Sunday, October 15, 2006

Sunday Roundup

News
CyclingNews story of L'Equipe story about alleged doping at Postal while Landis was there. This is probably the background to an earlier story here about WADA/UCI thinking Floyd has some information they want to squeeze him for to get at Lance. Supposedly, Floyd has pictures of a motocycle that has the blood bags used by Postal for blood doping, this from accounts of conversations and IM between Vaughters and Andreu. At the end of the article,

Vaughters said he could not be sure if Floyd Landis really had photographs of the alleged doping practices. "I regret saying Floyd said anything to me in that IM because it was a friend of Floyd's," he continued. "In fact, everything I wrote in that IM was something I heard from somewhere else."
So, it is rumours on rumours, and we find that out at the end, after all the accusations are made. TFT.

Tim Kawakami of the Mercury News takes a shot: "Floyd Landis, makes PowerPoint defense on the Web: And if you believed him, please contribute cash to the great new start-up site: YouRube.com."

NY Daily News does the same: "Floyd Landis' online defense makes online poker seem highbrow in comparison. "

Bradenton Herald does a web review of FL.com- wants more pictures, less text with TLAs on the front page. Sports Illustrated advised Podium Girls. TBV has a large number of pageviews directed at our post that covered the advice and experimentally put it into practice. We are shocked, shocked to discover this technique works.

Better late than never, we notice an Oct 4 VeloNews piece that discusses 2007 changes to USACycling points titles, to prevent things like Landis winning the '06 crown with results in just two events, and no race wins.

Blogs
Banshee Cycling likes doing it in public: "Fight on Floyd!"

Knowledge Problem blogosphere echo chamber: No, no, no, thank you!

Forums
On RBR, Simon Brooke has documented his own change in attitude, and seems to be getting to the heart of some issues, evidenced here, and here. Also David Martin, here.

Over at Topix, Mr. LNDD returns with his moderate voice, a long list of talking points and no SHOUTING. Sprited exchange both ways continues. The poster known as "Will" still avoids direct questions, preferring evasion and cryptic comments that go unexplained.

At DPF, holes are poked in the contamination argument.

[end]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The UCI wants to squeeze Landis to get at Armstrong?? You mean the same UCI that paid to have a lawyer who defends athletes in doping cases to write an "independent" report that might be described as a whitewash. The same UCI that when Andreau admitted doping to the New York Times they went the press, practically falling over themselves in the rush, to say that Andreau's admissions do not imply anything about Armstrong. That UCI?

Come on, dude. Conspiracy theories, especially ones that are contradicted by the players past behavior, do not help Landis' case. They make it much, much harder to for anything he and his lawyer says to be taken seriously.

I think that Landis will have a much harder time because of the behavior of Hamilton. Unfortunately for Landis, he has the same lawyer as Hamilton did. The USADA is likely to take anything Jacobs says with a very large grain of salt.

Landis' defense needs to be based on solid science. If he gets off on a technicality then it is likely the ASO will never let him race the TdF again. And that would be too bad because the last decade and a half of TDF's have been boring affairs where no one was willing to risk anything except in the last four kilometers of a climb. You have to go back to Pantani's 1998 ride to find anything similar, and that paled in comparison to Landis' stage 17. Before Pantani you have to go back into the 80s.

I like Landis' attitude and I want to see him race again, but bogus allegations of being framed will not get the job done. He needs to concentrate on problems with the tests or problems with the science, which as far as I can tell does not have a lot of research to back it up.

--BD

DBrower said...

BD, I'm in complete agreement that the defense needs to concentrate on the factual science. The article is listed because it talks about Landis' involvement in the same way as the San Diego Tribune report referenced i n the earlier posting.

I personally think it unlikely, but there certainly has been something like an anti-Armstrong agenda floating around for a long time. I think that is the scent the SD tribune was following.

TBV

Anonymous said...

I just listened to Jacobs’s radio interview. In it he said that Floyd is still due a $3 million bonus from Phonak for winning the Tour. He also estimated Floyd’s damages at $15 million and counting.

This got me thinking. Phonak broke the story about his positive test. They said it was because they expected the LNDD to eventually leak it to l’equipe. Fair enough.

We also know that Phonak was getting out of the cycling sponsorship business. Given the high-level of anti-Americanism in Europe, a drug scandal involving an American would not hurt Phonak’s reputation. Now I find out they stand to gain financially by a positive drug test.

Has anyone suggested, does anyone buy the idea that Phonak is not completely clean in the Landis affair? Could their financial interest have given them an incentive to set Floyd up?

Thoughts?

Anonymous said...

Phonak does not stand to gain anything. Bonuses like this are almost always done with some sort of insurance policy. That is the cheapest way. It is better to pay a known cost of 300K than to risk paying out 3M.

Phonak would have already paid for the policy and the only one who stands to lose money is the insurance company. The insurance company may not even be out any money because they might have insured other teams' bonuses and have a built in profit no matter who gets paid.

Also Phonak benefitted immensely from its cycling team. Its revenue shot up and it does not seem to have been affected by the 11 doping cases brought against team members. After Landis won the Tour Phonak announced they would stay with the team but in a minor sponsorship role, even though they had previously announced their sponsorship would end with the 2006 season.

--BD