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On Floyd Landis' Failed Tactics and Strategies

It's so sad to watch Floyd Landis try to recover from the failures of his own team's tactics and strategies for responding to the accusations of doping during the Tour de France.  By team, I don't necessarily mean his sponsor but his own legal support and whoever came together on his behalf.

You trusted weak tacticians, Floyd, and you'll pay for the rest of your life.  You'll always be treated like shit by the press and public and your legal advisers, who've managed to find the perfect way to drag this out without clearing you, will all go on with their well paid careers.

Check out this new AP article which says nothing new and focuses on Landis saying the lab must have made an error and sadly revealing that he doesn't have a fucking clue as to how to deal with this situation:


Sorry, buddy, but you failed to attack the lab at the beginning and encouraged[!] the same lab to test the second sample, meaning that all samples taken from Landis on the day in question at the Tour de France have now been contaminated.  There's very little hope of ever turning this around.

Now Landis is stuck in that hell of misleading journalistic accounts.  If you go back and read about the ongoing questions regarding French antidoping labs, you'll find that they've been under question even by independent scientific investigators, especially when studying the ongoing failed attempts to criminalize Lance Armstrong.  Yet, Jerome Pugmire of the AP writes:


Pugmire makes absolutely no adknowlegement of the serious questions raised regarding this investigation illustrating that the popular accounts of Floyd Landis' final days as a professional cyclist will forever be portrayed by journalists who don't know what they're talking about and won't do adequate background research, relying instead on certain formalistic writing devices [on the one hand, on the other, he said, she said] that pass for journalistic fairness.

Sorry, Floyd, but you're fucked.

For some interesting thoughts from a writer that does not presume Floyd's innocence but is also quite aware of all the possibilities that have not been fully discussed in the MSM, check the archives of Free Floyd Landis.


You're right that he's never going to recover from his early PR missteps, but he's equally never going to recover what he had before the accusations were made. If he's eventually found innocent, his PR errors will matter less than the fact that he was accused at all; and if found guilty, it won't matter what he said.

You're dead wrong when you think he had any choice but to have B test done at the same lab, or that he has much affect now on the speed of the resolution -- unless he wants to plead guilty. If he is going to be found innocent, the process is going to take as long as it takes, with the anti-doping agencies now engaged in most of the delaying tactics, to bleed him financially, deny him evidence, and to waste his remaining career time.

Free Floyd has been on hiatus for a long time. The current best site for news and collection of opinion is Trust But Verify


where this is now linked into the daily summary. A recent series there starting at


shows some of the USADA delay and deny tactics in action.

The best PR move he has done is insist on a public hearing. That is either going to succeed in a big way, or blow up in spectacular fashion.


Thanks for the info about your blog as well as your insights.


I didn't say anything about the speed of the resolution.

If you mean that he had no choice about the testing process due to the power structure with which he's dealing, I can believe that, but it doesn't change anything about what he could have attempted for pr.

Demanding a test of the second sample at another lab and making a lot of noise about it would have placed a question mark in many people's minds, especially if the folks in charge refused his requests and/or demands.

That's exactly the kind of thing that would have given him leverage in the public arena, whether or not it would have helped his case.

Especially in the U.S., the opportunity to tie testing problems into other famous lab blunders, like the incredible blunders of the LAPD crime labs which are now well documented and have cost LA huge amounts of money, would be one unique way to go that could actually work.

Saying things like, "I think they made a mistake", only works when people presume your innocent. For folks who haven't been keeping up or don't care, this AP report to which I link basically makes Landis look like a liar.

The unfortunate thing about a public hearing is that most folks won't understand what's going on and most MSM writers will be confused. I've read some of the online folks breaking down the lab results, the statements of Landis & co., etc. etc. and there's no way to simply present that to the public in a way that they will understand.

I hope he can get some good pr out of it but, barring vindication, he'll come out looking worse in the minds of the general public.

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