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the son of Mennonite parents, and that is a long way from owning a blooming cannabis business in Colorado.

Landis is capitalizing on the novelty of an athlete infamous for doping now selling dope, but “it’s not really about getting high,’’ Landis says. “It’s about having the pain go away for a period of time so you can sleep and you wake up feeling much, much better.”

Despite its population of less than 3,000, there are at least three cannabis stores in Leadville, with Floyd’s of Leadville recently taking over a shop in the city this past month (Landis formerly just had his office there). Former top cyclist David Zabriskie is one of Landis’ business partners.

“I wasn’t really sure I wanted my name on it at all,’’ Landis says of the company. “For a long time, I wanted to start a marijuana business and just not tell anybody. I was going to just try to avoid that. I wasn’t looking for abuse, and I knew it was coming one way or the other. But it wasn’t as bad as in previous years because enough time had passed.

“I think most people, even if they don’t really accept it or understand what happened, they’re willing to give people a second chance if they paid dearly enough for what happened.’’

The company’s emphasis is on cannabidiol (CBD), which is believed to have several medicinal properties. The company sells CBD pills, gels and creams.

“We had a bunch of different ideas at the time but kind of settled on the hemp, CBD thing,” Landis said. “CBD has a lot of real pain reduction values. It is really good stuff. It calms you down. It has medical value for people with epileptic seizures and things like that, but for people in general, it helps with your sleep or other things.”

Landis began taking cannabis a few years ago and found that it helped him with his depression, anxiety, sleep and pain issues. He says he takes hemp CBD oil almost every morning.

“(The business) is good for me because it’s something I can focus on,” he says. “I think that was my problem for all those years. I didn’t have anything else to focus on, so I would just obsess about cycling because that’s all I thought about. Now, I have all these other problems that don’t have anything to do with cycling so I can forget about it.”

He doesn’t always forget, especially when in the afternoon the topic turns to whether cycling has changed.

“I cheated. I broke the rules and I shouldn’t have. I should have been big enough and strong enough to say, ‘f*ck it, I’m not doing this.’ I didn’t. And I paid for it. I paid very, very dearly for it,” he says. “And that’s all fine and good and you can hold me up and say, ‘Look at this guy and this is what happens if you don’t do it the right way.’ But that’s not what’s really going on. That would be fine. I could accept that. I understood the risks but I never envisioned what the magnitude of the story would be.

“I knew the risks, but at end of the day, if you’re going to use me as the example, you better f*cking fix something. Don’t just use me as an example and go on like status quo. But that’s what happened. And I’m sure Lance feels the same way.”

It can be hard to see what the future holds for Armstrong, what he will be and how the public will receive him in, say, five or ten years. It is much easier to predict Landis’ future. He will run Floyd’s of Leadville. He will remain in his small mountain town, having long meals with his buddies and marathon viewing sessions of “The Big Lebowski.” He will be with Alexandra and Margaret.

“I always heard people talk about their kids and it sounded kind of lame but then you have this little person and it’s great, it’s good,” he says. “I would spend all my time with her if I could. I think for me it’s good just because there was a time when I was focused on cycling and whatever else I was fighting.”

His world will shrink even more now that the lawsuit is over, as the attention fades.

At one point, I ask Landis if he would encourage Margaret to become a pro cyclist; might she one day ride in the women’s Tour de France.

“I don’t think so. She’s going to do whatever she wants to do but I wouldn’t encourage her,” he says. “I don’t think anybody should encourage their kids to go into sports. Professional sports are not healthy. Very few people come out of professional sports and have a normal life.”

(Top photo: Daniel Petty/The Denver Post via Getty Images)