TORONTO, Sept 21: Cycling is paying the price for allowing a “culture of doping” to develop, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chairman Dick Pound said on the day that Floyd Landis was told he would forfeit his Tour de France win.

“It’s safe to say they (the International Cycling Union) understand now how serious the problem is and the question is whether they will be able to put a sufficiently robust programme in place to deal with the issue,” Pound told reporters during a teleconference on Thursday.

“We have never said that doping in sport is limited to cycling but I have said that it is a particularly serious problem in cycling and that the leadership in cycling over the past decade has allowed what is a real culture of doping in the sport to develop and it is coming home to roost now.”

American Landis was banned for two years on Thursday and told he would be stripped of his 2006 Tour title after a US arbitration panel found him guilty of taking the banned male hormone testosterone.—Reuters