Floyd Landis, a humble upstart battling a degenerative hip ailment that will require surgery, roars back from the brink of elimination with a one-for-the-history books ride from the Alps to win the Tour de France and bump the Barry Bonds steroid story off the sports page.

How we wanted to exult in his triumphant ride up the Champs-Elysees. How we needed to believe in a Mr. Clean in a sport and industry gone dirty.

And, now, less than a week later, his drug suspension pointedly suggests the whole thing might have been too good to be true. A Tour de Fraud? The most distressing con job yet by an athlete taking competitiveness too far and his championship from a bottle?

Say it ain't so, Floyd.

Better yet, prove it.

That's the biggest casualty of this episode if Landis isn't absolved: the tearing away of the last threads of trust by someone who could have done so much to begin knitting them together again.

Of all the reported positive drug tests involving athletes — and that takes in more ground than the borders of Luxembourg these days — you hope this one is wrong.

The wish is that there's something in the so-called "B" sample that will convincingly explain away Landis' suspension for having "an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone" after that breakaway 17th stage of the Tour.

Stranger things have happened, of course. And remember that Landis is said to have passed drug tests both before and after the positive one.

But the growing skepticism brought about by a galaxy of fallen stars and an abundance of cheats suggests that such hope is becoming the province of the naive now.

A dozen times over we have learned the hard way the ugly truth surrounding sports in general and cycling in particular: That desperate measures may be closer to the norm than we have wanted to admit.

Witness the expanding hall of shame in baseball. The legions of disgraced in Olympic sports. The rogues gallery in cycling where nine riders, including a past champion, were withdrawn on the eve of the start of this year's Tour.

Such has become the climate that our champions are greeted not by applause for their feats but immediately eyed with automatic suspicion about their means. That those with no history of bending the rules are being assumed guilty of cheating until proven otherwise.

And, even then, forever tainted as Landis will likely be even if the "B" sample backs up claims of innocence. Ask Lance Armstrong, who has yet to fail a drug test in seven Tour wins yet is dogged by innuendo.

Ben Johnson and those who have followed in his sordid footsteps taught us to view all with distrust. It would be a shame if Landis, who had so much potential to set a better example, merely reaffirmed the worst.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.