Native son Floyd Landis had an incredible spring last year.
He ripped into the early season races. He won the inaugural Tour of California in February, Paris-Nice stage race in March and the Tour of Georgia in April - when most cyclists were still trying to find their form.
If Floyd had sat up and done nothing else for the rest of the year, it still would have been one of his best seasons ever. Winning one of those races can make a career for a professional cyclist.
Yet, Floyd wasn’t done. He reached the pinnacle with his come-from-behind victory in the sport’s most prestigious race, the Tour de France. Then his season, his career, his life fell faster than he had risen. The bottom droped out from under him three days after Floyd won the Tour, with the charge that he had illegally doped to boost his performance.
So it was Sunday that Floyd wasn’t at the start line for Paris-Nice, the first big European race of the season. Instead of defending his title, he was at a bike shop outside Denver raising money for his legal defense.
His hearing before a panel of arbiters is two months away and, according to press accounts, Floyd is spending about $150,000 a month in legal bills as he prepares. His Floyd Fairness Fund, http://floydfairnessfund.org/, events have raised $300,000 or $500,000, depending on the news article.
Even if Floyd is cleared at the U.S. hearing in California, it has been hinted that the World Anti Doping Agency would appeal the case to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The case doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. Despite a new hip that has him riding pain-free for the first time in years, Landis likely won’t be competing with a pro-tour team this year.
We can only hope that Mike Farrington, Floyd’s long-time friend and owner of Green Mountain Cyclery in Ephrata, where Floyd got his start mountain biking, is right in his latest theory.
Farrington believes that the next revelation, such as last month’s disclosure that the French lab violating testing protocols by having the same technician involved in testing both the A and B sample, will result in the case being dropped.
Farrington believes that would allow all of the various agencies involved in the case to save face, avoid future embarrassment and lay blame on the laboratory. The French could promise to make improvements at the lab and have even stricter, more effective controls on doping.
And, Floyd would be allowed to race again. Maybe next season.
Floyd seems to be dealing with it the best he can. He is quoted today in the Boulder Daily Camera, http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/12/cycling/, saying: “Sometimes you’re dealt a bad hand,” he said. “But I came to play, and I’m not leaving.”
