What Else?!

The Lausanne Witch Trials: well, the "!@#$ you, Landis!" we've all been expecting is in, and, as predicted, the boy's been completely screwed by a perfect storm of dubious sample results, grossly incompetent French lab chimps, and grotesquely concerted cowardly unethical leakmeister character assassination by venomous self-serving fearmongers desperate to justify their own egregious inability to conduct a just testing procedure--and that's a damn compliment even *if* you assume he *did* do it. Way to go, WADA and UCI--your reputations as the sterling guardians and objective enforcers of fair sport are secure!

So what did the 3-zip firing squad actually conclude? Let's review the decision: (1)Floyd's a meanie; (2) his witnesses are meanies; (3) his lawyers are double meanies; (4) ergo, meanies oughta pay. Specifically, the lab excoriated Landis and his legal team for "forcing costs higher" and "focusing on minor procedural imperfections," while "Landis' witnesses crossed the line, acting for the most part as advocates, not scientists objectively assisting the Panel in the search for truth" (notably, I saw no similar reproof along the lines of "UCI's desperate attempts to minimize the colossal !@#$up of the astonishingly untalented lab nits, plus the organization's publicity-slut push for conviction before the ink even dried on the A sample vial, crossed the line from neutral enforcement to outrageous butt-covering.") In other words, (1) Landis kept saying he was innocent; (2) his science team kept saying he was innocent; (3) his lawyers zealously argued he was innocent; and (4) if you think any underpaid sap domestique's ever gonna challenge our unimpeachable perfection ever again, you got another thing comin' mister, because you we're whacking with only 100 grand in legal fees, but the next obstreperous !@#$%$ who tries it, we're gonna take his goddamn house, and he's gonna have to ride his decaying $10,000 team bike to the leaking tarp and stinking outhouse he's gonna have to set up in a blackfly-infested scrub heap of killer-bear-crowded woods. All right, guys, I stick a syringe full of dope into my rump every evening just to get enough energy to flick the remote control, I confess--now please don't hurt me! Anyone else thinking we're gonna see a *lot* more quiet deals with the narcs from now on?

The Gloating: as Landis issued a short statement noting he's "saddened," and his legal eagle Maurice Suh simply stated the violations weren't merely "technical in nature," smug USADA guru Travis Tygart wasted no time weighing in, flaying Landis for not only trying to "abuse the system," but trying to embarrass the French lab and the "entire antidoping system." Um, not to invade the Happy Planet of Frolicking Faeries and Cavorting Unicorns you're living in, Travis, but hasn't it occurred to you that even if Landis had 'fessed up to being the filthy repugnant cheating skank you're sure he is, the lab and the entire antidoping process have *still* embarrassed themselves?

The End Result: ah well. For Landis fans--and I rather am one, despite my lingering ambivalence about his true culpability--at least we can hope to see Floyd in team kit again someday, as for my money it's almost inevitable Michael Ball's gonna offer him a truly obscene gob of moolah to ride for Rock Racing in '09. And if there's any silver lining to this swollen black cloud o' career-destroying death, it's that it's so shocked the entire peloton that they've all been riding clean ever since August 2006. Oh, wait...