Slouched on a bench near a parking lot in Bend’s Old Mill District, Floyd Landis looked small.

Passers-by made nary a glance in his direction as he answered questions openly. But one man did recognize Landis, walked up and said simply: “You’re human.”

Moments earlier, Landis had surged through the finish line of the prologue of the Cascade Cycling Classic sporting a gray T-shirt that made him look more recreational cyclist than racer — USA Cycling would not allow Landis to wear a sponsor’s jersey.

Much to the chagrin of Cascade Cycling Classic organizers, a good share of the spotlight on the first day of Central Oregon’s long-running professional stage race Tuesday was on Landis. Television cameras from ABC’s “Nightline” news program followed him for an upcoming episode.

Hours after Lance Armstrong made a strong bid for a stage win at the Tour de France, Landis toiled in relative anonymity in Bend — save for the cameras.

A smattering of applause could be heard as Landis crossed the finish line. He finished 91st in the prologue out of 172 starters.

Landis, who won the Tour de France in 2006 but was stripped of his title after testing positive for synthetic testosterone, is racing for the second consecutive year in the Cascade Cycling Classic, which runs through Sunday.

Earlier this year, after four years of denial, Landis admitted to doping during his pro cycling career. He also came out with allegations accusing Armstrong — a seven-time Tour de France winner — of doping.

Prominent articles on Landis’ allegations surfaced in May during the Tour of California, the most prestigious bike race in the United States, and on the eve of the Tour de France earlier this month.

The backlash from the cycling community has made Landis even more of an outcast in his sport.

“It was about doing what was right,” Landis said Tuesday night of making the accusations, still winded from the short time trial. “It was about doing what allowed me to live my life OK with me. So whatever the reaction is, I hope it’s good. I hope people want to know the truth, but that wasn’t really my main concern. Part of what took me so long to figure out what to do was, I didn’t want to hurt some of the other cyclists. But inevitably, a lot of people are involved in the story.”

Landis, 34 and of Idyllwild, Calif., competed for the Bahati Racing team earlier this season, but he parted ways with the team shortly after his allegations against Armstrong were made public.

In May, Landis — who served a two-year suspension from professional cycling — admitted to extensive use of the red-blood-cell booster erythropoietin (EPO), testosterone, human growth hormone and frequent blood transfusions during years he rode for the U.S. Postal Service and Switzerland-based Phonak teams.

Landis sent e-mails to cycling and anti-doping officials, implicating dozens of other athletes, including Armstrong.

Armstrong has long been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, but he reportedly has never tested positive.

Landis also accused American riders Levi Leipheimer (Cascade Classic winner in 2008), Dave Zabriskie and George Hincapie of doping, and he accused Armstrong’s longtime coach, Johan Bruyneel, of being involved.

“I lied to everybody for a long time, because it felt like it was the only way I could get through the situation,” Landis said Tuesday. “Now there’s some other people put in the same situation, and I can’t really fault them for that. It would be hypocritical of me.

“I don’t know what the long-term outcome will be, but I hope it’s the truth, and I hope people look at the other cyclists, and look at me, and realize that we’re human, and accept it for what it is.”

The World Anti-Doping Agency has opened an investigation into Landis’ allegations, but perhaps more important, so has the U.S. federal government.

Prosecutors in California have reportedly been building a criminal case based on evidence collected by Food and Drug Administration criminal investigator Jeff Novitzky, who in 2003 uncovered the BALCO doping ring. That investigation implicated Barry Bonds and several other high-profile Major League Baseball players, and resulted in a perjury conviction for Olympic gold-medal sprinter Marion Jones.

According to the New York Daily News, the Landis’ accusations and the resulting federal inquiry is the most serious challenge yet to Armstrong’s legacy, particularly because Armstrong could be called to testify under oath before prosecutors.

According to a Denver Post story published Tuesday, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond said he believes evidence against Lance Armstrong in a federal probe will be “overwhelming.”

In an interview with The Post, LeMond said he was happy when he received the subpoena to make a July 30 appearance in federal court in Los Angeles to testify in an investigation of possible fraud and doping charges against Armstrong and his associates.

“The evidence will come from the investigation,” LeMond told The Post, “and I believe it will be overwhelming.”

LeMond also said he believes Landis was telling the truth in his descriptions of what he claimed was Armstrong’s systemic doping program.

Armstrong has denied allegations of doping.

In a lengthy Wall Street Journal article published earlier this month, Landis claimed that some of the bikes intended for the U.S. Postal Service team were sold for cash to support the team’s doping program. He also offered details of how he, Armstrong, and others got illegal blood transfusions during races as an energy boost, and he said Armstrong gave him illegal testosterone patches to boost recovery time.

“(The) Wall Street Journal article is full of false accusations and more of the same old news from Floyd Landis, a person with zero credibility and an established pattern of recanting tomorrow what he swears to today,” Armstrong was quoted saying in an AP story.

Landis said Tuesday that performance-enhancing drugs were “a part of the game” and were readily available.

“It certainly makes a difference, otherwise no one would do it,” Landis said of PEDs. “Once you get to that point where you can win the biggest races in the world, and it’s a choice that’s put in front of you … it’s hard to understand from the outside, so I don’t blame people for judging athletes for what they do.”

Landis still contended on Tuesday that he did not use synthetic testosterone during the 2006 Tour de France — but that is a mute point, because he used other PEDs.

“I used blood doping and things we used in the other tours, absolutely,” Landis said. “I didn’t use testosterone during the actual race, because we generally would know which tests were effective and which ones weren’t. I used growth hormone, I used EPO, I used blood doping.”

Landis said he spent his life savings trying to prove the test was wrong.

“I don’t know that I lost it (his savings),” he said. “I spent it defending myself against what I believed was a faulty test.”

As far as racing this week, Landis said he will decide after today’s McKenzie Pass Road Race whether to go for an overall win or just a stage win.

Just what sort of jersey — or T-shirt — he will wear remains to be seen.

“USA Cycling said that I wasn’t allowed to wear a jersey with a name on it of any sort, because I don’t have a team,” Landis said. “I’m not entirely sure what rule that was — I think they just made it up.”

Despite the slight from USA Cycling, Landis is hoping to perform well in a town where he believes he has friends.

“There’s a lot of people here that were my friends before, and I hope they’re still my friends,” Landis said. “I like the atmosphere here. It’s a good town and the people seem to get into it.”