Wednesday, February 23, 2011

From Sports Scientists Blog: Floyd Landis, spoof emails and the cycling comedy carousel

The problem for Landis, of course, was always going to be credibility.  Having spent millions of dollars and much time crafting his passionate defence, his admission of doping undermined his own argument, and the easiest response for everyone concerned - Armstrong, Bruyneel, the UCI included - was to dismiss him as bitter, vengeful and lacking morality.  Pat McQuaid's own words show this: "Unfortunately my initial reaction to someone like that is to discredit them..." (note that there was no desire to discredit the allegations or the content of Landis' emails, rather the person)

It also doesn't make it easy that Landis brings news that people don't really want to hear - finding out that their heroes have feet of clay, or the inevitable negativity that resonates through Landis' allegations would make any messenger unpopular.  The fact that it was Landis, a self-confessed doper who found himself in the impossible Catch 22 of revealing himself as a liar by claiming to tell the truth, made it even easier to resort to the all too common defence of "leave cycling alone".

Posted via email from monkeyphoto's posterous

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