A French judge has issued an arrest warrant against a disgraced winner of the Tour de France cycle race who stands accused of hacking into the country's anti-doping agency.
Floyd Landis was disqualified for failing a dope test after winning the world's most famous cycle race in 2006. He tested positive for banned testosterone, which medical professionals argue can enhance performance.
Judge Thomas Cassuto believes Landis wanted to prove wrong the laboratory which carried out his test, according to the head of the French anti-doping agency Pierre Boldry. Landis believes procedural mistakes occurred at the laboratory.
The agency launched legal action against a number of people after the agency identified the hack in September 2006. They were not publicly named. Landis is now required to stand before the French court.
"It seems that [Landis] made all he could to enter into our computer system to try to prove the laboratory was wrong," said Bordry, quoted by Reuters. "He showed many documents he got by hacking into numerous sporting instances. The judge traced a network of hackers back to the ringleader."
Landis denies any wrongdoing.
There have been few cases of sportspeople attempting to hack into doping authorities' computer systems. Hacking is more commonly motivated by financial or political gain, or is otherwise committed by junior hackers known as script kiddies.
Retailer TJX fell victim in 2006 to the theft by hackers of 45 million sets of customer credit card details in a case of attempted financial gain.
But the long-running saga of Gary McKinnon, the man accused of hacking into the systems of space agency NASA, is believed to be no more than a case of the perpetrator looking for alien life forms.
