Comments on: Is Floyd Landis The Only Person Who Thinks He’s Innocent?

By: David Brower

David Brower — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:39:39 +0000

The case is still open, and neither the charges nor the defense have really been offered as of yet. I’d prefer him to be innocent, and there explanations of unclear plausibility that say he is. We just don’t know yet.
I am keeping a close track of this case in a blog that may be of interest to those who care or are curious, at http//trustbut.blogspot.com
-dB

By: Tyler Hamilton

Tyler Hamilton — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 07:44:40 +0000

Funny how 1 of Landis’ 5(?) samples tests positive
and 0 of probably over 50 of Armstrong’s test never did. From the interviews pre-Tour all the American riders were saying what a stand up guy Landis was (while barely hiding their disdain for Armstrong).

By: Lettuce

Lettuce — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 18:56:05 +0000

Anyone who would trust Dick Pound or anyone assocaited with him with their lives is already dead.
Maybe Landis keeps insisting he’s innocent because… Wait for it…
He’s innocent?
Why not let the process play out, and see if he gets his public hearing (who looks like they have nothing to hide now?) before you anylyze him?
He’s a real human being, you know. He’s not just an image on your TV

By: zak822

zak822 — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:11:04 +0000

No, Floyd is not the only one. Taking testosterone at the time alleged would provide him with absolutly no advantage. He knows that. I know that, and I’m not involved in cycling. Testosterone could be beneficial during training, but not during a race. Landis would be an idiot to try it, knowing that if he won the dope would be exposed in the mandatory winners drug test.
Landis was tested several times during the race, and tested the day before and the day after the tainted sample was taken. He could not be clean on, for example, Tuesday, dirty on Wed. and clean on Thursday. It doesn’t work like that.
Something is fishy here. The test results were released far too quickly, very much outside the norm to release them before sample B was tested.
People are too quick to tear a guy down. On this one, few people are bothering to think it through.

By: scott

scott — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 19:06:50 +0000

Floyd didn’t do it. I don’t trust the UCI, WADA, the French lab, the French or USA Cycling. Floyd ain’t Lance. He’s just a riders rider. He is not as articulate as Lance and doesn’t have the support of anyone at this point except the people who know him. He is being tried and hung without a trial. The heads of the organizations involved can’t even follow their own rules. None of the people commenting here are going by anything but their opinion. In the US we don’t find people guilty based on an uninformed bystanders opinion.
All of the noncycling administrators should be fired and replaced with people who know what it’s like to be an athelete and rider.

By: Annie

Annie — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:11:25 +0000

Landis has bought his own B.S. Come on, we’ve all seen instances of this — although maybe I’ve observed more of it after working in law firms for 20-plus years. People convince themselves of something and then, by continuing to insist on it, further engrave it into their brains, even though it is not objectively the truth. I bet if you hooked Landis up to a polygraph he’d test out as believing what he’s saying.
It’s called “denial.” Except for gravity, it’s the strongest force in the universe — and I have days when I’m not so sure gravity is stronger.
I have toyed with various theories about this, just as a way of making sense of it myself, but I always come back to the idea that it’s a way of saying, “whatever I have or haven’t done I don’t deserve what’s happening because of it.” For Landis, who I assume worked his ass off for years training for the Tour, and probably knows of other people who also used testosterone or other forbidden items, his EMOTIONAL reaction is that it isn’t fair for him to get all this bad press and hoo-hah for something not limited to him.
I am NOT saying the bad press and hoo-hah is objectively unfair. I’m just trying to make sense of an emotional reaction. It’s similar, I think, to the reactions of parents whose children are convicted of crimes and sent to prison. Their pain at what is happening to their kid (and maybe guilt at whatever mistakes they may have made in their upbringing) morphs from “my precious baby doesn’t deseve this treatment he’s getting because he did Thing X” to “my baby didn’t do Thing X.”

By: space

space — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:54:41 +0000

Frankly, I am more convinced of Floyd’s guilt based on his behavior following the positive results than I am by the actual circumstances.
Instead of angrily accusing the lab of letting someone tamper with his specimen, he has fallen back on rather weak, general denials.
First, he complained about the semi-official leak of the results before the B sample was tested. This is a genuine complaint, but who cares? You’ve just been accused of cheating to win the Tour and your first concern is that the accusers didn’t follow protocols?
Next, he has fallen into this general “I’m innocent” claim without proffering a theory for why the samples were positive. If you want me to believe that you are innocent, I need to see a lot more angry table-banging and finger-pointing.

By: Tony C.

Tony C. — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:12:21 +0000

I work in the Thoroughbred racehorse business, and, unfortunately, we face a similarly serious drug problem. The vets I have spoken to all agree that it is actually likely that the sample was somehow tampered with. They arrive at that conclusion because, as another in this thread touched on, Testosterone could not possibly act quickly enough to help Landis had it been administered during the race (remember: only one leg’s test result came up positive).
It is also quite interesting that the sample which turned up positive was associated with his most brilliant leg of the race, suggesting that whoever tampered with the sample was attempting to be especially clever.
The only other possible explainations are that he knowingly cheated by using a susbstance which could not have helped his performance (highly unlikely); he was given something without his knowledge (a possible form of tampering, though highly unlikely if given by one of his allies for the reason already stated); or that he took a seemingly innocuous supplement which produced the positive (possible, given that many “natural” supplements would have such an effect, though unlikely given how incredibly careful elite athletes are in this area).
Bear in mind that I am generally very skeptical of athletes in these situations, but in this case, I tend to be circumspect.
In any case, this is no Barry Bonds slam dunk…
Tony C.

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:57:30 +0000

The Phonak cycle team Landis rode for(past tense) has been disbanded by the lead sponsors. This sort of collective economic sanction is rough justice, but offers a chance of changing the culture of tolerance of doping in cycling.

By: rilkefan

rilkefan — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:38:54 +0000

Ok, ignorant question – a spike in testosterone in the middle of the race would be of zero competitive value – why bother?

By: MobiusKlein

MobiusKlein — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:32:41 +0000

Somebody spiked his drink?
If he is guilty, then somebody suplied the Testosterone to him. Somebody out there would know more, and could be induced to come forward. It’s not like he had his own bio-lab to brew it up.