Thursday Roundup
News
The NY Daily News politely tells of yesterday's "Word for Word" event in Bryant Park with Floyd Landis where the 2006 Tour de France champions talked about his book and the defense of his reputation before what was described as a small crowd in sweltering heat. The last word in the piece is given to a WADA board member who emphasizes that a positive test result is a positive test result, apparently no matter how badly it was done.
Guardian (UK) reports Landis is hopeful he'll win the USADA arbitration, saying,
"In order to convict me they're going to have to fabricate something."
The New Statesman UK writes of the fan disillusionment and monetary loss that is Tour de France cycling at this time. But, as the TdF prepares to commence in London this year, without last year's Champion Floyd Landis, it remains a beautiful sport despite its' problems.
Univest announces that Landis will lead a mid-day Friday ride after a press conference, celebrating the anniversary of the Univest Grand Prix race.
Blogs
FOXNews's Brian Kilmeade interviewed Landis on FOX News Radio, and blogs:
I felt conflicted interviewing Floyd Landis — the current Tour de France winner is accused of failing a drug test after the race. I looked the quotes, saw the tests and it's hard to imagine something not going into his system. Yet, I personally found him so likeable. I hope I am wrong, but I just feel like the ruling will stand and he'll be stripped of his title.
Rant thinks The Pledge is just more window dressing by the UCI.
The New Common Sense implores heaven to help him in this time of doping scandals in both baseball and cycling. About the cycling aspect of the story he wonders if those in power, considering the new UCI pledge stating that caught riders who have signed the thing must forfeit a year's salary, will reimbursed Floyd Landis for his excessive financial losses should he be exonerated? Good question, here's hoping no one holds their breath.
Beer Sandwiches lists parts of the perfect athlete, and names examples of perfection. Then in an anti-perfect list, gives:
Honesty- Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Michael Vick, Pacman Jones, Tank Johnson, Floyd Landis, Brett Boone, Guellermo Mota-har
The Road Bike gives Positively False a positive review, but kind of wishes some of the swearing had been left out.
Cheater's Life Advice has this snip of dialog, indicating the penetration of L'Affaire Landis in the gestalt:
Whoa what!? You just got caught on TV as the other girl, you lock yourself in the bathroom to get away from everything and then you walk through the cameras and grab the dude and get in a cab with him?Are you serious here!?That’s like Floyd Landis getting away with doping, winning the Tour De France and then using an investigator’s phone to call the lab he got the stuff from to thank them for the quick delivery.
Neil@Road got POd at a question he heard in a phone in press conference with Paul Sherwan ad Phil Liggett today that put into question Floyd Landis' Stage 17 efforts in last year's TdF.
Fingerfood/Johnny Baseball is hoping to get in on a Landis interview tomorrow.
Sportsjournalists.co.uk has a roundup. Before getting to Landis, there's this piece of sagacity, marred only by putting quotes around "Watergate Reporter":
“Watergate reporter” Carl Bernstein, promoting his new Hillary Clinton biography, on the state of modern journalism
“One of the things I’ve observed having been interviewed so many times is that reporters tend to be terrible listeners. They have usually decided what the story is before they do the interview, and they will choose the one which will manufacture the most controversy. But manufactured controversy is not news”
Immediately following, they pick this snip from Postitively False:“
I’m sure you weren’t doing anything that everyone else wasn’t doing. You’re just the unlucky one who got caught” - international cycling chief Pat McQuaid to 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, according to the cyclist’s new book
Forums
During the Hearing, comments at the Sioux City Journal [LINK FIXED]went wild for a while. One of our fans, "Dave" is possibly D-Queued from DPF. The "Landis-doped" posters never seem to get around to addressing the failure to identify peaks in ALL of the tests, and making the incorrect claim that all of Landis' defense claims address a single test. We'll see.
5 comments:
"The last word in the piece is given to a WADA board member who emphasizes that a positive test result is a positive test result, apparently no matter how badly it was done."
This is exactly why any cyclist that signs the UCI letter for the tour, can get screwed. All repercussions placed on cyclist and no accountability for labs and WADA. It just burns me up.
There's a current list of the riders who have signed the UCI pledge on the website of the French TV network TF1.
http://www.eurosport.fr/cyclisme/tour-de-france/2007/sport_sto1225447.shtml
Marc
The link for the Sioux City Journal is bad. It appears to be a link for editing a blogger post and every time I click on it I get logged out of blogger.
"A positive test is a positive test." Indeed. But at what point does all this become good old garden variety slander and libel?
The road is likely to get stranger and stranger. If Floyd prevails, either at the arbitration phase or at the CAS (or even in France with the pending AFLD case) will he press forward with a defamation action against those responsible? I think we can even see evidence of "NY Times malice" in some of these statement.
Eightzero, the problem is that a positive test SHOULD be a positive test. In a world of properly done testing using lab CoC and procedures that are beyond reproach and using properly trained lab techs one should NEVER have a false positive. In this case, however, we know from their own admissions, that the lab personnel did not use good lab procedures, have an incomplete CoC and made lots of mistakes on a recurring basis.
This is where a lot of reporters and that Dave fellow over in that Sioux City Journal fail to understand about this case. To the average Joe/Jane they just assume that an accredited lab would have infallible procedures, this is "science" after all and we are supposed to trust science.
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