Requiem for a Champion

Floyd Landis
2006-2008


“He’s in every aspect the toughest man, ever,” Amber says seriously. “Physically tough, mentally tough, he’s just one tough bitch.”
Amber Landis


Bill Hue*


I stopped having heroes sometime after I turned twelve and I figured out my parents weren’t gods. I grew up pretty quickly after that and soon set aside all childhood things. As an adult, I was trained in and entered the practice of the most cynical profession there is, the law, ultimately becoming a judge. Floyd Landis doesn’t want to be nor has he ever intended to be anyone’s hero. But he is my hero.


Floyd is not my hero because he is an American or because he won the Tour de France. Greg LeMond and/or Lance Armstrong are not my heroes and they won many more tours than Floyd has. Floyd is not my hero because of his epic ride on Stage 17 of the 2006 race. Without demeaning that ride, others in cycling have had similar epic single day rides throughout the years.


Floyd is my hero because in the face of the biggest travesties of “justice” I have ever seen, he stood proud, determined, true to himself and his family and did not bow to those who define “the game” by making its rules, prosecuting those deemed to violate those rules and then stack the deck with those responsible to judge those “violations”. He made them work for it and we are all the beneficiaries of his efforts even though he ultimately derived no benefit, whatsoever.


Today, the Court of Arbitration of Sport finally declared the winner of the 2006 Tour de France after 2273 miles and 708 days. Floyd Landis won the race on the road but lost it, inevitably, to WADA and its useful idiots at the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory, the international media and those who slavishly kneel at the alter of the anti-doping gods.


Landis beat the likes of Oscar Pierrero, Carlos Sastre and Levi Leipheimer on the road, fair and square but he could not overcome WADA’s minions, Travis Tygart and Richard Young in particular, Dick Pound, of course, the rubber stampers on both Panels who call themselves "neutrals" with smug straight faces and a host of others who act out of self preservation rather than justice because that playing field was in no way fair or even.


I’ll have more to say in the hours and days to come as I deconstruct the fable that was Landis’ anti-doping prosecution.


For now, I simply and humbly thank Floyd, Amber, Arnie, Maurice, Howard and Floyd’s family, many friends and supporters who fought a fight they could not win because it was the right thing to do.


I also wish to offer my sincere gratitude to Dave and Mrs. TBV and Paula and Mr. STRBUK for their dedication to truth, fairness and justice and to their daily sacrifices to keep this matter in the forefront of our attention.


This is a sad day for justice.


Bill



*Bill Hue is a Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge. His opinions here are strictly his own.