Floyd Landis speaks...

[OakLeaf]

Paint me cynical.

But the bottom line is that regardless of who was or was not technically breaking the rules, "doping" and biotech generally is regulated, not banned. I'm sure there's no one active in professional sport who's never had sport-related surgery; tweaked their body position in a wind tunnel; used caffeine, ibuprofen, lab-tested amino acid combinations or other substances that are legal in sport; etc., etc., etc. I mean, if all drugs were banned to all competitors, Lance would probably be dead, right (or more realistically, have never competed after his diagnosis)?

Sport is about rules. Rules by definition have a point at which they are completely arbitrary, and the sanctioning body just has to draw a line somewhere. The job of everyone on any team in any sport is to find a way around the rules. Sometimes people get carried away and go through instead of around. And then it's the sanctioning body's job to disqualify them, whether the violation is taking steroids or wearing a string around one's wrist.

[jobob]

Here's an interesting article
http://www.cycle-smart.com/blog/2010...etty-boy-floyd

At the same time, at no point did I think Landis was innocent, or that he hadn't been doping. But every time I'd see him talk about it, I felt like he was always winking while he did it. My understanding of Floyd's position went something like this: "Oh **** yes I doped. I doped just like everyone else did. I did not invent doping, and I understood that at the level I was at, it was part of my job description, like Lance, like George. So why should I be the only one who goes down for it?" I saw Landis fighting the charges not because he hadn't doped, because like all his peers, he had. I saw him fighting it because he thought the system was ****ed up, and I mean the whole system. The team he was on that encouraged him to dope, the labs that didn't follow their own rules, the UCI that had its own interests to protect. Why would any of us expect Floyd to "do the right thing" here, and in his mind, take the fall or be the scapegoat for a system he participated in by choice, but that he sure didn't invent?