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This year's Tour was an emotional roller coaster right from the very beginning. Just when it looked like the wild ride had come to an end and some semblance of order restored, suddenly we find ourselves back on a train that is hurtling out of control.

Sadly, this will continue on for weeks. I won't even try to keep up. But it feels kind of odd to let it drop now. So a couple of noteworthy items.

Floyd has broken his silence in an interview with Sports Illustrated's Austin Murphy. As is customary in rider responses to doping charges, he says he didn't do it. I'll let you judge for yourself.

The media have been hounding Floyd's mother, whom they were celebrating only days earlier, even if in a patronizing sort of way. The poor woman. Here's some of what she has to say:

She said that she wouldn't blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but "if it's something worse than that, then he doesn't deserve to win. I didn't talk to him since that hit the fan, but I'm keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are. I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I'm not going to jump to conclusions ... It disappoints me."

Later on, after speaking to her son on the phone, she says: “He said, ’There’s no way,”’ she said in an interview with The Associated Press at her home in Farmersville, Pa. “I really believe him.”

Arlene Landis said it could take two weeks for the results of the backup test to be made public.

“Why couldn’t they take care of this before they pronounced him the winner?” she said. “Lance (Armstrong) went through this too. Somebody doesn’t want him to win.

“Why do they put you through two weeks of misery and spoil your crown? My opinion is when he comes on top of this everyone will think so much more of him. So that’s what valleys are for, right?”

'They like to make a good man look bad. If that's what they are doing, they will be disappointed,' she said just moments after speaking by telephone with her son from inside the family home in this tiny farming community.

Their conversation came just hours after it was disclosed that Landis had tested positive for high levels of testosterone during one leg of the race that ended Sunday.

'When he comes out on top of this everyone will think so much more of him. That's what valleys are for,' she said.

'He said he was sorry I was being mobbed,' the cycling champion's mother said as television trucks and press cars started to clog up the local road.

They spoke for seven to 10 minutes, said Landis' mother.

'I told him I'm praying intensely for you,' she said before driving away with a family member.

Finally, someone who seems to know a little something of the science and medicine behind the testing for testosterone explains some of what will be at issue over the next few weeks. The most interesting thing I've read is that anyone whose ever challenged the results of a negative testosterone test has been successful and fully reinstated. But then again the UCI and Tour de France are intent on cracking down in the hardest of ways these days in order to give the impression that nobody succeeds in cheating at cycling. The scary thing is that recent accounts--the Floyd Landis case aside for a moment--suggest they'd rather wrongly exclude someone than take the chance that they might beat the system.

So no matter how all of this turns out in the end, it looks doubtful that it won't be settled conclusively. That's too bad, because it would be nice to move on either way.