Landis vindicated, maybe

I saw that the French lab may have messed up again in its accusation that last year's Tour de France winner Floyd Landis was hopped up on goofballs. While the taint of this allegation and Landis's unquestionably poor handling of the situation in the days that followed may never really go away, I will nevertheless shed my immense disappointment and revert to my Stage 17 excitement.

Although this is old news, I will state that as a former athlete, I found his Stage 17 comeback (one day after his Stage 16 disaster) as totally probable and believable when it happened. I also believed that if something had been ingested, it would have been unintentional (although had this been the case, it would have been nearly impossible to show that he didn't know). Regardless, and I can't state this to a reasonable certainty because I have certainly never competed in anything as grueling as the Tour de France (or an Ironman or marathon for that matter), but I have certainly had multiple days of competition where you can blow up one day and come back like a world beater the next.

Landis's Stage 17 victory was a testament to an athlete's ability to come back from hitting the wall at the worst possible time. If he cheated, then obviously he should be stripped of his title. Because it now appears that he did not, and the French (again) have jumped the gun on accusations (and I am strongly tempted to use the word "baseless" here but choose not to), I think the world should simply accept his amazing comeback for what it is and move on.

I can only hope the 2007 Tour de France will not have these types of controversies. Unfortunately, I will be studying for the bar during most of it and will have to rely on the update rather than watching it live on OLN (or whatever that network is called now).

Tags: floyd landis, tour de france