http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/06/26/what_people_think_of_me_is_mea.html
'What people think of me is meaningless'
Floyd Landis should be about to defend his Tour de France win of last year, instead he is a drug-smeared pariah determined to clear his name.
If appearances counted for anything, then Floyd Landis would be arriving in London for the start of the Tour de France in 11 days' time as the pre-emptive favourite to defend his stunning victory of last July, and not as a pariah. Never has a man looked so innocent, so steady of gaze and sweet of disposition.
As he sat in a lecture hall at Pepperdine University in California last month, looking on as expensive lawyers argued over the positive drug test that transformed his image overnight from yellow-jerseyed hero to bare-faced cheat, he carried the air not of a top-class athlete staring down the barrel of ruination but of a wonder-struck schoolboy let loose for the day in the crazy, crazy world of grown-ups.
"I am looking forward to the hearing, delighted that finally I have the chance to put my case," Landis said before the US Anti-Doping Agency arbitration panel met to decide whether or not he should be banned for providing a positive "A" sample for testosterone on July 20, the day he rallied to win stage 17 of the 2006 Tour - a ride described by some observers as one of the greatest in the race's history.
Landis's carefully nuanced case against the methods employed by the French laboratory responsible for the positive test was submerged by a soap opera subplot involving his former manager and a plot to blackmail the former tour champion Greg LeMond, who was due to give evidence for Usada. The cyclist who pleads his innocence has become a target of contempt in recent years, not least because many of the "innocent" have subsequently been exposed as cheats. Landis is aware of this lineage but affects not to care that it now potentially includes his name.
"Before all of this happened I used to put more energy and time into caring what people thought about me but the truth is I'm not going to convince everybody," he says. "What people think of me personally is meaningless at this stage. They can think what they like. All I care about now is that the next guy who comes along gets the chance to defend himself. As the system stands, an accused person has no chance of proving he is innocent."
As with his generalised pleadings of innocence, it is easy to dismiss this apparent concern as self-serving claptrap. But the charge is harder to pin on Landis than might be thought, not least because he has put his money where his mouth is. The bill for defending himself over the last year stands at $2m (£1m) and is rising. Usada's arbitration panel will deliver its verdict later this summer but, assuming it rules against him - as most people, including Landis, are - he will take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
"Most of the money I made as a bicycle racer has gone to the lawyers. By the time we're done every penny will be gone," he says with the matter-of-fact tone of an experienced blackjack player facing up to a bad night at the tables. "Do I think it's been worth it? Yes, regardless of the result. It is not in my personality to take something like this and not defend myself. Athletes have walked away in the past because they didn't have the resources or the energy to stand up to Usada and Wada [World Anti-Doping Agency] and this laboratory in Paris. What people do not realise is these organisations make mistakes but they cover up those mistakes to protect themselves. That's completely unacceptable so, whatever it has cost me personally, of course it has been worth it."
Landis's lawyers spent endless hours at Pepperdine debating the methods used at the Châtenay-Malabry laboratory outside Paris, which delivered the positive result on Landis's "A" sample, as well as four positive "B" sample results. Most of the detail was incomprehensible to a lay person. Far clearer and more compelling was their insistence that the current procedures for dealing with so-called drugs cheats in sport fall short of standards of natural justice that apply in civilian life.
Even the mild-mannered Landis can muster up a degree of anger against those who leak drugs test results - "they might as well just set up an open fax line to L'Equipe newspaper" - against the cycling world's hierarchy - "a bunch of clowns" - and against **** Pound, the head of Wada, who wrote a newspaper column after the positive test urging him to "come clean" and confess - from Landis's viewpoint a bit like the supermarket security guard telling the shoplifter to 'fess up before he has even examined the contents of his bulging pockets. "Pound is just a loud mouth who just likes to see his name in the paper," Landis says of Wada's esteemed chairman.
But, if Pound has some explaining to do, so too does Landis, not least about his own conduct in the aftermath of last summer's events which struck some people as less plausible than they might have expected from an innocent man. Shifty and evasive were two of the milder adjectives that were flying around.
"When news of the positive test came to me I knew how the system worked, I knew it would be kept confidential until we could figure out what the deal was. And that's exactly what happened - it turned up in L'Equipe and the next thing you know I was guilty as charged. The fact is I hadn't even been given details of the test results. I didn't know what was in them. So not only did I not know why I was being accused, I didn't really know what I was being accused of."
But what of his apparent docility under questioning, not to mention his various explanations of what might have caused his positive result, ranging from a natural high level of testosterone to his imbibing a large amount of whisky the night before stage 17?
"People think I should have got angrier. I don't know what to say to that. It was a more stressful time in my life than I can ever remember and people react differently in those kinds of situations. I was angry. But I wasn't angry at the press or the people I was talking to. I was angry at those who had caused it to happen. As for the various explanations, I didn't know what had caused the positive test. In the circumstances all I could do was give people details of what I had been doing the day before in the hope there might be something in there," he says, although as those words come out he seems to sense their inadequacy. "The truth is I didn't know what to say. But I couldn't just hide, could I? There was no place to go."
With the Usada arbitration hearing behind him and his fate still undecided, Landis now finds himself staring into a wide horizon of uncertainty. In the short term he has a book, Positively False, to promote and he expects to be in London next week for Le Grand Départ
"I'm a cycling fan at the bottom of it all. Despite the people who are in charge, it is still my friends out there racing their bikes," he says dismissing the suggestion he is intent on embarrassing the race director, Christian Prudhomme, who said last month that Landis's name would be erased from the tour's records. "What is he going to do - sell videos of the race with a black spot over me?" Landis sneers. "How's that going to work?"
This month Landis came 36th in a mountain bike race in Denver, putting paid to the suggestion that he intended to return to his roots as a mountain biker. As for his career on the roads, he sounds like a man whose energies have been utterly spent.
"Why would I want to go back and deal with the people who are running the sport? As I said, they are clowns," he says before coming as close as he has ever come to announcing his retirement from the sport. "If I never race again I am proud of my cycling career. I made it all the way to the top and not many people can say that. Everybody's career ends sooner or later and, if that it how it has to be, then so be it. I have been one of the lucky few."
'What people think of me is meaningless'
Floyd Landis should be about to defend his Tour de France win of last year, instead he is a drug-smeared pariah determined to clear his name.
If appearances counted for anything, then Floyd Landis would be arriving in London for the start of the Tour de France in 11 days' time as the pre-emptive favourite to defend his stunning victory of last July, and not as a pariah. Never has a man looked so innocent, so steady of gaze and sweet of disposition.
As he sat in a lecture hall at Pepperdine University in California last month, looking on as expensive lawyers argued over the positive drug test that transformed his image overnight from yellow-jerseyed hero to bare-faced cheat, he carried the air not of a top-class athlete staring down the barrel of ruination but of a wonder-struck schoolboy let loose for the day in the crazy, crazy world of grown-ups.
"I am looking forward to the hearing, delighted that finally I have the chance to put my case," Landis said before the US Anti-Doping Agency arbitration panel met to decide whether or not he should be banned for providing a positive "A" sample for testosterone on July 20, the day he rallied to win stage 17 of the 2006 Tour - a ride described by some observers as one of the greatest in the race's history.
Landis's carefully nuanced case against the methods employed by the French laboratory responsible for the positive test was submerged by a soap opera subplot involving his former manager and a plot to blackmail the former tour champion Greg LeMond, who was due to give evidence for Usada. The cyclist who pleads his innocence has become a target of contempt in recent years, not least because many of the "innocent" have subsequently been exposed as cheats. Landis is aware of this lineage but affects not to care that it now potentially includes his name.
"Before all of this happened I used to put more energy and time into caring what people thought about me but the truth is I'm not going to convince everybody," he says. "What people think of me personally is meaningless at this stage. They can think what they like. All I care about now is that the next guy who comes along gets the chance to defend himself. As the system stands, an accused person has no chance of proving he is innocent."
As with his generalised pleadings of innocence, it is easy to dismiss this apparent concern as self-serving claptrap. But the charge is harder to pin on Landis than might be thought, not least because he has put his money where his mouth is. The bill for defending himself over the last year stands at $2m (£1m) and is rising. Usada's arbitration panel will deliver its verdict later this summer but, assuming it rules against him - as most people, including Landis, are - he will take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
"Most of the money I made as a bicycle racer has gone to the lawyers. By the time we're done every penny will be gone," he says with the matter-of-fact tone of an experienced blackjack player facing up to a bad night at the tables. "Do I think it's been worth it? Yes, regardless of the result. It is not in my personality to take something like this and not defend myself. Athletes have walked away in the past because they didn't have the resources or the energy to stand up to Usada and Wada [World Anti-Doping Agency] and this laboratory in Paris. What people do not realise is these organisations make mistakes but they cover up those mistakes to protect themselves. That's completely unacceptable so, whatever it has cost me personally, of course it has been worth it."
Landis's lawyers spent endless hours at Pepperdine debating the methods used at the Châtenay-Malabry laboratory outside Paris, which delivered the positive result on Landis's "A" sample, as well as four positive "B" sample results. Most of the detail was incomprehensible to a lay person. Far clearer and more compelling was their insistence that the current procedures for dealing with so-called drugs cheats in sport fall short of standards of natural justice that apply in civilian life.
Even the mild-mannered Landis can muster up a degree of anger against those who leak drugs test results - "they might as well just set up an open fax line to L'Equipe newspaper" - against the cycling world's hierarchy - "a bunch of clowns" - and against **** Pound, the head of Wada, who wrote a newspaper column after the positive test urging him to "come clean" and confess - from Landis's viewpoint a bit like the supermarket security guard telling the shoplifter to 'fess up before he has even examined the contents of his bulging pockets. "Pound is just a loud mouth who just likes to see his name in the paper," Landis says of Wada's esteemed chairman.
But, if Pound has some explaining to do, so too does Landis, not least about his own conduct in the aftermath of last summer's events which struck some people as less plausible than they might have expected from an innocent man. Shifty and evasive were two of the milder adjectives that were flying around.
"When news of the positive test came to me I knew how the system worked, I knew it would be kept confidential until we could figure out what the deal was. And that's exactly what happened - it turned up in L'Equipe and the next thing you know I was guilty as charged. The fact is I hadn't even been given details of the test results. I didn't know what was in them. So not only did I not know why I was being accused, I didn't really know what I was being accused of."
But what of his apparent docility under questioning, not to mention his various explanations of what might have caused his positive result, ranging from a natural high level of testosterone to his imbibing a large amount of whisky the night before stage 17?
"People think I should have got angrier. I don't know what to say to that. It was a more stressful time in my life than I can ever remember and people react differently in those kinds of situations. I was angry. But I wasn't angry at the press or the people I was talking to. I was angry at those who had caused it to happen. As for the various explanations, I didn't know what had caused the positive test. In the circumstances all I could do was give people details of what I had been doing the day before in the hope there might be something in there," he says, although as those words come out he seems to sense their inadequacy. "The truth is I didn't know what to say. But I couldn't just hide, could I? There was no place to go."
With the Usada arbitration hearing behind him and his fate still undecided, Landis now finds himself staring into a wide horizon of uncertainty. In the short term he has a book, Positively False, to promote and he expects to be in London next week for Le Grand Départ
"I'm a cycling fan at the bottom of it all. Despite the people who are in charge, it is still my friends out there racing their bikes," he says dismissing the suggestion he is intent on embarrassing the race director, Christian Prudhomme, who said last month that Landis's name would be erased from the tour's records. "What is he going to do - sell videos of the race with a black spot over me?" Landis sneers. "How's that going to work?"
This month Landis came 36th in a mountain bike race in Denver, putting paid to the suggestion that he intended to return to his roots as a mountain biker. As for his career on the roads, he sounds like a man whose energies have been utterly spent.
"Why would I want to go back and deal with the people who are running the sport? As I said, they are clowns," he says before coming as close as he has ever come to announcing his retirement from the sport. "If I never race again I am proud of my cycling career. I made it all the way to the top and not many people can say that. Everybody's career ends sooner or later and, if that it how it has to be, then so be it. I have been one of the lucky few."
