Floyd Doped. Get Over It.

If you're a fan of cycling and didn't crawl into a cave sometime between Wednesday night and today you are well aware that my boy, Floyd Landis, confessed to doping. If you're a fan of cycling you probably go to all the same websites that I do and so you've read about a hump-teen-ga-jillion articles on the topic. Being that this blog talks mostly about cycling I guess I feel (even though that's weird) some sort of obligation to at least express my thoughts on the ordeal.

I read the story Wednesday night from VeloNews on my iPhone. When I woke up the next morning there were about 15 emails that had already started circulating on the cycling team's list serve. Everyone was calling Floyd Landis an asshole. A friend who I used to ride with in San Francisco sent out an email to his riding buddies calling Floyd a huge asshole. Everyone but me, it seemed, had this knee jerk reaction to this news to the point that they thought they needed to share it. I found this odd. Just weeks ago there was a story on the news where a teacher beat a student and they have it on video. Nobody sent me an email calling this teacher an asshole. But Floyd Landis' drug confession warrants outrage...

I get why people are upset. Floyd put on a charade since the positive result came back. In actuality I think he did everything he should have done to try and over turn the case. He's not the first cyclist to question the validity of the test used or the ethical practice of the lab doing the testing. There's another pretty famous cyclist who has done this on several occasions and seems to walk away from it each time with his star power tripled. The one thing I do think that Floyd did absolutely wrong was establishing the Fairness Fund or whatever he called it. Basically Floyd went bankrupt and couldn't afford to pay his legal bills. So, he set up a fund where people who believed him could pitch in. It was all very "for the good of cycling." What it turned out to be was a sham and it's a shame he took his fan's money and squandered it away when he knew the truth all along. That aspect of this entire case I think justifies calling Floyd an asshole. But the doping? I'm not sure.

As a cyclist with a lot of non cycling friends, I always get asked the question, "Do you think Lance doped?" That is probably the single hardest question to answer in all of cycling. Legally, the answer is no. He's never been busted, he didn't do it. Logically, it seems almost impossible that he didn't. I was asked that very question this weekend and again I had to dance around the topic so that I don't crush the image of someone's favorite cyclist but I feel like there's a truth that people, especially Americans, just need to realize about that era, and more importantly, the history of cycling. It was, and maybe still is, a culture of cheating.

Lance is one of those guys who loves the science of what he does. I think that's one reason he's been so successful. When other guys thought TT bikes looked funny he was investing in wind tunnel testing to get as aerodynamic as possible. When other guys were eating chocolate in the off season (Jan Ulrich) he was taking advantage of testing things like his VO2Max and using a power meter to establish baselines for measurable results and projections of fitness. Because of this, it was often thought that Lance Armstrong was a freak of a human being recording numbers so high and off the charts that nobody else had anything of this level. Truth be told, everybody who rides in the professional peloton has V02Max numbers at least in the range of Lance, and he's certainly not the owner of the highest (That's some cross country skier from one of the Scandinavian countries). I remember reading a few years ago that our boy Floyd Landis had higher numbers than Lance and it's long been known that Tom Danielson (or Jan Ulrich) is the most "gifted" cyclist from a pure scientific stance. But, as they say, that's why they don't play the games on paper.

What's this have to do with Floyd doping and accusing Lance of doing the same? Bill Strickland pointed out on his blog, Sitting In, that of the 7 tours that Lance won 14 other podium spots up for grabs. 8 of those 14 podium spots were held by the same riders and 5 of those 8 have admitted to doping or were suspended for it. If Lance was surrounded by guys that were doping (not to mention the domestiques that left US Postal or Discovery to be busted later, ie., Roberto Heras, Tyler Hamilton and Floyd), and they're all pretty equal on paper, how'd he beat them so consistently? I know that question looks like I'm throwing Lance under the bus and I really don't mean to. Again, legally, Lance is clean and innocent because he's never tested positive. Maybe he beat them because he was willing to hurt more than they were. Maybe he beat them because he's just flat out better at racing his bike. Maybe he beat them because it meant more to him than it did to them. Maybe he beat them because instead of eating chocolate in the winter he was training. Those are all factors that would certainly make a difference in a 3 week bike race.

I have a tough time, except for the Fairness Fund, of telling all my friends how much of an asshole I think Floyd is. I defended him to just about every person who I've rode a bike with because I like/d Floyd and I really wanted to believe he won the Tour de France. I made up all sorts of excuses and debate points based on science I didn't and don't understand all in the name of trying to convince one more person to side with Floyd. Still, knowing now that it was all a waste of time, I can't say that I blame him. I've said it over and over again that it's easy to point the finger at these guys when they get busted and scold them and say "how could you?" But until you've had someone come to you and say "If this is how you want to make your living, this is what you have to do," I'm not sure you're in any place to be upset that Floyd chose to dope. If Floyd is telling the truth and all those other guys were on the juice as well, he has to feel betrayed that he got busted and nobody else did. At this point, I'm sure he looks at himself in the mirror and says something like, "Fine. I did it. But I'm not going down a lone." Isn't that what happens to drug dealers and the mafia? Eventually one person can't take it anymore and simply isn't willing to be the only one doing time for doing what everybody else was doing?

Floyd doped. Get over it. Did Lance and the other's named? Who knows. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But, in my humble opinion a cyclist doping isn't nearly a big enough deal for everyone to send out mass emails as if they've been personally assaulted by the guy.

Just for fun I responded to my friend's email using "reply all," which I generally despise. I wrote, "He's no Richard Virenque, but he's doing ok for himself." I'm not sure if a single person on that email list even knows who Richard Virenque is, but if not, hopefully they looked it up and found a story of a guy who somehow managed to dope his entire career and seemingly by ignoring the charges, won more polka dot jersey's than anyone in the history of the Tour. Mr. Virenque is French and to the French dopings not a serious crime. It's just part of the sport. It creates drama and that's what the French love about cycling, the drama. How's the saying go, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying?" Maybe that's just how it goes in cycling.