Floyd Landis caught red-handed
Jul. 29th, 2006 05:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI 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.
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.
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Date: 2006-07-29 05:17 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-29 05:48 am (UTC)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.