Sunday Roundup
News
Floyd hangs tough, BBC reports Spanish paper. Says his laywers have plenty of evidence to show the tests were botched, though it has been difficult to get. He is quoted as saying (apparently through two translations), "I have come to talk with my lawyers and also to say goodbye to my colleagues and helpers in Phonak, given the fact that after the Tour I hardly had time to do so."
Similar report at the Guardian, but with quotes in English; MSNBC carries AP report that's the same; PEZ catches Floyd visiting the Phonak bus, and congratulating Vino at Astana's.
Anonymous comment to this post observes that Mr. Pound has changed his tone towards Landis a lot in the last few weeks. Perhaps Mr. Pound has seen the evidence and is beginning to think the case isn't as strong as he touted back in August.
[updated 18:53]
2 comments:
Back on August 9, right after the b-sample can back positive, this is what Dick Pound WROTE about Landis ....
-----
It's time to come clean
These are dark days for efforts to stop cheating in sports, but they represent an opportunity to change the game
Richard W. Pound
Ottawa Citizen Special
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=c6740180-1345-4c77-8f32-1a2e3aa117ea
If Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin were not household words before the last couple of weeks, they may be about to go down on the dark side of the sport history books.
Mr. Landis, winner of the fabled Tour de France, following a Cinderella comeback late in the race, erasing a disastrous day-before, now seems to have taken a morning-after pill to recover from the previous failure and will likely be stripped of the crown that is the dream of all cyclists -- the Yellow Jersey in the showcase event of cycling.
[snip]
We will have to wait for the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) to organize an appeal process, since both are American athletes, before any formal sanction can be pronounced. Who knows, USADA may subscribe to a suggestion that both athletes, in separate sports, were ambushed by a roving squad of Nazi frogmen and injected against their will with the prohibited substances. But, if USADA does not bite, Mr. Landis faces a two-year suspension and Mr. Gatlin (because of an earlier violation) a lifetime suspension.
-----
This is what Dick Pound SAID about Landis last week (Sept. 14) ...
Pound takes 'wait-and-see' approach to Landis case
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/10866.0.html
The World Anti-Doping Agency can only watch and wait as the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency considers Tour de France champion Floyd Landis' request to have the case against him thrown out, WADA president Dick Pound said Thursday.
"I think we have to wait and see what happens," Pound said in a teleconference from Montreal, where the WADA executive committee will meet on Saturday. "We're kind of a monitoring agency in these things. This is a UCI process.
Pound said that USA Cycling's "procedure is to punt to the national anti-doping agency, which in this case is USADA. USADA will consider the evidence. We watch and see what happens."
----
Quite a change in tune for Dick Pound in just five weeks. Why the change?
Does he know/fear that Landis is going to walk and his agency, and him in paricular, will lose all credibility? Especially after the Jones fisaco?
That, or he's trying to shore up his image so people won't see his as the megolomaniac that he really is.
If I were a betting man, however, I'd go with the theory that he's seen the evidence, knows it's weak, and is trying to minimize the damage to his own credibility and to the credibility of WADA.
Oh, and while he's at it, he's probably building a case for why he should be allowed to keep his job.
- Rant
Post a Comment