THE STORY OF CYCLING’S KING OF DOPE
HOW’S THAT FOR REDEMPTION?
FLOYD LANDIS IS UP TO HIS EYEBROWS IN CANNABIS.
Actually, higher than that: most of the plants in this 4 000m2 patch, rich and lushly green, stand a good head or three taller than the former pro cyclist and disqualified Tour de France winner.
On this warm Thursday in mid- September, Floyd and two colleagues are making the rounds of Amish farms in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, checking on their crops. The plants are the same species, Cannabis sativa, that produces the marijuana people smoke to get high. But they are technically special strains of hemp bred to have low concentrations of THC – the chemical responsible for the marijuana ‘ high’ – and high concentrations of CBD or cannabidiol, the substance used in the creams, edible gummies and tinctures sold by his brand, Floyd’s of Leadville. Six months ago, Floyd’s placed a small ad in
Lancaster Farming magazine, hoping to gauge interest among local farmers in growing hemp, which had been legalised in the 2018 Farm Bill. They rented a meeting for 150 people. Nearly twice that many up. Most were Amish, intrigued new cash crop to replace tobacco, had been in decline for years. signed on to grow test patches the seeds and some initial direction. Now, months later, harvest time is looming.
“Check these guys out,” Floyd says, holding a conical flower covered in droplets of sticky oil. “Epic,” says Wayne Bendistis, the 27-year- old head of agricultural sciences for Floyd’s. The different strains of hemp even have stoner-inspired names, like Purple Haze and Sour Space Candy, although by law they can only contain a tiny amount of THC, 0.3 per cent or less by weight. More than that and it’s considered marijuana, illegal in Pennsylvania.
“This one, with the orange pistils, is ready,” Wayne explains to farmer Ben King, who leans in for a closer look and a whiff. To my untrained nose, it smells the same as marijuana.
“This one over here, where they’re still white, isn’t.” Ben nods.
While Ben and Wayne both have dark beards, the similarities end there. Ben, in his 30s, has a traditional Amish chin beard and sports a straw hat, blue shirt, and suspenders. Wayne is pure hippie, with flowing chestnut hair and bare feet tanned the colour of the soil. Growing cannabis is his passion, and he’s largely self-taught; let’s just say this is not ( yet) on the curriculum at Penn State University. For Ben, who grows a wide range of crops from corn to ornamental cabbages, this 4 000m² of hemp with roughly 2 000 plants offers a potential payday of about R330 000, depending on market value. The same square metreage of corn, by contrast, is worth around R9 500.
Ben’s interest runs deeper than cash. Jake Sitler, 30, the company’s business director who also runs Lancaster County operations, hands him an assortment of Floyd’s of Leadville products, including a CBD tincture and a bottle of CBD gummies. Ben uses them to combat the aches and pains that come with working 16-hour days on his 40-hectare farm. Holding up a hemp flower that fell on the ground, he says he plans to dry it and add it to the family’s ‘ meadow tea’, a traditional Amish concoction made from foraged plants and herbs. After all, it’s just another weed.
It certainly grows like one. “Six weeks ago, these plants were maybe waist high,” Ben tells me. “The soil did all the work.” The crop is mostly organic, too; he sprayed the plants once when they were young, but after that, he didn’t use pesticides. In place of chemicals, he brought in a colony of wasps to prey on the bugs that might otherwise eat the hemp buds. Still, one or two pests manage to survive. Wayne plucks a small green worm off a flower and holds it up. It seems, well, pretty chill.
“He’s probably full of hemp juice,” jokes Ben.
SEVERAL MONTHS EARLIER, IN THE SPRING OF 2019, I had run into at a bike race in central Pennsylvania, 25km from where he grew up. Locals still recall him winning a nearby mountainbike race, the first one he ever entered, wearing cutoff jeans because his Mennonite parents deemed spandex bike shorts sinful. “He did a wheelie across the line,” says race organiser Bill Gentile.
“My dad asked why I didn’t go to church,” Floyd said. “I told him I won R8 000. I was rich!” His parents also warned him that if he continued with cycling, he would go to hell. They might have been right about that, in a way. He’d left Pennsylvania when he was in his early 20s and hadn’t been home much, especially since testing positive for testosterone after winning the 2006 Tour de France. But now he was back and he looked happy. “Hemp juice” was a big part of the reason.
As racers milled about, Floyd held court beside a sprinter van wrapped in Floyd’s of Leadville colours, which look remarkably like the rainbow stripes worn by UCI world champions in cycling – which Floyd never was. “We changed one colour,” he laughed.
He had a small entourage, including Sitler, a local bike racer who was a teenager whenn Floyd had tested positive. “I believed he was innocent,” Sitler told me later. “I didn’t know any better.”
All that appeared to have been forgiven. Floyd wore a big smile as friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers came up to say hello and chat. The beer cup in his hand always seemed full. His smile never faded. He laughed a lot. His partner, Alexandra Merle- Huet, was also there, chasing after their five-year- old daughter, Margaret, who is named for Floyd’s Mennonite grandmother.
This wasn’t the Floyd Landis we’d been reading about for so many years, the jut-jawed guy who had fought his doping positive with funds raised from many of these same people, claiming innocence while knowing he was guilty. This wasn’t the ‘ bitter’ ex- teammate who had finally blown the whistle on Lance Armstrong, seemingly wanting to take all of US pro cycling down with him, or the vengeful money grubber who had sued Armstrong under the federal Whistleblower Act, a lawsuit that could potentially have earned him tens of millions of dollars.
That Floyd was angry and tortured. ‘Disgraced cyclist’ could have been on his LinkedIn profile. This Floyd seemed happy and fat ( by pro cyclist standards, anyway). He could have been any other
middle-aged suburban dad in a bike jersey – except for the part about growing acres of marijuana. People snickered when he emerged, three years ago, as the front man for a Colorado marijuana company called Floyd’s of Leadville. It was too perfect – the confessed doper now selling dope. “I’m happy to finally be involved in a legitimate industry,” he tweeted at the time, tongue firmly in cheek.
Since then, he and his co- founder, Dave Zabriskie, a friend and former US Postal teammate, have expanded their business in the fast- growing CBD market. They were early movers into CBD, and now their products are found in some 5 000 retail outlets, including bike shops and convenience stores. Somehow, Floyd’s of Leadville turned into a real business, and the CBD side (that is, hemp juice) soon outpaced Floyd’s lucrative recreational marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and Oregon, which Floyd says bring in more than R16 million a month. Floyd’s remains a niche player in the overall US CBD market – which estimates, conservatively, to be worth roughly R16 billion; CBD is found in cosmetics, lotions, and even pet treats. But its operation is growing, fuelled largely by the move into convenience stores. “We’re in 2 500 C- stores now,” Jake Sitler said, “and that will probably double in three months.” Still, it’s nowhere near the size of a company like Lord Jones, a high- end maker of CBD edibles and creams that was part of a R5 billion acquisition last summer by Cronos, the Canadian cannabis conglomerate.
Floyd’s markets a range of products targeting endurance athletes, including CBD gummies, tinctures and balms; hence the Leadv ille connection. They sponsored the 2019 edition of the Leadville 100 mountain-bike race, and maintain a sort of headquarters there, in a ramshackle miner’s cabin that also houses a recreational marijuana dispensary. ( It doubles as a crash pad for athletes who come to train at the town’s 3 048metre altitude.) “We’re trying to associate with something that people like, endurance sports, which is kind of what
Red Bull does,” he says. “You might not ever run Leadville, but you’ll see the stuff in a convenience store and buy it.”
New on the market this year is a limited- edition, CBD- infused coffee that they’re calling Stage 17, in honour of the memorable day in the 2006 Tour when Floyd went on a solo breakaway to put himself back within reach of the leader’s yellow jersey. ( That evening, of course, he submitted the urine sample that showed elevated levels of testosterone, which is banned, leading to his downfall.) Once a taboo subject, that infamous stage has become a joke.
Just to compound the irony, Floyd’s also sells a logo-printed yellow jersey. “It’s a good colour to wear when you’re riding,” he deadpans. “It’s
easy to see… but I g uess it is sort of sacrilege.”
In Floyd’s world, sacrilege is a good thing, particularly when it comes to pro cycling. But cycling is the furthest thing from Floyd’s mind most days; he’s busy running a business. As we speed down narrow country roads in Jake’s cluttered Prius, they jump on a conference call with a Midwestern convenience store chain interested in carrying Floyd’s of Leadville products. Once an exotic niche product known mainly to cannabis aficionados, CBD became a mainstream market category almost overnight. Floyd’s of Leadville, which began selling CBD products three years ago, found itself on the leading edge of the wave.
The call is going well. Jake is explaining their new vertically integrated “seed to store” business model that lets them charge lower prices than premium CBD brands. Their display stand includes an informational pamphlet describing what CBD is and what it does. ( While not psychoactive like THC, CBD is thought to deliver many of the medical benefits of cannabis.) “I tell you what, gentlemen,” says the female executive who’s leading the meeting. “I’m very excited. This looks nice.” An hour later, the 90- store chain places a R4 million order.
There’s no time for rejoicing. This year’s hemp crop is ready to harvest, and Floyd and his team are racing to figure out how to cut the stuff and store it until it’s ready for processing. That morning they’d been tinkering with a cryogenic freezer machine, tucked into an abandoned car wash owned by Floyd’s dad; they’ve only just signed the lease on a 1 000m2 space in a nearby town, where they’ll open a processing facility to extract the CBD from the hemp plants.
Meanwhile, though, the farmers are getting antsy. “I see a lot of work in it yet,” says Ben King, scratching his head. This is the first legal hemp crop in Lancaster County in 82 years, and there are many unanswered questions. When is it ready to cut? What’s the best way to harvest the CBD-rich flowers? And most of all, will hemp be profitable enough to justify all the work? Ben plans to enlist his four brothers to cut the plants by hand, in the evenings after their main chores are done.
“Dude, the Amish are badasses,” says Floyd. He grew up Mennonite, and while the two sects are sometimes confused, Mennonites avail themselves of modern technology that the Amish traditionally reject, such as motor cars, electric appliances, and bicycles with gears. Hemp plants are tough and sticky, and there is no such thing as a hemp harvesting machine. But since the Amish still farm largely by hand, they’re the perfect growers for such a labour-intensive crop.
There is further uncertainty around the future of the hemp market. This was the first year that, under the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp could be grown on a basically unlimited scale; and farmers nationwide planted over 100 000 hectares, according to Beau Whitney of the Hemp Business Journal. The roughly 26 hectares sown by farmers under contract to Floyd’s represent a tiny drop in that bucket. The company plans to use what it needs to make its products, and then sell the rest on the open market. “Until this year, there’s been more demand than supply,” says Whitney. “Now there is supply, and a lot of it.” If demand for hemp doesn’t rise too – not just for CBD oil, but for the crop’s many other potential uses, from fibres to seed to even plastic-like products – farmers like Ben could face a drop in prices.
Ben’s neighbour, Daniel Miller, whose mirrored aviator shades make him resemble an Amish Bob Dylan, is already sceptical. He also has 4 000m2 of ready-to-harvest hemp plants, but he’s concerned about how much he’ll earn. ( Wayne says the farmers will be paid based on the amount of CBD oil the flowers produce.) “I’ll be thanking you when I get the cheque!” he tells Floyd, only half joking.
The money shouldn’t be a problem. Floyd’s phone rings again; this time it’s a guy from a firm specialising in mergers and acquisitions in the cannabis industry. Would he perhaps be interested in a Pennsylvania medical marijuana licence, for the low price of, say, R32 million? “He’s gotta be high,” Floyd jokes after hanging up.
I venture a question: is the cannabis business better, financially, than pro cycling?
“It’s not even close,” he laughs. “Not even close.”
YOU COULD ARGUE THAT CANNABIS HELPED SAVE Floyd’s life. After he blew the whistle on doping at US Postal in 2010, he was stuck. He was out of money,
divorced from his first wife,fe, and living in a lonely cabin in the mountains of Sou uthern California. Getting back into the bike industry ry was probably not going to happen. “Some days I’dd get my cycling kit on and start to ride, but thenn after 10 minutes I’d be like, fuck this, and go homeho and just drink,” he says. “My bike had beenn my one drug, and then all of a sudden it had thhe opposite effect. I just couldn’t handle it.”
So he substituteed other drugs. Some days, he says, he consummed all his kilojoules in the form off bbeer. But boozeb wasn’t his biggest problem; he hadd begugun using opioids after having his hip replaced, and getting more pills was easy. “I had prescriptions, and all I had to say was that my hip hurts, and nobody would question it,” he says. “I’d take a pill, and I’d drink with it. It turns your brain right off. I mean, the label says don’t use with alcohol, so you know it’s gonna work,” he laughs. “I was lucky to live.”
Out of money, he moved to Connecticut and stayed with a friend, Tiger Williams, an avid cyclist who worked in the hedge fund business. Williams invited him to join his firm as a trader. That lasted two days. Williams then suggested he get involved with cycling again, perhaps as a coach. That had zero appeal; and besides, Floyd laughs, “I’m the worst coach on earth.”
Floyd needed to get out of cycling altogether. He eventually bounced to Colorado in 2013, wher he worked for a time in a compounding pharmacy but that ended when it was shut down by the FDA Marijuana had been legalised in Colorado in 2012 so Floyd and some friends set up a growing an processing facility in the Denver suburb of Aurora That seemed like a good fit; he certainly enjoye the product. More than that, smoking marijuan – which he says he’d never done until well afte he retired from cycling – helped him break hi addiction to painkillers and booze. It calmed hi anxiety, he says, making it a softer substitute fo the pills.
He never thought it would turn into a busines and he never thought he would end up as it figurehead. But it’s illegal to advertise cannabi – and that led to putting the name of the group most publicly notorious partner front and centre In April 2016, the enterprise became Floyd’s o Leadville.
The irony was too good for the press to resis “Floyd Landis is rolling with the dope crowd, punned the New York Daily News. Floyd’s Leadvill dispensary became a cannabis destination, enablin the company to purchase four more dispensarie in Portland, Oregon, as well as a 45-acre marijuan farm in that state. Initially, the company sol only THC products, but when one marijuana cro failed to yield the expected high levels of THC one of Floyd’s partners saw an opportunity. The processed the plants to produce a batch of CBD extract and put that into some new products including gummies. That was the beginnin of Floyd’s CBD business. Because CBD is no considered a controlled substance by the federa government, the company could expand beyond Oregon and Colorado, and CBD products could be sold online to the many potential customers who visited the Floyd’s of Leadville website.
At the time, CBD was just gaining traction for its purported anti- inflammatory and antianxiety powers, so it seemed logical for Floyd’s to target the athletic market. Floyd toured hundreds of local bike shops with Dave Zabriskie, who by then had become a partner in the company, trying to drum up interest in CBD products. The response was lukewarm at first, in part because of uncertainty about CBD’s legal status; even now, Floyd’s keeps a law firm on retainer to map the ever-shifting matrix of federal and state regulations on marijuana and CBD.
The break came when Floyd’s managed to get its products listed in the Quality Bike Parts catalogue, where most bike shops order their supplies. Sales took off, to the point where Floyd’s of Leadville’s CBD business more than equalled the marijuana side. ( That’s now a separate legal entity, known as Floyd’s Fine Cannabis.) The economics of CBD are attractive: the active ingredient in a 50mg CBD gummy costs about 15 cents, while the final product sells for around R50.
“Our marijuana business does well, but I actually like the CBD side of it better, because I’m not a huge fan of being high all the time,” Floyd says. “It’s fun once in a while. But I don’t get a lot done when I’m high.” (He does concede that THC makes the experience of flying commercially, which he does often, more tolerable.)
Also, because marijuana remains federally illegal, it’s difficult (and expensive) to bank the enormous amounts of cash it generates. Congress recently clarified banking laws to make handling marijuana revenues easier; but under federal tax law, cannabis is still considered a criminal enterprise, and is thus taxed on gross revenues rather than net profits. (Translation: the effective tax rates are much higher).
While CBD from hemp is now federally legal, it remains in something of a regulatory limbo. The FDA has approved a CBD-based prescription drug, Epidiolex, to treat two rare forms of epilepsy, but has not yet decided if over-the-counter CBD should be a drug or a dietary supplement. The agency website is full of warning letters to CBD companies, taking issue with various wild health claims made on behalf of CBD compounds; so far, it seems to be okay with Floyd’s of Leadville’s vague- enough slogan, ‘Relax and Recover’. But how the agency plans to treat CBD in the long run remains unclear.