“The Outcast” – New York Times
When Kate and I were on our across-America drive a couple weeks back, we stopped to visit her Pennsylvania relatives near Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Knowing that I’m interested in cycling, folks asked me at both stops what I thought of the whole Floyd Landis affair; the interest wasn’t just polite, but neither was it driven by a passion for bike racing. Instead. people wanted to know what I thought because they have friends or coworkers who are Landis relatives (it’s a big clan). My opinion is as it was a year ago: I find it unfathomable that the guy would have cheated the way he is suspected of doing. Anyway, while I’m opining, The New York Times sports magazine, Play, has published a pretty good piece on Floyd a year after his fall. A cycling friend of mine sums up the story in a word: “depressing.”
Meantime, we have the continuing saga of one of Landis’s chief persecutors — no other word really suffices at this point — Greg Lemond. He continues shooting his mouth off to whoever will listen — most recently, to an audience in Colorado — about how wrong Landis is to continue to deny guilt and to cast dark hints at who else in the pro ranks is doping. The one question I’d like to hear Lemond answer at length is how, if all the top riders are implicated in cheating, how he himself can be above suspicion.
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