livestrong, die, or take performance-enhancing drugs

While some cycling fans, many of whom coincidentally seemed to be Reaganites, steadfastly stood by Floyd Landis' claims of innocence, readers of this blog will know that I never gave either Landis or Reagan much credit for being anything other than big dopes. However, just because Landis is the dopiest, angriest, most vindictive former member of the peleton doesn't mean he can't occasionally tell the truth.

Lance Armstrong has been the other big bully in cycling for years and bullies are yellow. Landis is Armstrong's 2nd teammate to accuse the 7-time TDF winner of systematic doping. Armstrong won the first case against Frankie Andreau and is winning the second one against Floyd in the court of public opinion. But should he? How is Lance any different than Barry Bonds? It's yet to be proven that Bonds took performance enhancing drugs to become the all-time home run king but everyone believes that he did. Only the superficial American cycling fan doesn't understand the fact that sure Lance has done more victory laps down the Champs Elysee than anyone in the history of cycling but that doesn't mean he's wasn't using. Listen to Lance and his coach when he speaks to the public, you'll hear him talk about being clean now and how he never had a positive test for performance enhancing drugs in his career.

The beloved and current US road champion, George Hincapie, sounded a lot like Mark McGuire the other day when he said he'd rather focus on the current state of cycling. Hincapie's sponsors (not the Steroids Anonymous ones!) would probably agree. A lot of cyclists can make similar statements about being clean today (ignoring yesterday) but no one else has Lance's seven TDF victories. And in America, we're all about winning. We're all about not getting caught. And we're all about being white.

It's hard to defend Landis because he has been such a bitter loser. Obviously what pains him the most is that he was doing what everyone else was doing at the time and he was the one who got caught and labeled a cheat. And others are seen as heroes. The timing of Landis' allegations during the Tour of California demonstrate just how bitter he remains. Landis, a former mountain bike world champion won the inaugural Tour of California. Now, he rides for a middling team that can't even buy entry into the event. And to make matters worst, Armstrong comes out of retirement and now all the media wants to do is talk about Lance. Lance. Lance. What a great guy. And his foundation. Awesome. All the time Landis is thinking, Jesus (forgive me, I have forsaken you), but I was just as good as this guy except I got caught and then burned by the system. This guys does it and he's a hero?

I don't think you've heard the end of this story but a lot of people with money and influence sure hope it goes away soon. Among those I count Radio Shack and the Livestrong Foundation. When the bottom line suffers, people take notice. Listen closely to their arguments against Landis and you'll discover that they always focus on labeling him and not on the issue of whether on not the accused took steroids during the time in question. Landis claims he spent as much as $90,000 a year on performance enhancing drugs. That should be pretty easy to prove if Landis cooperates. Authorities won't be able to access the finances of other riders who were implicated so all this will be hard, if not impossible to prove.

Ask yourself this. If Landis spent this kind of money to dope then the other top riders who claim innocence spent nothing? Also ask yourself this. Why are you so eager to find Barry Bonds guilty in the court of public opinion but not Lance Armstrong?

One of the more damning allegations, that the $100,000 contribution that Lance gave to the US anti-doping agency was in reality a bribe. UCI director. Pat McQuaid, strongly denied these allegations but this is one that should be pretty easy to uncover. For example, how many other $100,000 contributions did/does Lance routinely give and how many does UCI receive? We know the answer to the second question-none.