Floyd Landis confesses to doping and implicates Lance Armstrong

[Hound]

Its gas they way the pro-Lance brigade still stick their heads in the sand. There are others too who haven't been caught.

Lance is a cheat.

Anyone who admires him for his cycling feats is delusional, or foolish. Unless being a better cheat than most is somehow admirable.

[Dinny Breen]

Jesus I'd hate to have some of you preachers on any jury of my peers if I was ever up for trial. No one has provided any evidence thus far, just conjecture.

Armstrong is physiologically a beast, he has run a sub-3 hour marathon with a stress fracture to his chin, he may or may not have used drugs but to fight and beat cancer the way he did to dominate a sport like he did (it was a level playing field drugs or no drugs i.e if he was on drugs then they all were), he's still a man that is an inspiration to 1000s of cancer sufferers.

Lance Armstrong guilty until proven innocent...

[deiseach]

Jesus I'd hate to have some of you preachers on any jury of my peers if I was ever up for trial. No one has provided any evidence thus far, just conjecture.

Armstrong is physiologically a beast, he has run a sub-3 hour marathon with a stress fracture to his chin, he may or may not have used drugs but to fight and beat cancer the way he did to dominate a sport like he did (it was a level playing field drugs or no drugs i.e if he was on drugs then they all were), he's still a man that is an inspiration to 1000s of cancer sufferers.

Lance Armstrong guilty until proven innocent...

I'd hate to have you as my lawyer - "yerra, they were all at it!"



Seriously, there is merit to what you say. Whatever way you cut it, Armstrong was head and shoulders over his peers. If they were all clean, he still would have won the lot. But I'd be laughed out of court (so to speak) if I were to suggest Claudio Gentile can't have ever put in a hard tackle because the only time he was ever sent off was for handball.

[maddog]

Whatever about the latest allegations, it just defied belief for me to accept that someone could be so dominant in such a drug-addled sport, yet be clean himself. He's as dirty as the rest of them.

But to me the idea that everyone else was at it yet all those drugs were only good enough for them to be able to get a bit closer to the one clean guy in the peleton is fanciful.

Is it ? It could be argued that the standard of cycling since the end of Hinault, Lemond, Fignon era has been average, allowing the likes of Indurain and then Armstrong to dominate.

[stew]

Whatever about the latest allegations, it just defied belief for me to accept that someone could be so dominant in such a drug-addled sport, yet be clean himself. He's as dirty as the rest of them.

Thank God the likes of yourself wasn't a member of the Judiciary in the wee six during the troubles with that line of thinking.

[AbbeySider]

Whatever about the latest allegations, it just defied belief for me to accept that someone could be so dominant in such a drug-addled sport, yet be clean himself. He's as dirty as the rest of them.

Thank God the likes of yourself wasn't a member of the Judiciary in the wee six during the troubles with that line of thinking.

Thank God the likes of yourself wasn't a member of the Judiciary in the The Nuremberg Trials after the war with that line of thinking.

[gerry]

landis for the past 4 years has said that he did not take drugs, spent millions in court saying he was drug free and wrote a book to say the same.  now we should all believe that he did take drugs, where is landis credibility.

[Puckoon]

Jesus I'd hate to have some of you preachers on any jury of my peers if I was ever up for trial. No one has provided any evidence thus far, just conjecture.

Armstrong is physiologically a beast, he has run a sub-3 hour marathon with a stress fracture to his chin, he may or may not have used drugs but to fight and beat cancer the way he did to dominate a sport like he did (it was a level playing field drugs or no drugs i.e if he was on drugs then they all were), he's still a man that is an inspiration to 1000s of cancer sufferers.

Lance Armstrong guilty until proven innocent...

Couldnt agree more. The man is a stud - forget all the tour wins - to come back from his cancer like that takes some beating.

Although I'm not sure how important your chin is to running.

[Hardy]

Although I'm not sure how important your chin is to running.

Unless it could trip you up.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/05/19/article-0-09A11618000005DC-552_468x738.jpg

[Main Street]

I don't know anything about the drug scene in cycling but the $100,000 gift from Lance towards the Cycling drug testers has more than a bit of a whiff about it, regardless how Pat McQuaid explains it.

[Tyrones own]

Right but if indeed he did teach landis how to administer the hormones without detection
then how come he got caught simply didn't pay attention in class that day I suppose
Landis is more to be pitied than laughed at imo

http://sports.yahoo.com/video/player/news/AP_Sports/19940667;_ylt=Apv_R8ncFgD3f.yV4EWJ1l97grcF#news/AP_Sports/19940667

[AbbeySider]

Right but if indeed he did teach landis how to administer the hormones without detection
then how come he got caught

He gave a urine sample that had higher than normal levels of testosterone.

simply didn't pay attention in class that day I suppose
Landis is more to be pitied than laughed at imo

Maybe he should have done a Michelle Smith on it and put whiskey in the sample.

The difference between the two is that Lance is better



at cheating
I think its the pro-Lancers that I pity

[Tyrones own]

He gave a urine sample that had higher than normal levels of testosterone.

Yes he did...and so he's a cheating hewer, think we can all agree with that!

Maybe he should have done a Michelle Smith on it and put whiskey in the sample.

OK...not sure what that has to do with anything though

The difference between the two is that Lance is better

Again no argument there
According to my yahoo link above, it's quite simply put up or shut up time for Landis...
so whadda ye say we all hold our breaths and wait for this proof that he has

[J70]

Jesus I'd hate to have some of you preachers on any jury of my peers if I was ever up for trial. No one has provided any evidence thus far, just conjecture.

Armstrong is physiologically a beast, he has run a sub-3 hour marathon with a stress fracture to his chin, he may or may not have used drugs but to fight and beat cancer the way he did to dominate a sport like he did (it was a level playing field drugs or no drugs i.e if he was on drugs then they all were), he's still a man that is an inspiration to 1000s of cancer sufferers.

Lance Armstrong guilty until proven innocent...

I've no problem with the inspirational fight against cancer bit. I do have a big problem with the idea that he was able to so comprehensively dominate a sport that was rife with doping while remaining squeaky clean himself. That may well be unfair to him (if he was clean, how dominant could he have been in a clean sport?), but how anyone could not be suspicious is beyond me.

And that's all we're talking about... suspicion. Courts and juries are a different thing altogether - the case has to be proven. Look at OJ Simpson. Broad US public opinion says he murdered his wife and Ron Goldman. But he was acquitted by a jury filled with African Americans who were brought up in a segment of society so filled with police brutality and stitch-ups that their mistrust of the law led to enough reasonable doubt to prevent conviction. Not saying it has any parallels to Armstrong, but just that the courtroom and public opinion are two different things (and you could choose any number of cases to make the comparison).

[mountainboii]

Interesting piece in the Tribune yesterday.

Trans America, Dave Hannigan - US fans a pack of dopes when it comes to drugs

To understand just how little America cares about whether or not Lance Armstrong is on steroids, you need to know the story of Brian Cushing. A linebacker with the Houston Texans, Cushing's first season in the NFL was so impressive he was recently voted the league's defensive rookie of the year, a prestigious enough bauble voted on by journalists. Days after the announcement however, it emerged that Cushing tested positive for a banned female fertility drug (commonly used as a masking agent by steroid users) during the campaign and, consequently, will be suspended for the start of next season.

As sponsors of the award, the Associated Press decided it would be only fair to have a re-vote, allowing all the hacks involved to cast their ballots again in the light of the damning, new information against the winner. What might have seemed like fair play to the rest of the sports world was deemed utterly ridiculous over here. The reaction to the decision was so negative that one of the AP editors had to go on sports talk radio in New York to defend the very idea of a second ballot. Against that unpromising background, it wasn't so surprising that when the new results were announced, Cushing won again.

So, a guy who has had persistent steroid whispers following him since he first bulked up at a too-big, too-fast rate at high school in New Jersey was openly endorsed by the type of reporters many might reasonably expect to be in the vanguard of the movement against cheating. There's only one problem with that. A lot of journalists and a lot of Americans don't regard the use of performance-enhancing drugs as cheating. Why? Various reasons, including the old saw: "They're all at it so it's a level playing field."

The Cushing example is only the latest to offer a window into the odd attitude to doping in these parts. There are plenty of others. Following one of the most craven and embarrassing performances ever before a Congressional hearing into steroid use in 2005, the former St Louis Cardinals' slugger Mark McGwire spent years in hiding. He needn't have bothered. This winter, he was rehired by the Cardinals as a hitting coach, offered a kinda, sorta, not quite apology for the steroid use that made him the most feared slugger in the game back in the 1990s, and is now treated like a god all over the country.

Every night, fans queue up to get his autograph and to have their photographs taken with him. One of the most famous cheats in the history of the sport? No, not anymore. Today, he's back to being the gargantuan home run machine from the magical summer of 1998. That summer might have been more chemically-enhanced than the average East German Olympic team but who's worried about that now? Not the fathers bringing their sons forward to get a snap taken with Big Mac.

The incendiary Floyd Landis emails seem to have had plenty of people in Europe, Britain and Ireland tut-tutting and nodding their heads sagely. Over here, the revelations mostly elicited shrugs of shoulders. So what? Who cares? Big deal? The indifference towards behaviour that challenges the integrity of all competitive sport is no longer even that shocking because it's such an intrinsic part of the culture. Professional athletes cheat. Get over it. This admittedly bizarre attitude may have its roots in Americans regarding sport as part of the entertainment industry. Just like with movie special effects, they don't care a jot how magical feats are performed as long as they get the joy of witnessing them. In the space of seven months last year, the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez went from being exposed for serial steroid usage to being feted along Manhattan's canyon of heroes by a million people. That his greatness had a chemical stench to it didn't bother the fans once he was part of a World Series-winning team.

It helps too that there's no stigma attached to steroid use. Several NFL and baseball players have gone from being caught using to working as pundits on television. You'd think their credibility might be affected by their doping. You'd be wrong. There can't be any shame attached when the very same products they exploited are so prevalent it's difficult to spend half an hour in a suburban gym here without being offered the stuff by some meathead bodybuilder.

As the only people seriously interested in exposing drug cheats, the FBI may be the last best hope for those who'd like this country to grow up and face down this burgeoning problem. The feds exposed baseball as a pharmaceutical joke, are currently using the case of Canadian doctor Anthony Galea to dig deeper into the NFL's chronic steroid usage, and, via the legendarily dogged special agent Jeff Novitzky (the man behind the BALCO story), could yet be the ones to shatter the myth of Armstrong's greatness.

In the meantime, consider this. Armstrong was participating in the Tour of California when the Landis story broke. That event has been sponsored for a number of years by AMGEN. Who are they? A biotechnology company most famous for producing the synthetic form of EPO. The same EPO that is apparently the drug of choice in the sport of cycling. And the funniest part of all is nobody around here cares enough to even regard that commercial relationship as even slightly inappropriate.

dhannigan@tribune.ie

May 30, 2010