It’s a sad day when one great American cyclist, the first to win the Tour de France, goes into a courtroom to testify against the current Tour de France champion. I take no pleasure or happiness in writing this post. For me, this is one of the blackest moments in the history of professional cycling in the United States.I have followed the hearing today, and nobody could have written a fiction that could have rivaled what happened today. If a writer went to a publishing company with a proposal that said something like, "I have an idea for a book about a cycling champion who is accused of doping, and a former cycling champion - a pioneering countryman of the accused - testifies that the accused one confessed to him because of a story about childhood sexual abuse, and the accused one's manager threatened the other using his own cell phone the night before he was to testify..." Said fiction writer would have been laughed out of the publisher's office!
From one of TBV's anonymous comments:
Polygraph 'em all. The only thing missing from this debacle is the "...videotape." Ever since Lance Armstrong won the TDF, Lemond has tirelessly sought to impugn the character and credibility of Armstrong and now Landis. This much is certain. The halcyon days of American cycling appear to be long gone.
So, what is the prospect of Team Discovery Channel getting an American sponsor now? Perhaps this was Lemond's ulterior motive for testifying seeing Armstrong has an ownership interest in the team.
Everything that happened today seems to be the result of insinuation and subterfuge. Without an actually record of the alleged call between Landis and Lemond and without scientific voice identification, then it seems Lemond's testimony was sought by the USADA to illicit the effect obtained: to get the focus away form the lab's bad science....
Ultimately, truth is never about science. Science, like everything else, is servant to the agenda of those in power. I fear Landis is being made an open show (since he requested the public hearing) so that no athlete subject to ADA will choose this route in the future. I believe Landis is being sacrificed, and there are far too many sick people on both sides of the pond that love to have it so. Fear and intimidation and very strong tools for control and will be more successful in curbing future doping than good science.
