Sunday Roundup
Today is Floyd Landis' 32d birthday, have a great day Floyd and Happy Birthday!
News
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the soon to be released "Mitchell Report" will expose the names of many baseball players who had/have been using steroids and other illegal PEDs.
The San Diego Union Tribune posts some letters to the sports desk and one feels that the Mitchell Report will blow the lid off what seems to be the never ending PED scandal in sports.
The ModBee.com says Suzy Powell has been a hero all along and a great example to youth because she competes clean.
The Monroe News.com wants to know if what we see when we see a great athletic feat is real, or is it enhanced?
The VeloNews Foaming Rant casts Floyd Landis in the roll of the gambler and feels that support for Floyd may be crumbling, at least it seems that way by looking at the responses VeloNews has received about his announcement of an appeal to the CAS. Still, there are two ways to view the Landis choice to appeal:
No. 1: Landis really is innocent. If so, and if you were him, wouldn't you spend your last nickel trying to prove it? Fight like a junkyard dog until they finally drag you, kicking and screaming, into the history books as the first Tour winner to lose his title for doping?
No. 2: He's guilty. If so, the smart thing would have been to admit it straight off and get busy serving time. But Landis didn't get smart until he lawyered up, and by then he and his camp had pitched enough preposterous concepts to land him a top-10 list on Letterman, if not an actual writing job on the show itself.
The CyclingNews reports that several big name cyclists will also be in attendance at the "doping summit" in Madrid next month and among them will be David Millar. Nice to see that the people who are among the most affected by whatever the summit comes up with will have some representation.
Redding.com says that drug cheats deserve no forgiveness, and snarks that after his appeal to the CAS Floyd Landis will be off the the "scandal hall of fame."
Blogs
A Yahoo 360 Blog lists the historical happenings of October 14th, and also notes birthdays of the famous, including Floyd Landis.
Does Today Suck?, in one of the more interesting blogs we have seen, rates each day. It rates October 14th as "bad" and lists the disasters, births, and deaths that have occurred on this day. At least the "Winnie the Pooh" reference of first publication on October 14th is rated as "cool".
Unsportsmanlike Conduct proposes that Floyd Landis be deported, to France.
Thought for the Day
As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.
-jack handey-
12 comments:
Floyd, I hope your birthday is great!! And you gave "us" a great birthday present, when you decided to go to CAS!! And I'll continue to support you thru the FFFund!! I'll put my money where my heart is!
Theresa
Happy Birthday to Floyd!
WRT to the "Mitchell Report", let's hope it's long on fact and short on "witch hunt". I trust Sen. Mitchell will respect due process and that those accused, if they deny any potential allegations, will avail themselves of a system that is not "stacked" as it has been for Floyd, thus far.
WRT VeloNews Rant, I'm fairly sure not many Floyd supporters are enthusiastic about VeloNews anymore. I as once a subscriber, but have been happy to let my subscription lapse. Most of the content is available on the website. Better content is generally available elsewhere.
I do enjoy "Legally Speaking" though....
Now that Floyd's lost his yellow jersey, shouldn't you buy one and send it to him? 100% organic. Only $29.99. Check it out @:
http://theministerofinformation.blogspot.com/
What a pathetic post m.o.i..
Your shirt is organic, all right.
You're correct. When the facts are against you, ground your argument, as Flance has done, in pathos.
And the apologists will rally behind you, "look! he protests vigorously, so he must be innocent." And behind them, even more apologists will gather and chime, "oh my, he spends his money, why would he do that if the allegations weren't unfounded."
Alas. Sadly. Another man wears the jersey. The case is lost. The cause celebre refuses to disappear, but the samples (you must have forgotten?) were POSITIVE.
MOI,
I guess I'm living in a slightly different reality than you are. My memory is that Landis' defense has been based on the facts of the tests as executed, not on "pathos."
You also seem to have adopted another style, that of assuming the conclusion and offering that as proof.
Here are two examples:
"The case is lost" is demonstrably not true, because the appeal to CAS hasn't even been argued. The conclusion you offer is procedurally incorrect as a point of fact.
Second, "The samples were POSITIVE" is very much an issue in dispute. The only clear facts are that (a) they were reported as positive by the LNDD; (b) prosecuted as positive by USADA; (c) ruled to have been positive by 2 of 3 arbiters. None of those make the tests actually positive. More than a few people who have looked at the process and science by which they were obtained think they are not sufficiently reliable to support the conclusions drawn.
You are of course free to disagree, but to try to say here that there is no dispute, and the case is lost is presumptuous. So much so that it makes me wonder a few things:
Were you drunk when you made the post?
If you insist those who don't think the case was proven are "apologists" are you willing to accept the term "lackey" being applied to you for making what can be read as absurd statements in support of the agencies?
TBV
Some simple math.
TBVa + TBVb + TBVc = Oscar Pereiro wears the 2006 Maillot Jaune + 2 year suspension for Landis.
Jurisprudence, like science, does not require proof beyond ALL doubt. There is no truth that harbors no doubt.
Short of an admission of guilt and an apology, which if other similar cases can be viewed as examples, will likely be years in coming, what would constitute guilt in TBVs mind?
What would convince me?
1. Independant analysis of the mass spec data from the IRMS.
2. Replication of a the result at another lab.
3. A validation study that actually validated the single metabolite standard.
4. An analysis of the chemical separation method used at LNDD that showed it fit for purpose.
5. Some comparable runs using the same chemistry that used a true positive control in the cal-mix to show peaks were identified properly.
To be fair, let me turn it around and ask you a question I made repeatedly at another forum. What would convince you that the methodology used by LNDD was the culprit here? Work from the premise that there was no doping and that this is a series of lab errors built into the protocol.
TBV
We all began with assumption of innocence, we all wanted to believe the 'impossible' had happened on Stage 17. Slowly, as the situation unfolded, we began to lose faith, and ultimately to understand what had happened.
We have also seen similar defenses that just continue to use one set of improbable explanations (beginning with the JACK) after another, one method questioning device after another (and yes these are sometimes effective even when all the evidence indicates otherwisse), and now even the conspiracy theorists are joining the fray "the beer was spiked", "it was the French."
NO. It's a spectacle driven by the chase for fame and fortune. Most of us (those with other hobbies besided pouring over thousands of pages of documents) have decided the best course of action is just ride off into a cool, crisp October day and put some miles between us and the Flance debacle because although you may have not, almost everyone else has decided that it's over. Too bad for TBV, too bad for the sport, too bad for Floyd. But the choice was made, he made me it, and now the payment has come due.
Want to keep it alive for another six months? a year? Be my guest.
Such a smart guy. Smarter than everyone. A rider too. Faster and stronger than everyone, I suspect.
One wonders why you waste your time here. Oh, that's not too hard to figure out
Maybe you should spend less time telling others how not to waste theirs.
MOI speak for yourself, as I am sure you are doing. I wonder if you know how imperious you sound? I pray that YOU are never falsely and publicly accused of something you very may well NOT have done, or that you are required to trust substandard lab testing for anything as important as say your future life. Funny how even in light of some of the comments of the majority arbitrators in the Landis decision you still seem to be giving the LNDD a free pass, and imply you know more than even they do. Funny indeed. Good luck to you...
str
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