Saturday Roundup
Quote of the DayThey are painful words to read: "Floyd Landis will not defend his Tour de France title this year."
- Mrs. TBV
News
The San Diego Times Union posts a rather trivial trivia question (considering all that has taken place this week) about FL's placement after stage 17 in last year's TdF.
Sportingo says Travis Tygart should hang out the ol' "gone fishin' " sign.
DetNews.com places FL's absence from the 2007 TdF in this week's "in review" column, behind the scheming, plotting, love sick astronauts.
NY Times, passed on by Steroid Nation, has Discovery Team blaming the Landis positive for souring the sponsorship environment. This can be read as blaming Landis personally, or as saying it's just the sad lay of the land at the moment. TBV inclines towards the latter.
In SN's article, they explain the benefits of cycling sponsorship, and why it can be cost-effective for European marketing. (Which raises questions about why Discovery Networks ever bothered, but lets not go there.) They suggest, awkward as it sounds, Amgen, maker of EPO as a good candidate.
VeloNews runs Landis' shot back at the B sample request.
Blogs
Roadkill notes the AFLD decision and thinks they will get to chew on Landis too, eventually.
Go Faster Jim thinks Landis was right, and WADA/USADA is wrong:
Landis is right. This request is a violation of at least the spirit, if not the letter of the WADA code. The athlete is innocent until proven guilty. Could this tactic by USADA reveal the true weakness in their case? That Landis is right, the tests on his positive A and B samples were bogus? Only time will tell.
RoadCycling.com gives us the "Readers Digest" version of this week's Landis events.
Rant (who has been extremely busy these days!) puts on his turban and predicts the Landis case will wind up being stranger than science fiction by the time its finished. He also spins a interesting narrative of what happened when a contaminated sample meets a pressured, politicised environment. This draws a comment from Brian Rafferty of the FFF pointing readers to the slide show.
We've previously been skeptical of the contamination argument (see the wiki), but it's certainly possible there is more there behind the smoke than we've seen. If so...
WCSN thinks that all the town meetings and money raised in the world may not be enough for Landis to "win" in light of the AAA's past record
Suitcase of Courage posts more pix from Brooklyn FFF event.
First 100 Miles give Oscar an apology-- not the one he wants from AFLD et. al., but it may be all he gets. TBV notes that Peirero, too, is in a tricky position, and has just been exposed to the flame himself. Sara's blog also seems to have a lively crowd of commenters, including some frequenters here.
CyclingShots gave us a plug on the 29th-- thanks Eric!
Velo pas terrain snarks on the arb selections.
glo buys the 'hiding something' spin on the B sample flap.
Thought for the Day
"If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that's another weakness." -jh-
[end]
5 comments:
Are there any reports from Pepperdine Law School as to whether a room has been reserved for the May 14th hearing?
If Sara's blog, "The first 100 miles" has shown up on TBV, by golly, she made the Big Time!!
ORG here ...
A New York Times article today about Disco leaving cycling. Bill Stapleton, part owner of the team, says its Landis' fault.
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Bill Stapleton, a part owner of the cycling team along with Armstrong, Bruyneel and others, said Friday in a telephone interview that the owners hoped to attract another United States company as the team’s lead sponsor. But, he said, the announcement last summer that Floyd Landis, the winner of the Tour de France, had failed a drug test during the race “took the wind out of a lot of people’s sails” around the sport.
Several of the team’s lower-level sponsors “expressed their displeasure and doubts about continuing” in the sport, he said.
“Nobody asked to be let out of their contract,” Stapleton said. “What we said to all of our sponsors was that Floyd wasn’t on our team, and we have never had a positive test. We understand it’s a suspect environment right now, but we answered all their questions.”
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Detailed here
http://grg51.typepad.com/steroid_nation/2007/02/is_cycling_read.html
NYT link
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/sports/othersports/10cycling.html?_r=1&ref=othersport&oref=slogin
ORG, that is so depressing. So, now the poor guy's responsible for sponsership problems in America for teams??? I thought it was just because the guy that loved cycling is being replaced. Simple, over and out.
ORG here ....
Theresa:
Actually if cycling has to live one the charity of the wealthy, and not on business plans from marketing deptartments, then the sport is really in trouble.
TBV - As Stapleton said yesterday, Disco showed CEO Billy Campbell the door on Monday and dropped cycling on Friday. For Disco it was never about marketing. It was about Campbell trying to buy access to Armstrong.
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