After denying doping charges for years, disgraced cyclist Floyd Landis has sent e-mails to sports authorities admitting that he used performance-enhancing drugs for most of his career. Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title, felt compelled to add that other top American cyclists — including seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong — had cheated, too. However, Armstrong, who’s long denied doping allegations and never tested positive, said Landis has no proof. “It’s just our word against [his],” Armstrong said, “and we like our word.” Who’s telling the truth?
Floyd Landis has no credibility: Landis’ track record is hardly encouraging, says Bob Cesca in The Huffington Post. First, he wrote a book “hilariously titled Positively False” to defend himself against doping allegations, and now he admits the whole thing was a big, fat lie. Yet he wants us to take his word over that of Lance Armstrong, one of “the classiest, most popular riders in the world today”? “Good luck with that, Floyd.”
Landis may be a rat, but that doesn’t mean Armstrong is innocent: Floyd Landis “is a jerk,” says Mike Freeman at CBS Sports. “He’s desperate. He has nothing.” But like Jose Canseco — the disgraced slugger whose similarly detailed doping confession helped explode baseball’s steroid scandal — Landis “may also be telling the truth” about Armstrong. Some of his specifics, “such as the account of Armstrong storing blood in a Spanish refrigerator,” are so particular it seems unlikely they’ve been completely fabricated.
Landis is in trouble if he has no evidence: Armstrong is “extremely aggressive” about defending his name in court, says Randy Starkman in the Toronto Star, so Landis may be facing a massive lawsuit. And it looks like the sport’s governing body won’t be investigating Armstrong — the International Cycling Union chief Pat McQuaid has accused Landis of making up the charges to damage the sport out of spite — so Landis is on his own, if this goes to court.
Wouldn’t Landis face huge lawsuit if he’s lying re Armstrong?”
