(Maybe this should be in IMHO)
With the Tour starting in a few days, and the recent failure of Landis’ appeal, I got to wondering if Landis did actually dope. The evidence seems overwhelming, but some suggest a conspiracy by French officials to dampen recent American domination and perhaps return glory to Europe.
What do you think?
It seems pretty likely that he did.
I don’t have a cite, but one thing I recall hearing was that the performance-enhancing effects of testosterone (or whatever it was he was charged with using) take too long to appear to explain the sudden recovery he showed. If that’s true, it would indicate that he either wasn’t doing what he was accused of, or that he managed to screw himself out of a fair (as much as that word can be used for the TdF) victory.
I have no idea.
I’ll say this. I think the Tour de France is incredibly corrupt and that the sport is screwed up. I think it’s equally likely that Landis was cheating as it is that tour officials or someone with an agenda framed him. Both sides are so fucked up that there’s probably no one innocent here.
I’m not particularly invested in it either way but I find it impossible to take a side either way and feel like you are taking the high ground. It has way more to do with politics than it does sports or doping in any case.
Sure he did. As did every other winner (and most other riders) since the days of Merckx at least - probably earlier, too. And yeah - the sport is screwed up from a puritan point of view, but insisting on keeping cycling “clean” (whatever that means) and at the same time demanding fast, tough racing as most people do these days just seems hypocritical (and hopelessly naive) to me.
So: Yes, Landis doped, he got caught. No conspiracy.
Let Floyd Landis answer the question himself, some 4 years after he was first busted.
His answer: Sure I doped, everyone else did too.
The only aspect to the Floyd Landis case which I found exasperating was the headbutting I did against the wall at the time on this messageboard.
There were Americans on this messageboard who simply couldn’t accept, under any circumstances, that the evidence was overwheleming that an American sportsperson was guilty of doping. It was too heartbreaking to bear. Tyler Hamilton got busted for blood doping in the 2004 Tour of Spain, some 2 weeks after his 2004 Athens ITT Gold Medal. Then Landis in the 2006 Tour de France.
There were some Americans (not many but some) on this messageboard who simply argued to the death that Lanids could never have done it, that his Lab Tests in France were corrupted, that it was a conspiacy, blah blah blah. And why? Because the next logical connection was Lance Armstrong himself, and that was too cruel to bear… that the Dalai Llama of Sport himself, the deity of all that is good and right, might also have been dirty.
Well Floyd Landis just admitted what most of us “in the know” had been sure of for years. He was dirty. He doped like crazy. He finally came out and fessed up. Good on him I say.
I still have little respect for him however… not because he doped. They all do. He was simply never a champion rider. He lifted himself from barely a Top 10 Grand Tour rider to a winner, by doping, but his riding style lacked panache. He was weak. He never won Spring Classics. And on top of that, he simply didn’t conduct himself well after his bust. He lacked class.
Yeah, he doped. And if they took money on this sort of thing @ Vegas, I’d lay a few g’s down on Armstrong doping as well. (And Tiger).
I guess ‘doping’ is now the same as using PEDs? Wasn’t doping a particular series of things one did to increase oxygen capacity in the blood?
You’re correct about that… the term “doping” has now become a generic term to encompass all forms of human cheating, from muscle steroids to oxygen carrying hormones to blood filtered transfusions etc.
The real story here was the sustained dishonesty by Landis about his dishonesty, subsequent to his bust in 2006.
Apparently he’s almost insane now, right bang in the middle of mental health issues. He’s often seen talking to himself in public, all day long, and then he fires off reams of emails at night.
Saddest of all, he’s brought it on himself.
So was Landis mostly caught because he doped so much compared to other TdF winners? I always thought it odd that he got nailed on steroids, which seemed like the wrong tool for the issues you face as a TdF racer.
I don’t remember it that way, though I could be wrong. I remember a vigorous defense of Lance Armstrong, but mostly noncommital shrugging about Floyd Landis. Plus maybe a healthy dose of incidental French-bashing.