It’s official, 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has been
ruled guilty of doping.
And this just in: I officially could not care less.
It’s official, 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has been ruled guilty of doping.
And this just in: I officially could not care less.
I may want my home run kings to be juice-free and my football players to be human without growth hormone, but when it comes to guys who ride bikes, I say let them take enough testosterone to kill a small horse. Let them feel like aggressive, manly men. Something has to offset the fashion statement of wearing a fluorescent spandex suit, right?
If I climbed a mountain stage or sped through a time trial, I’d probably bypass the Gatorade for an oxygen tank. But watching people ride bikes over the course of a month is as entertaining to me as sitting through a 24-hour marathon of Texas Hold ‘Em, narrated by Ben Stein.
If it wasn’t for Lance Armstrong, most people wouldn’t even know who Floyd Landis is. His success made the Tour de France noteworthy in America, making Landis somewhat of a successor. But without Armstrong’s incredible victory over testicular cancer, few people would care about cycling’s biggest name. He’d be another guy who rides a bike and happens to do it quite well. It’s the adversity Armstrong has overcome that makes him a cultural icon, not the fact that he’s won seven Tours.
Don’t believe me? Well, can you name any of the four cyclists who previously held the Tour record of five victories? If so, congratulations, you can take off your clip-on shoes and bike helmet now.
Armstrong has battled his own allegations of doping, but has never tested positive. Landis did test positive, then came out with a laundry list of possible explanations: Naturally high testosterone, drinking whiskey the night before a race, dehydration, thyroid medication and even a conspiracy orchestrated by the testing facility. The result is Landis became the boy who cried wolf. Only in this case, the boy took a blood test that showed synthetic traces of testosterone and he is now being eaten alive by critics.
You could believe Landis hurt America’s image in the cycling world, but that would require cycling as a sport to have had a positive image in the first place. Cycling’s reputation is about as clean as a prostitute’s linens. Two teams and three individual riders were kicked out of this year’s race, including the leader after the 16th stage.
Landis will now be suspended for two years unless he chooses to appeal. He most likely will never compete in the Tour again, fading into oblivion, popping up every now and then in a game of Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit.
And that’s exactly cycling’s and the Tour de France’s place in the American sports landscape. A trivial pursuit.
