Thursday, May 20, 2010

Doping - Floyd Comes Clean?

Got this from a friend who saw it from a friend in Europe. It originally broke on the Wall Street Journal but since their articles "expire" sometime after seven days for non-subscribers, I'll link to a non-expiring one.

Not that this will go away any time soon.

Link: VeloNews.com

One cynic said that this was a pre-book publicity thing. Which, when I think about it, makes a little bit of sense. If he writes a book that reveals doping habits it'll be huge - but he doesn't need to send out emails about doping before the book comes out. The book itself will be enough.

One of my original thoughts at the beginning of this blog was to use it to "editorialize" on doping in cycling. But then it got ridiculous. The turning point came when Floyd and Tyler both used their fans to raise money for their defense. Instead of letting cycling fans (in general) watch the proceedings, they got them involved.

In Europe riders were a bit more succinct in their responses. Almost all of them quit or played out their suspensions. Currently my peeve rider is Valverde who just won't stop (but then again, no one's told him to stop except the Italians).

I like the Swiss rider's response when he got caught. Thomas Frei promptly admitted to doping; not just that, he told us why he did it.

The problem is when Floyd starts talking about other riders, he opens himself up for lawsuits and such, not just from the riders but from their sponsors and associated companies. To wit - one book never made it into English after its subject matter sued everyone associated to the book. An internet copy (seemingly laboriously translated into English and then scanned into a pdf file) found its way onto, and then off of, the internet.

I hope Floyd has a good lawyer.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I hadn't seen that article about Frei. I like it. He seems like a person, not like a composite of soundbytes and denials. The right way to go down.

Anonymous said...

I want to sue Floyd for the time I apparently wasted reading his book "Positively False." I'll never get back those hours.

knitseashore said...

So, so sad.