On Friday Dr. Arnie Baker, a retired doctor, coach and longtime friend of former Phonak team leader Floyd Landis, presented to an audience in Tucson, Arizona, a slideshow arguing against the doping charges that could strip Landis of his 2006 Tour de France win. Friday’s presentation at the Tucson Convention Center, the starting point of Saturday’s El Tour de Tucson event, was an updated version of a previous slideshow that Baker unveiled in California last month.

While Landis didn’t attend Friday’s presentation, he appeared in Tucson the next morning as the official starter of the Tour de Tucson. After sending the riders off, Landis spoke to VeloNews about his case. Among the topics Landis talked about were the recent claims that someone close to him hacked into the computer system of the French laboratory that turned up a positive testosterone-epitestosterone level from one of his Tour de France urine samples. Landis also spoke about his September hip surgery, his recovery, and the emotional toll of the fight to clear his name. An in-depth article on Landis’s case will appear in the December 4 issue of VeloNews. Here are a few excerpts from Saturday’s interview:

VeloNews: How’s the hip after your surgery?

Floyd Landis: It’s been about eight weeks since the surgery and the flexibility’s already better than it was before the resurfacing. Riding’s good, I can ride with no pain at all. Whatever fitness and muscle mass I lost from not riding for so long needs to come back, but other than that I’m happy it’s done. The pain is gone. The pain wasn’t so bad before [the surgery], but it was more of an aching, arthritis pain; it would keep me awake at night. That was the worst part, and that was gone immediately [after the surgery].

VN: What kind of training are you doing now?

FL: I’m starting to train now. I’ve been doing two hours a day, something like that. Hopefully by the end of December I’ll be able to do a long ride a week. The hip’s not limiting me, I’m just trying not to overdo it, to just ease into it.

VN: What was your reaction to this week’s news about the hacker?

FL: Somebody sent me an email, because I guess it came out in L’Equipe but it was nighttime in the United States. So I woke up and had gotten the email that somebody said there was a story about some hacker and they connected it to me somehow. I was caught completely off guard, I have no idea what they’re referring to, but I’ve come to learn that nothing about this hacker story relates to my case. Why it got blamed on me or anybody around me is baffling.

VN: Arnie Baker’s presentations center on being transparent and public with documents. How do you feel about the strategy at this point? FL: I’d say it couldn’t be better. We’ve got all kinds of people that have expertise in the way the test works. We’ve got to find experts that can explain what’s going on. So I’d say it was probably the best thing we could have done. It’s been extremely effective. We had all kinds of people contacting Arnie with their advice and their opinions on it. Partly we did it for that reason, but the other reason is that we’re just showing everybody so they can decide for themselves. Not by what they read or other people’s opinions — here it is, if you want to take a look at it, have a look. For that reason, too, I think it was a wise thing to do.

VN: It’s a cutting-edge strategy, have you gotten any feedback from other riders about it?

FL: Not a whole lot. I think everybody’s just trying to figure out what it all means. Personally, if it had gone the way it should have from the beginning — if people running the show had followed their own rules and it wasn’t such a public affair — I’d rather not keep the story in the news all the time for four months. I’d rather do it right, just go and have the hearing. But since it came out in the press and was made into a giant scene, I see no reason why we should keep any [information] away from anybody.

VN: There was an admission to a small error from the French lab this week. How did you feel about that?

FL: Well, I don’t know exactly why they decided now to admit to the error because we posted everything online months ago. We identified the errors for anybody to see them — you don’t have to go through the lab packet yourself. And there are multiple errors. Why they would come out and admit that there’s one error baffles me, because now they’re going to have to admit that there’s more errors.

VN: Are you concerned about how long this case could drag on?

FL: They do it intentionally. They drag it out hoping I’ll either run out of energy or money. I can tell you that it’s exhausting to deal with it. Every day it consumes all of my time. And all of the people around me, it consumes all of their time. And obviously their best tactic would be to drag it out as long as possible. But I assure you I will not get tired.