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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Landis: Accusations of Duplicity, a Reputation for Honesty |
| 2006-07-29 |
| Although close observers are anything but naïve when it comes to the use of performance-enhancing drugs in their sport, the idea of Landis as a cheat is at odds with his reputation among many in the sport. Although Landis was well known as an unusually tough man in a sport that prizes that quality, many other riders and team managers paint a picture of Landis as unusually well liked in a world often divided by jealousy. He was also candidly outspoken in a sport better known for closely guarded secrets. Perhaps inevitably, Landis is also compared to Lance Armstrong, another American who won the Tour de France and who had to deal with doping allegations. But those comparisons also swiftly become contrasts. “This is the anti-Lance in so many ways,” Lim said Friday from his office in Boulder, Colo. “They’re similar in their self-belief and their willingness to win. But Floyd is a very simple individual: not self-important and doesn’t rate himself above anyone else. He’s less than a regular guy in that his life is so simple.” Armstrong used to arrive at Tour news conferences flanked by bodyguards and public relations advisers, but Landis, 30, was so ill prepared for his first session this year that he had to borrow a dress shirt and a blazer from a trainer to avoid appearing in a T-shirt. As his friends and colleagues describe him, there are two sides to Landis. The rider whose training program largely involves outworking everyone else is easily pigeonholed as the boy who endured hard work on his Mennonite family’s farm in Farmersville, Pa. The Jack Handey admirer, eccentric dresser and constant joker is almost a caricature of someone who escaped the farm more than a decade ago to become a mountain-bike racer in California. Landis had no sponsor and was sleeping on a friend’s floor when John Wordin, the director of a team sponsored by Mercury, saw him ride for the first time at a minor early-season race in California. “He was like an untamed stallion, he was so strong,” said Wordin, who now runs a sports marketing company. When Wordin consulted the other riders on his team about hiring Landis, the reaction was mixed. “Some of them thought he was too rash, too wild to fit in,” Wordin said. “But he was so strong that I couldn’t not take him.” Despite Landis’s decision to leave the farm and his faith, his relatives continued to support him. Dressed in traditional Mennonite clothing, they were an incongruous sight at race finishes, where riders frequently strip down in public and the conversation is often less than refined. Wordin never fully tamed Landis during his three-year stay at Mercury. “Floyd and I had a definite love-hate relationship,” Wordin said. “He’s very opinionated and he’s very outspoken. I had to tell him that there’s a line between being a joker and a jerk.” Phonak, sponsored by a Swiss hearing aid manufacturer, has become mired in doping cases to an unusual extent, even by cycling standards. Most famously, the former Postal Service rider Tyler Hamilton was on its roster in 2004 when a newly developed test discovered that he had injected another person’s blood to boost his level of oxygen-rich red blood cells. But, unlike some teams, Phonak had also fired managers and made other personnel changes in the wake of each new crisis. With Hamilton suspended from cycling and fired by the team, Landis was promoted to leader. His leadership style, however, was not based on Armstrong’s. Armstrong intimidated others sometimes and demanded respect, but Lim said that Landis earned it. “People think that I’m the physiologist who gives him guidance on everything,” Lim said. “But he inspires me.” His responses in news conferences, they say, are further examples of his sometimes misguided bluntness and his social ineptness. “It’s not a polished P.R. game with Floyd,” Vaughters said. “He just says what comes into his head.” Vaughters and Lim, who have spoken to Landis several times since the doping allegations, accept his denial. They argue that a single testosterone injection would not have produced that Stage 17 performance. Given that cycling’s credibility has been eroded by a series of doping scandals since police raids almost halted the 1998 Tour de France, they are not optimistic about the final outcome. “I believe in him 100 percent, and I’m proud of him,” Lim said. “He’s being made to pay for the sins of others that came before him.” As for Landis, Vaughters said: “More than anything, Floyd is very sad. I feel that he now may be thinking that this is retribution from God for all he did in the past.” The T/ET ratio test is historically problematic, prone to false positives. Besides the possible effect of cortisone on the test, it's known that alcohol has a strong effect. And we know that Floyd had more than a couple brews the night before the stage. Ethanol and T/E Tests |
| Posted by: KBK |
| #2 No doubt his testosterone level was high, compared to the French baseline of zero. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2006-07-29 14:31 |
| #1 1) The lab that tested Floyd's samples is the same lab that accused Armstrong of using EPO in 1999. 2) There are more through tests that will detect artificial testosterone; I hope to hell Floyd asks that both be done. 3) Floyd apparently passed all his other tests; it's curious to say the least that this one gets flagged. I smell a rat. A French one. |
| Posted by: Raj 2006-07-29 14:08 |