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.

Jason Giambi and The Truth

I saw an interesting piece in USA Today about Jason Giambi and steroids. If nothing else, while I can appreciate Giambi’s candor and honesty in discussing the great There/Not There of MLB, I still believe that he did not go far enough.

While talking to Bob Nightengale, the 2000 AL MVP offered what should be considered the only acceptable mea culpa of the steroids era: “I was wrong for doing that stuff…(w)hat we should have done a long time ago was stand up – players, ownership, everybody – and said: ‘We made a mistake.’ We should have apologized back then…”

Giambi deserves no small amount of credit for this statement, even as it does appear to restate the obvious. The fact is that MLB – “players, ownership, everybody” – has engaged in systematic collusion, obfuscation, and stony silence. Someone of his stature should have spoken up like this a long time ago, but various reasons have been given, and none of them wash. Managers pretend that they have no idea what’s going on in locker rooms; owners have no idea why their star slugger’s helmet size continues to change; and players both former and current cite the spurious “code of the locker room,” as though locker rooms are exempt from the law of the land.

Giambi, without naming names, without betraying confidences, still said what we, the public, have been wanting to hear for years: yes, they were doing it. Yes, they were wrong. And yes, something should have changed years ago. After all, isn’t sport supposed to exemplify outdated concepts like “fair play?” Don’t we teach our kids that cheating is wrong?

But an exchange near the end of the article between Nightengale and Giambi illustrates the great gulf between perception and reality that still exists with regard to steroids.

Giambi says, “That stuff didn’t help me hit home runs. I don’t care what people say, nothing is going to give you that gift of hitting a baseball.”

Nightengale asks, “So why did you take steroids?”

Giambi responds, “Maybe one day, I’ll talk about it, but not now.”

This is exactly the problem. Giambi, on the one hand, appears to be honest, and within the space of the same interview, reverts to classic MLB disingenuousness. Nightengale’s question is THE question of the steroid problem: if they don’t help, as so many major leaguers aver, then why take them?

We are supposed to believe that being stronger doesn’t help one hit home runs? We’re supposed to believe that maintaining one’s strength throughout the marathon that is a baseball season doesn’t help one hit home runs? OF COURSE THEY HELP. No one is suggesting that steroids help eye-hand coordination. However, if strength is the issue, then steroids become a must for baseball players trying to make the big club, because strength is the difference between a seeing-eye single and a 6-3 put-out, or the difference between a fly ball at the warming track and a home run.

Let’s put it in even more practical terms: over 500 at-bats, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .250 hitter is only 25 hits. That’s it. Are we not supposed to believe that being a little bit stronger won’t make a visible difference over that crucial 25 at-bat window?

Steroids increase strength, which means that balls are hit harder, which means that guys on steroids have a clear advantage over guys that are clean. No competitor wants to go into a contest at a distinct disadvantage, which explains why steroids are so rampant in the big leagues. A guy at Triple A will not sit idly by while some wunderkind with a syringe gets a May call-up; he’s going to call Dr. Feelgood as well. The 23rd man on a major league bench is not going to let the wunderkind from the farm take his job, so he calls the dope man as well. The hotshot first baseman, in his walk year, is not going to give up a possible MVP and a New York Yankee payday because steroids don’t help one hit home runs.

Once again, when were you taking steroids, Jason Giambi? Oh, that’s right, it was during that magical 2000 season when, as a free agent-to-be, you won the AL MVP and then cashed one of George Steinbrenner’s immense checks.

But they don’t help.

Not much.