The Floyd Landis saga continues. Today they posted all of the case details and documents, as well as a overview of their defense on FloydLandis.com.
The opening line reads...
"Los Angeles, October 12, 2006 – Floyd Landis, 2006 Tour de France winner, has made public his case documents that use fact-based science to support his innocence in the alleged positive doping test of July 20, 2006. "
Well I'll say! It's about time we got some fact-based science up in here!
If you haven't been following along, this Landis issue is nothing short of a fiasco. The current state of sport is broken in so many ways. For those of you with better things to do than to follow this stuff, here's a quick history of what we've seen just in cycling over the last 10 years.
1998: Tour de France. Team Festina is caught with a grocery cart of, um, pick-me-ups in their team's possesion. They are ejected from the race, scandal ensues.
2004: Tyler Hamilton tests positive for EPO at the Olympics, then at the Vuelta (Tour of Spain). He strongly claims his innocence. I mostly believe him. He loses all his appeals, gets a two year ban.
1999-2005: Tour de France. Lance kicks the living shit out of everyone. Everyone outside of the US, plus many who don't live in Texas assume/believe he's on something too. I mean, really, the guy almost died from cancer. Right? He gets tested more than Mark Foley at a Junior State convention, but never fails. A few people claim to know facts that incriminate him, but they're all pissed at him for something else anyway, so who knows?
2006: Operation Puerto. Spanish authorities bust a doctor and doping ring allegedly involving about 50 riders. See, cycling is a more about confederations than teams. Even if you ride with Team X, you tend to have your own coach, your own doctor, etc. Anyway, three days before the Tour, they announce the names of those involved. It includes most of the top contenders for the 2006 Tour de France, including favorite and 2006 Tour of Italy winner Ivan Basso, who had just finished kicking the shit out of everyone in Italy in May. Lance style. Scandal ensues, and the teams hold all of those riders out of the race. Oh, Tyler Hamilton's name comes up too. Oops. Oh, but wait. None of these riders have yet to be formally charged with anything...hmmm...
2006: Tour de France. Open race! Clean race! Exciting race! Floyd rides strong, falters, then has an amazing comeback and picks up the win. Yay USA! Whispers start. A few days after the Tour, the UCI announces there was an adverse finding, and it was Floyd, and it was testosterone, and he's guilty pending testing of the B sample. So sorry!
So that basically brings us to today. This has torn cycling up. Sponsors dropped. Teams folded, etc. Regardless of guilt or innocence, there isn't anything even resembling due process here. Floyd hears a bunch of this stuff through the media. The UCI and WADA (World Anti Doping Assoc...) basically proclaim that the sport is dirty and Floyd is guilty because the tests are "foolproof". Nice.
The problem ends up being this: this has caused so much drama and trauma, what happens if the doping control folks turn out to be wrong? What then? Moreover, the way the rules are written, an athelete can't challenge the efficacy of a test (many are flaky, it turns out), they can't challenge the process, and they can't prove non-doping causes (for example, some people claim your testosterone ratios can be thrown out of whack by alcohol or different types of veggies you eat, etc). Sorry, positive test, too bad. The cards are really stacked against the atheletes. On the other hand, it's hard to loosen up much because all of them claim their innocence to the last breath, and will use any loophole they can find.
In any case, I haven't looked at Floyd's stuff. He's felt burned enough by the process that he wants anything going forward to be 100% public. I like transparency so I'll give him kudos for that. I'd also like to think that he's innocent. But, again, I believed Tyler too. The really unfortunate thing is that if he is innocent it's even a bigger tragedy than if he's guilty. The sport as a whole pays the price. Every amateur racer with a day job that busts his arse for a $20 prize and a water-bottle-prime who wants to look to the pros for inspiration pays the price. It's a mess that cycling has decided to confront versus some other sports that I won't mention.