Earlier today the story broke about Floyd Landis admitting to doping in his career as a professional cyclist, and in the process he implicated a number of other prominent American riders, including Lance Armstrong.
Lance is currently racing in the Tour of California, where he took a nasty spill today, but he did take some time to address these allegations that are on everyone's mind today. Lance met with the press and said that he'd like to say that he's surprised by Floyd's words, but that he really isn't. Lance claims that he began receiving threats from Floyd some time back, and that Landis continued to harass him, Dave Zabriskie, Levi Leipheimer, and others through e-mail and text messages over time. Lance also pointed out that Floyd has been under oath a number of times, and yet continued to maintain his own innocence. Something he now recants.
You can read all of what Lance had to say in this article over at the Team Radio Shack website, where they also just posted the response from Johan Bruyneel, manager of Team Radio Shack and the U.S. Postal Team that Lance and Floyd both road on back in 2002, when Landis says he began doping. The disgraced rider has said that Johan was well aware of what was going on, and was part of the doping process.
This whole affair just keeps getting more and more sordid. It is hard to know who you should believe. The sport is such a mess, and it seems that all the top riders have been doping in some form or another, but then again, Lance is the most tested athlete in the world, and he has always come up negative. Innocent until proven guilty?
Landis is not unlike Jose Canseco at this point. When Canseco blew the lid off the drug problems in Major League Baseball, everyone said he was nuts and a liar too. Pretty much everything he said has since been proven to be true. Will this all eventually help a sport to clean itself up? Only time will tell.
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