Malibu: Though he’s convinced his reputation is ruined, Floyd Landis still had to give it his best shot.

He took to the witness stand at his arbitration hearing on Saturday for his much-awaited testimony and found 50 different ways to say he didn’t cheat.

“It’s a matter of who I am,” last year’s Tour de France champion testified. “It wouldn’t serve any purpose for me to cheat and win the Tour.”

Wearing that familiar yellow tie, Landis spoke clearly during a 75-minute dissection of his career, which was thrown wildly off track when he tested positive after Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour.

Landis conceded that maybe the real damage already has been done. “It will be forever connected to me,” he said.

Landis outlined the strategy he used for his riveting comeback in Stage 17.

Speaking under oath, he said the only banned substance he has taken has been cortisone — an approved medicine he used to treat his injured hip.

He also spoke about allegations that Greg LeMond made two days earlier, acknowledging he was in the room on Wednesday night when his former manager, Will Geoghegan, made the call to LeMond threatening to reveal the three-time Tour champion’s secret that he had been sexually abused as a child.

“I knew there was a problem,” Landis said of his reaction upon realising Geoghegan had made the call. “I was traumatised having him tell me that story in the first place. There are very few things I can imagine would happen to a person that are worse than that. ”

Although Landis corroborated most of what LeMond testified to Thursday, there was one key difference.

“I told him that I didn’t do it,” Landis said. “I told him it wouldn’t make any sense for me to admit to something I didn’t do. But if I did admit it and I didn’t do it, what would the positive outcome of it be?” (AP)