Floyd Landis caught red-handed

[fpb]

I have long felt, though not yet said in public, that if I could excuse any sportsman for using drugs, it would be a cyclist. Being a cyclist is murderous hard work, makes claims on strength and stamina that go well beyond those of any other game (imagine even a marathon runner running several hours a day for two or three weeks); and, unlike a lot of other games, it is not even well paid. Unless you are Eddy Merckx or Miguel Indurain or Lance Armstrong, you cannot retire on your winnings; and most cyclicsts spend their lives in the shadow, supporting the few champions without any acknowledgement except for the occasional stage win.

On the other hand, there are two things about Landis that make it hard to believe his innocence: he is a cyclist, and he is American. As for cyclists, the number of doped champions discovered as soon as the Italian, French and Spanish police forces started taking it seriously must already be in double or triple figures. And as for being American... be serious. Ever since the fall of the Evil Empire, American athletics has been by far the worst sinkhole of doping and cheating in the world. And what about baseball? There are athletes there who are so shamelessly obvious in their abuse as to make one wonder whether the American public are even concerned by drugs abuse at all.

Perhaps I exaggerate. The athletics and baseball doping scandals were both exposed, after all - though little thanks, in both cases, to the local sporting authorities. But there is no excuse for this kind of reaction: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21820_Landis_Says_Hes_Clean#comments. If your man is caught breaking the rules, insulting the virility of the checkers only proves that you are in favour of crookedness. And, incidentally, it shows why the rest of the world loves it when Americans lose in fair contests.

Comments

[rosedemon.livejournal.com]

Landis tested high in testosterone levels which may or may not indicate steroid use. He is pretty adamant about not taking any dope and, in the light of what happened to Armstrong, I could not see any American being that stupid to try using them.

Landis second set of tests should show whether or not he was indeed doping. He is also going to prove his testosterone levels are high naturally. Could be. Our levels of what makes us male and what make us female fluctuate from one person to another as well as change over a lifetime.

It would be embarrassing to the French to once again accuse and be wrong. And if Mr. Landis did take steroids before this race, believe me, he will become a pariah here.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Lance Armstrong is almost an exception among cyclists in never having been caught doping. It would not be "embarrassing" for the cycling authorities (not "the French") to "once again" be wrong, because in nine previous cases out of ten they have been right. Check recent events in Spain, France and Italy.

[rosedemon.livejournal.com]

I should have made that clear. In the case of Americans using steroids it would be embarrassing for the French. The accusations swirled about Armstrong also. Was it not his fifth win that the authorities accused him?

I don't see Landis as being, as I have said, that stupid. What is at stake for him is a lot of money. Armstrong style in the endorsements and appearance money he will be heir to. Losing it to a dirty piss test means he loses millions of dollars. Too many trainers, too many agents and too many customs police will be watching him and keeping him on the straight an narrow.

No, the practice is not condoned. The majority of Americans do not like their sports tainted with steroids. Barry Bonds hears that each time the Giants go out of town and he is jeered and pelted with debris. And the ones who "Watergate"-ed him were a pair of SF newspaper writers, so even your hometown paper will not back you up.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You keep on making this a matter of "USA vs. France"; it is not. Doping is an endemic problem in cycling, the leading Italian and German cyclists (Basso and Ulrich) have been excluded from the Tour because of positive results, numerous previous champions have been proved guilty, and one famous Italian, Pantani, has died of drugs.

I have no doubt that the American public does not like dopers. It is not the public I was speaking about; it is the institutional culture that had made American athletics something very like East Germany before 1989 in the name of "winning is not everything, it's the only thing", and that, incredibly, had not even thought it necessary to have rules against steroids in baseball (a wonderful game, by the way) until the outcry began. It matters very little whether John Q. Public wants his athletes to be honest, if all the coaches and managers conspire to make them cheats. That is something we are seeing in Italy right now, with the terrible soccer scandal raging across the nation. Most Italians hate the notion of managed football matches and results decided in advance. The game's management, on the other hand, loved it. Guess what happened?

Finally, what led me to post at all was the idiot reaction of the macho morons on that thread I quoted. These are people who know nothing whatsoever about cycling except that an American has been caught doping by Frenchmen - of whom, in turn, they know nothing except for the miserable racist jokes they hear on night TV shows. It would be wholesome to avoid this imbecilic "USA vs. France" mindset altogether, and leave it where it belongs - at the gutter end of conservative blogs.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm pro-doping for all sports. The joys of being libertarian.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

So you are in favour of sportsmen dying young in order to provide spectacle to a paying public? Drugs kill sportsmen and women - sometimes quite horribly and painfully. Many of them don't reach their fiftieth year. And it is all for money; nobody offers drugs to a man trying to win a local amateur sack race. This strikes me as being rather closer to the gladiator games of imperial Rome (which were an instrument to keep the public happy with the loss of their ancient freedoms) than to anything connected with republican freedom.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

If you want to ruin your own body, that's your choice. Doesn't mean it's a good idea. And the glorification of drug use is horrible.

One problem with being libertarian is that you have to be able to accept the legalization of things that you think are morally wrong, or detrimental to society.

Oh, but I guess we're talking more about doping as it relates to sports. I don't know that much about sports in general, actually, and never really understood its appeal, so I don't know.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am actually in favour of legalizing most drugs, although I agree that it would increase the number of addicts and terminal cases. (It would, however, reduce the overall negative social effect of drugs, because it would move their trade away from organized crime and reduce prices, thus reducing the number of addicts who have to steal or prostitute themselves to feed the habit. We have a lot more drunkards than drug addicts in our society, but they do rather less overall harm - though I do not underestimate the Hell that an addict or drunkard can create in his or her private life.) I would leave out something like LSD, which can ruin a man for life with a single hit. But sports drugs are not recreational: they are intended not to provide pleasure, but to alter body shape and performance unnaturally. And nine times out of ten, they are not taken out of choice: the equivalent is not a drug addict going out to score on his own free time, but an employee being demanded to take a noxious substance by his/her boss (that is, coach or manager).

I think there is a fundamental problem with our legal categories. Our laws only think in terms of either permitted or forbidden activities. It follows that everything that is not forbidden by law - from private drunkenness to perverted sex among "consenting adults" - is ipso facto regarded as permitted and therefore basically right. I would add a third category to the law: Tolerated activities. These would be things like smoking or drinking,which are not good to you but which the law allows you to do - under whatever constrictions, but without damaging your status as a citizen. This is an idea I have had for years.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I would add a third category to the law: Tolerated activities. These would be things like smoking or drinking,which are not good to you but which the law allows you to do - under whatever constrictions, but without damaging your status as a citizen.

An interesting concept, as a social idea, not a legal one. And, technically, I don't think that committing crimes should necessarily damage someone's status as a citizen, but that's nitpicking.

Mostly we agree. ^_^

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, I think we need it as a legal category, if only to get rid of a particularly bad kind of special pleading. How often do you hear the advocates of something obviously bad, like smoking, complain that as it is not illegal and never has been, it is a right, and therefore implicitly good? A category of tolerated behaviour would get rid of this false syllogism (legal hence good) without at the same time threatening the freedom of people who choose to indulge in tolerated behaviour.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

Yes, but people would argue over what should be in that category and what shouldn't. For example, extra-merital sex.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Of course, and they should. The law does not spring full-fledged from the head of Zeus. It is formed from millions of private experiences, debates, proposals, disagreements, case law, failures and successes.

Personally, I would make it a principle that anything that is not specifically forbidden or tolerated is permitted. That is, there should be a prejudice in favour of always defining the areas of tolereated or criminal behaviour.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I think I kinda lost you there, but lol Athena. That reference always cracks me up, for some reason. There's something very comical about being born of a headache.

Debate is fun; legislature is not. That's what I say.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

But life is not made only of fun things. That's what I say.

Besides, I think you missed a few dozen columns of bizarre laws there. (According to Dorothy L. Sayers, to call a lawyer a "daffy-down-dilly" is or has been a criminal offence in England, for instance.)

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

I heard it was illegal to shoot whales from a moving vehicle in Tennessee.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Urk! Well, there you go.

Where is the Supreme Court when you need them?

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked! I thought you could shoot anything anywhere in Tennessee. Or maybe that was Mississippi?

Re: Where is the Supreme Court when you need them?

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

What are you going to shoot in Mississippi? Squirrells? Trespassers?

Re: Where is the Supreme Court when you need them?

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Killer Whales. Repeat offender Killer Whales. And jaywalkers.

[spinozany.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that someone doped Landis? Perhaps painted his handlebars, gloves, socks, food, whatever, with testosterone gel?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a detective story.

[spinozany.livejournal.com]

Easy to do. The gel is readily available (by prescription in most places), and is absorbed through the skin.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And Landis would not realize that he had goo on his hands or skin?