What a Rocking Few Minutes…Floyd Landis out, Leslie Byrne In

My phone rings off the hook from the breadth of my widespread universe…within a very few minutes I discover that:

a) Floyd Landis appeal denied 2-1 by his arbitration panel. Landis must forfeit his Tour de France title and is subject to a two-year ban, retroactive to Jan. 30, 2007.
b) RK announces that Leslie Byrne has formed an exploratory committee for a possible 11th Congressional District race in 2008.

Too bad on Floyd…I had hoped that somehow he would be cleared. Great move by Leslie Byrne both for herself and Mark Warner. Her announcement will put pressure on Gerry Connolly to announce shortly after the Supervisor elections whether he will run or not, and also on Tom Davis as to what he is running for in 2008.

Dan Daly Destroys Landis Due Process

Running from a link at Trust by Verify, I find that Dan Daly of the Washington Times has decided that Rodney Harrison of the New England Patriots, who recently tested positive for HGH and confessed to the same, is on a different run of guilt than other “drug cheats”. Daly goes on to use Ben Johnson, Barry Bonds, and Floyd Landis as the “scoundrels” occupying certain “circle of hell”, and somewhat excuses Harrison because he didn’t “mess with history”.

Now, I want to believe Floyd Landis did not dope. At this point, the process by which his samples were tested is so fraught with miscues, missteps, mislabeling, misuse of equipment, and misuse of confidentiality that I think the only fair thing is to say the body of evidence from inconsistent tent methods to inconsistent methodology is so inconclusive that the benefit of the doubt has to go to Landis, and he is reinstated.

That’s just me. Nonetheless, Landis matter is still under appeal. He has never said he doped (as did Johnson or Harrison), nor is there circumstantial evidence or significant physical evidence (as with Bonds). One might think that Daly might exercise a little restraint before casting reputations to the flames. One might think Daly would allow the process to work before calling folks out as cheats.

Yeah….like that is going to happen.

So, here is my prediction. We can see what Daly will write if the Landis appeal is denied. However, if Landis wins his appeal, I bet Daly will choose to either ignore the ruling or dive into the Greg LeMond “technicalities” line of argument.

It will be a pity whichever course he chooses.

Big Weekend-Get outside

This is a big weekend…College football starts, and my beloved D3 Bridgewater College Eagles start their campaign to regain the ODAC crown by taking on McDaniels, while SWMBO’s alma mater the James Madison University Dukes (home of the Marching Royal Dukes) will whack the Tar Heels this PM.

Non spotlight sports also have their time in the sun-the Vuelta a Espana ( the Spanish version of the Tour de France) kicks off today.  Anyone who thinks cyclists are sissy’s in their tight outfits should think about what it takes to ride a bike up and down the Pyrenees.

But more important, the weather is supposed to be phenominal-at least here in NoVa-and that means get out of the house!  Do something outside!  Enjoy the last days before school starts!  Grill some steaks…oh, and grab the last of the summer squash, slice it up, souse with olive oil and pepper, and toss that on the grill, too!

You may ask, “Bwana, if it is so great to get outside, why are you blogging?”

Answer-because when I go outside I will be pulling weeds, so I am putting that off as long as I can.

Enjoy the Weekend!

Quo Vadis Due Process in Cycling?

The folks at Trust But Verify yesterday linked to a Denver Post interview with three time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond regarding doping in professional cycling.  Sadly, while LeMond brings up a number of viable concerns he also shows he is incapable of objectivity in the Floyd Landis matter.

LeMond goes on at length about Tyler Hamilton and Landis, pretty much demanding they confess to sins against the sport:

“Everybody’s entitled to defend themselves. But the reality is to go out into the public, like the Floyd Fairness Fund, and be asking people who are so gullible and who really don’t know what’s going on? I don’t know how, in a morally conscious way, that he’s able to do that.”

LeMond later demonstrates he has already judged Landis, and offered him psychological advice by telling him before the recent doping hearing:

“I told him, ‘Floyd, you may think you can get away and hide your lie, but it’s always there and it works on you and it works on you,”‘ LeMond said. “‘And in 15-20 years it manifests itself. It’s proven throughout psychotherapy and (with) psychologists and psychiatrists that trauma or lying or not being true to yourself has a dramatic effect on self- destructiveness.”‘

Lemond does not see himself as a bad guy…

“People misunderstand me,” LeMond said. “I’m not against Floyd. I’m not against Tyler. The only thing I’m against is a guy who’s not an honest person and who lives a façade, that he’s really not a good person. That’s my only issue with them. But Floyd and Tyler, you don’t see European riders who get busted and who go out on this PR campaign and try to tell everybody, ‘Believe in me.”‘

Finally, LeMond comes in for the crusher:

LeMond…believes in the French lab Landis is challenging. However, LeMond fears for the sport if Landis is proven innocent and the lab is put under heavy suspicion.

“I think if Floyd gets off because of a technicality,” LeMond said, “it would be a big blow to the anti-doping movement.”

Yep, wouldn’t want a little thing like innocence to get in the way of the movement.

LeMond is waltzing into the territory of being unethical if not a little unstable.  At one edge, I feel sorry for him.  He won in 1986 after fighting off a challenge from a teammate (Bernard Hinault) who was supposed to be helping him.  LeMond got shot in 1987, and spent 1988 in continued recovery.  He won the 1989 Tour by using bike sprint technology not previously used in the Tour to win the final time trial and propel himself into an 8 second lead.  LeMond’s 1990 victory occured without his winning any stages.

Bottom line, LeMond was a champion without instant replay moments.  None of his wins had a start to finish dominance of Lance Armstrong, nor did it have that signature stage win.  Perhaps such is fertile ground for bitterness.

Are LeMond’s comments about dopiong in pro cycling accurate.  Most likely.  Nonetheless, LeMond has prejudged Landis-so much for any concern about due process.  LeMond has effectively said there were no mistakes in the testing, despite the bulk of evidence at the Landis hearing that showed there was more than reasonable doubt that tests were not conducted properly, despite evidence of chicanery, and despite a wild variety of lab standards used to measure testosterone.

But nooooooooooooooooo, LeMond knows Landis is guilty.  So certain, he apparently thinks the only way Landis can be cleared is through a “technicality”.  He may not have noticed it, but technicalities crop up in life every day…from contracts to criminal trials. Technicalities are there to protect rights…unless you are 100% certain of something.

When LeMond takes a whack at Tyler Hamilton’s protestations, I can dig it.  I have not seen the evidence that suggests that although the “false twin” effect exists, that Hamilton had it.  Between the evidence at Landis’s trial and his accounts in his recent book, I think there is no clear certainty that Landis doped…and I wish Greg LeMond would stop prejudging his peers and let the process play out before adopting the role of sanctimonious sage and prosecutor he is suddently so comfortable in.

FOLLOW UP: This just in from Sara Best: The TdeF Greg LeMond Should Have Won. Like she says, until the mystery of the secret motorcycles is solved no one is safe.

“End the Tour” and other Doping Dementia

I have a tendency to follow less than mainstream sports.  I am a long time chess player and have always followed the tournaments, but the internet has allowed other native interests to blossom so that I can follow everything from Division III football to the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition in a very timely fashion.

But through the efforts of a co-worker I also follow some pro cycling, and the reaction of some American writers to the recent doping difficulties on the Tour de France is so silly as to be HC.  HC, by the by, is the highest categorization given to a mountain on a Tour course, and  translates roughly as “without comparison”.

For example, Michael Ventre at MSNBC wants to scrap the tour until it is perfectly clean. His colleage Bryan Burwell gets off a collateral shot while wallowing with his cynical side. In addressing the Barry Bonds fiasco he argues Bonds is not the only person in sports who is tainted, and then appends a list of names that included Lance Armstrong.

While I am not one to defend Tour officials and some of their questionable practices, one can only suspect from these columns that these and other writers have been engaging in some recreational chemistry of their own to toss this stuff out.

General to the topic, there is clearly as much chance of France moving to shut down the Tour as their is of a Greek held Olympic games deciding to cancel the Marathon event. The Tour is an event of international stature and national pride, and it will tough it out. Clearly if Mr. Ventre was engaging in real journalism, he would have made a similar suggestion about professional baseball during the steroid era…a column I cannot seem to find.

Regarding taint, Mr. Burwell might note that while Barry Bonds conduct has been of a level that he had to testify before a grand jury that Lance Armstrong-in winning the Tour de France seven consecutive times-was tested innumerable times and never failed a drug test. The French labs, which are so quick to claim doping, have never come close to reasonably suggesting he doped. When a sponsor attempted to welch on a contract with Armstrong because of doping concerns, Armstrong sued and won-which, if there was proof of doping, he could never have done.

Mr. Burwell also mentions Roger Clemens.  Dang it and excuse me, but all I have never seen any allegation of doping on Mr. Clemens part…yet Mr. Burwell puts him in the same company as Barry Bonds and Floyd Landis (who, by the way, is still deep in an appeal process to show he is not guiltly of doping-which means the jury is still out).  But that doesn’t matter to folks like BB, who prefer creation of flashy copy rather than good copy.

One of the mildly humorous aspects of all this is that the Doping enforcement model is based on a “guilty until proven innocent” concept…which I am sure these writers would find abhorent if applied to anything else. 

 The real cynicsm is found in Burwell’s comment “But the cheats are everywhere. The liars and witch doctors lurk behind every grand achievement.”  He fails to mention the scribes and charlatans of the mass media who saw first hand what was happening, could have been in the forefront of sounding the call that something was amiss.  To now adopt such a tone of ennui when sportswriters across the country saw what was in the locker rooms, saw up close and personal how these players bodies were being recreated, had the bully pulpit to say something-and didn’t…well, that is about as demented as it is to cast stones at folks who either have not been suspected or have been challenged and been found clean.

This is not to say that I approve of doping.  I don’t.  I think doping damages the players who use, undermines the sport they participate in, and sets an incredibly bad example for those who want to emulate them both morally and physically.  However, as far as records go, baseball chose to turn a blind eye and not test.  To the layman’s eye, Barry Bonds clearly juiced.  Compare his body as a young man to what he has now, look at the sudden upturn in his statistics after the age of 35, and there really is no other explanation.  However, without a test or without complete consensus to put an “RX” after steroid records, how can you say for a fact that he juiced?  If he has the brazen chutzpah to say and believe he didn’t, and he wasn’t caught, and it wasn’t against the letter of the law when he did it, how can you not put him in the record books?

However, putting him in the record books does not mean we honor him.  We don’t and we won’t.  But unless you want to  put an asterisk next to all those in positions of power who saw it happening and did nothing, how can you asterisk Bonds?

That’s crazy talk, as is talk about ending the tour or claiming that every great atheletic acheivement in the last fifteen years is questionable.  It is the deluded babble of ink stained wretches who need to write something, anything, to meet deadline.  It is the demented stylings of a profession who want to tear down folks they used to build up.  It is the vicious scibblings of people who have a forum and an audience who find it easier to point fingers than to look in the mirror, own up to their part, and try to make things better so they are not tempted to indulge their silliness again.