and believably too. Here's what I remember: Before I met Floyd Landis, I heard nothing but good things about him. Everyone liked him. His teammates liked riding on teams with him; he kept the temperatures down with humor and a great attitude.
I met him a few times and he did seem like a great guy. David S and I had coffee with him the morning after the San Francisco GP a few years ago. We were sitting at Starbucks across the street from the race HQ hotel. Floyd walked in and sat with us. Again, I thought he was a great guy and David did too.
Now it's hard to know what to believe. Maybe I just want him to be an honorable guy, even when he's admitted that he wasn't. I don't see myself giving up on Floyd. If I'm honest with myself, maybe that's about me and not about Floyd at all.
Thanks, David S, for the link. I'm sure you're just as saddened as I am.
2 comments:
Sadly, Landis was just a pawn in a much larger game. Just as folks much smarter engineered his doping, folks much smarter engineered his defense. Most of the $$ coughed up was NOT from individuals who thought he was wronged but rather from those lawyers and others who wanted to try to break the anti-doping system. The same shady characters who were involved with Marion Jones and other cheaters knew damn good and well what Landis had done, they just wanted to break the system by any means possible. They failed though they smeared everyone involved in trying to clean up cycling. BigTex supported Floyd and his henchmen in this endeavor---so much for his being all for clean cycling, eh? All I can do is feel sorry for Floyd but even a guy like Greg LeMond who got smeared too, can forgive him...why not the general public..especially if this mess helps clean up our sport?
We who work in analytical chemistry labs can enjoy a little laugh at Floyd's expense, but I also have to say that we are always under the microscope. If a set of results pokes a hole in someone's balloon, they go through every training, quality control, and laboratory instructional document, audit training and analytical records, and otherwise try to poke holes in anything they can. Much of that paper trail is created for the lawyers rather than to validate the basic science, but nonetheless, you have to be able to defend your numbers. So the French lab should have been used to that.
Calling them dishonest was a little over the top, especially now that we know it was the pot calling the kettle black. Flandis owes everyone a written apology.
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