Advice worth heeding: ‘Run like you stole something
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Sunday 6th August, 2006 (02:15 +1 GMT)
(AP) – It was a small moment in a big race. Two years later, it still sounds like the best advice Floyd Landis ever got.
He was a helper on Lance Armstrong’s team at the time and had never won even a single stage of the Tour de France. On a steamy July day, Landis unselfishly and unsparingly towed Armstrong to the crest of the last of the day’s five hills. The pace was so withering that only three of Armstrong’s toughest rivals – Germans Jan Ullrich and Andreas Kloden, and Italian Ivan Basso – were hanging around.
Eight miles away, at the end of a long, speedy descent into Le Grand–Bornand, lay the finish line. Armstrong draped an arm across Landis’ shoulder.
"How bad do you want to win a stage of the Tour de France?" he asked.
"Real bad," Landis replied.
"How fast can you go downhill?" Armstrong said.
"Real fast!" came the reply.
"Then run," Armstrong said, "like you stole something, Floyd!"
That brief exchange likely had only one meaning at that moment. But in hindsight, it may explain why Armstrong has consistently outraced the shadows of doping in a dirty sport and Landis may never get out from under them.
Early in what turned out to be the first of seven straight titles, Armstrong learned a lesson he never forgot. He won the opening stage in 1999 and everybody in France loved him. The Tour was still reeling from a drug scandal the year before, and as a cancer survivor with no performance–enhancing allegations clouding his past, Armstrong became its poster boy.
All those good feelings didn’t even survive the midpoint of that year’s race.
By then, Armstrong had locked it up with a devastating ride into the Alps, and because he wasn’t known as a strong mountain racer before, the tone of the coverage in the French newspapers turned on a dime. The newspapers never bothered to learn that Armstrong had spent the spring and winter training in those same Alps, applying the same maniacal effort that stunned his stateside doctors during an arduous recovery. They just assumed the Tour was back to doping as usual.
That episode hit its low point when one of the papers, the respected daily, LeMonde, claimed to have copies of Armstrong’s drug tests from the first two days of the race and accused him of doping. Armstrong quickly countered that glucocorticoid, an anti–inflammatory steroid, was contained in a skin cream for saddle sores, that it had no performance–enhancing qualities, and that he’d already provided officials with a prescription for its use. But he couldn’t resist the chance to fire back.
"They say stress causes cancer. So if you want to avoid cancer, don’t come to the Tour de France and wear the yellow jersey," he added. "It’s too much stress."
Armstrong never let his guard down even once after that. There’s a saying about the Tour that the strongest always win and Armstrong was always the strongest after that. He flat–out denied every allegation that followed it, demanded to examine the evidence in every instance, challenged the motives and methodology of the testers, and then – in real courts and the court of public opinion – steamrolled each one with the same ruthless efficiency that he ruled the road.
I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating: I have no idea whether Armstrong is clean, despite having been on hand for that 1999 Tour de France win and each of his last three. But he’s survived lawsuits, damaging books, and a few questionable associations – with his reputation largely intact.
It could be because Armstrong is clean. Or because he’s lawyered up like few athletes in any sport, or because, as someone in Landis’ inner camp suggested gloomily the other day, "He’s had way more experience at this than we did."
Whatever it is, this much is beyond doubt: Whether his fuel is outrage or fear, or some mix of both, Armstrong has never once taken his foot off the pedal. On the last day of his reign, he stood on the wide boulevard of the Champs–Elyses and used the occasion to scold his doubters:
"For you people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics, I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry you can’t dream big and I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles. ... There are no secrets. This is a hard sporting event," he said, "and hard work wins it."
Landis certainly put in enough hard work to become the champion. And as with Armstrong, I don’t know whether Landis is clean, only that the drug testers have done a thorough job of nailing his hide to a wall.
Doping control will always be a cat–and–mouse game. The science is murky, open to differing interpretations, political pressures and selective leaks. Had Landis come out with a more forceful denial and tried to turn the tables on his accusers, he’d still be in a deep hole against such mounting evidence. But he might have at least earned the benefit of the doubt.
Instead, his camp has issued alibis in a confusing, piecemeal fashion and done little to advance any presumption of innocence. Landis’ stuttering might be the result of honest shock – perhaps the best face you can put on his deer–in–the–headlights performance so far. His handlers are so inept that someday they’ll become a case study in business schools on how not to control damage.
But fair or not, Landis has arrived at this tough juncture and even his staunchest defenders concede that climbing back to the top of his sport is almost an impossibility now.
At the end of the stage race into Le Grand–Bornand two years ago, Armstrong, Landis and the three pursuers hurtled toward the finish, eyeing each other and jockeying for position. With a half–mile to go, Kloden exploded from the pack. Armstrong instinctively knew that Landis was out of gas, kicked himself into a higher gear and coolly nipped the German at the finish.
He dedicated the win that day to Landis and the two hugged at the finish, still perched on their bikes. Landis leaned in and said, "I couldn’t go any more."
Let’s hope that’s not the case now, because the presumption is he already stole something. |
