Landis

MADRID, Spain — His voice steady and his tone defiant, Floyd Landis vowed he would clear his name of allegations he cheated to win the Tour de France.

In his first public appearance since a testosterone imbalance showed up in a urine test and cast his title into doubt, the American cyclist said his body's natural metabolism — not doping of any kind — caused the result, and that he would soon have the test results to prove it.

"We will explain to the world why this is not a doping case but a natural occurrence," Landis said Friday from the Spanish capital.

Wearing a baseball cap turned backward and a white shirt with the name of his Phonak team, Landis lashed out at the media for characterizing his plight as a drug scandal and said he wanted to "make absolutely clear that I am not in any doping process."

Later Friday, Landis' personal physician sought to clarify the nature of the test result and the possible benefits of the hormone in question.

"He does not have a high level of testosterone. That's not been documented. He has a high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in his urine," Dr. Brent Kay said on CNN's "Larry King Live."

Kay said the test could indicate elevated testosterone or low epitestosterone, or some other factor — including handling or specimen contamination.

The aggressive tack Landis and his supporters took Friday was a departure from his Thursday teleconference, when he said he expected to clear his name but not his reputation, and had no idea what might have caused the test result after the Tour's 17th stage.

Landis is still awaiting results from a backup sample, which would clear him immediately. But his lawyer, Luis Sanz, said he fully expected the backup test to come back with the same result, because the testosterone imbalance was produced naturally by Landis' body.