Tour de France Bombshell

Just when it couldn’t get any worse for Floyd Landis, also known as Pond Scum Emeritus, comes this bombshell from out of left field: Bjarne Riis, 1996 Tour de France winner and the lone Dane to take the yellow jersey, openly admitted to doping during his career, including his Tour victory.

As reported by Jan Olsen of the AP, Riis made the following statement: “I have taken doping. I have taken EPO.” Riis went on to add that he’d also used cortisone and human growth hormone, and that the only side effects he’d ever noticed were that they made him ride faster.

For anyone thinking that perhaps I’m making a bit too much of this issue, here’s a comparable situation: someone uncovers a film reel of Babe Ruth admitting that he swung corked bats.

This is enormously significant. In a smaller but no less important context, it practically forces Floyd Landis’ hand. A recent former champion of the Tour has openly admitted to using drugs to compete. The Duck-And-Cover defense will no longer suffice for the Landis camp. One might think that there are no other alternatives left the disgraced rider, except that this is the same man who attempted to use Greg LeMond’s personal tragedy against him in an effort to protect his own drug-enhanced skin. While there may yet be some small expiation of guilt available to him should he recant his bogus testimony, the fear here is that Landis will so something stupid in response. After all, that is his modus operandi thus far.

But in a much larger context, say this much for Riis: he single-handedly opened up a seething can of worms where the Tour is concerned. Now we must rightly question the ability of anyone in the past eleven years to win the race completely clean, even as his confession amounts to public self-immolation. (Lance Armstrong, please pick up the white courtesy phone…) If a former Tour champion can come clean about using human growth hormone, and if a current Tour champion stands guilty of having tested positive for using performance-enhancers, what are we to believe of the winners between 1996 and now? I’m sorry, but I only had so much benefit of doubt to give out, and none where sports are considered. Count me among those who must now openly wonder about Lance Armstrong and his seven consecutive Tour wins. The Tour was testing in 1996 when Riis was using; I’d be a fool not to believe that racers have not improved test-beating techniques since then…and there’s STILL no reliable test for HGH, which means that, short of an open and public confession, we’d have to have videotaped evidence of Michael Vick at a dogfight helping Jose Canseco inject a guy in the buttocks before we could believe it.

And what does this now mean in light of Jason Giambi’s recent assertion that he was “…wrong for doing that stuff”? The 2000 AL MVP admits to having used performance enhancers. The 1996 Tour de France winner now openly admits to having used EPS and human growth hormone. The feds have Jason Grimsley and Kirk Radomski, with more to follow.

It sez so right here that we are in the midst of the sports version of Watergate, where as more light gets shed, larger rats get exposed. Bjarne Riis came forward of his own accord.

More will follow.

Floyd Landis: Coward

There are few words to describe Floyd Landis now; at least, there are few words that don’t involve “the seven dirty words you can’t say on television.” But, for the sake of catharsis, let’s try some anyway.

In my best Bronx: “Floyd Landis is a rat bastid.”

No, I can’t say that; unfortunately, it slanders all the other rats of questionable parentage.

Floyd Landis is the stuff that runs out a pig’s sty after a heavy rain, but worse.

What kind of man, to further his own ends, would use a dreadful childhood secret against another man? Apparently, the kind of man who would cheat to win the Tour De France.

Here’s where we are. Floyd Landis was caught using steroids after Stage 17 of the Tour; for those who remember, he utterly imploded in Stage 16. Thus, his surge from peloton fodder (8:08 behind the leader) to 30 seconds off the overall lead was nothing short of miraculous. He even had the nerve to credit “the beer” he had the night before Stage 17.

So, let’s see: beer makes me funnier, irresistible to hot women, ten feet tall and bulletproof in any bar brawl, and able to win the Tour de France.

It’s bad enough that both samples have come back positive for levels of testosterone that one normally finds in the New York Mets clubhouse; it’s worse when one resorts to intimidation to keep a potential witness from testifying.

Greg LeMond, the first American Tour winner and three time overall champion, had a private conversation with Landis, urging him to come clean if there were anything to tell. LeMond then related an ugly personal secret about a childhood incident involving his uncle, telling Landis that keeping something like that a secret can tear one up inside.

LeMond’s motives are clear: he was trying to help a fellow American and competitor. He thought that if he showed some personal courage, Landis might follow suit.

LeMond’s mistake is that only human beings can show courage.

Instead, Landis’ “former” manager, Will Geoghegan, makes a phone call to LeMond purporting to be LeMond’s abusive uncle, and threatening to be in court when LeMond was scheduled to testify.

There is no way that Landis is not directly complicit in this vile deed. Reports indicate that Landis was even in the room when Geoghegan made the call. At the trial the next day, Geoghegan was present with Landis while LeMond related the sordid affair on the stand.

Only after it came out in testimony did Landis “fire” Geoghegan, who has since entered rehab.

And Landis has the unmitigated gall to take the stand and claim to be an honorable man.

For those keeping score, this isn’t the first time Landis has been accused of doping. This is, however, the first time that he won a bicycle race and lost the human race.

Bring on the invective; nothing is too low for this paean to honor.

In an ironic way, an overabundance of testosterone helped him win the Tour. Perhaps if he’d had the normal amount in the normal place (inna fork, as the Brits say), he’d have never tried to use another man’s pain to cover his own shame.

Craven, pusillanimous Floyd Landis.

At least O.J. now has some company at the “Most Vilified Athlete” Table.