...luckily my friend J-Will knows more than any man should know. So I had to get his opinion on today's news surrounding former Tour de France winner Floyd Landis. In case you hadn't heard, the disgraced Landis admitted to taking PED's during his victory (after spending his entire income on trying to prove his innocence over the past two years) and then accused Lance Armstrong of being dirty (which coincidentally came before his very bloody crash in the Tour of California today). J-Will had the following to say...
"On July 12, 2007 I went to Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, WA to see Floyd Landis speak about his book Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France. There I watched and listened as he told the audience he had not used synthetic testosterone to win the 2006 Tour de France and therefore the doping allegations against him were false. Upon hearing his recent admission to doping most of his professional cycling career I wanted to throw my bike of my third story balcony and never ride again. I won’t do that. I won’t stop riding. I won’t even stop watching them ride. I will go home tonight and watch the tape delayed Giro broadcast. I will root for my favorite riders and my favorite teams. I will watch them don the leaders jersey, win the King of the Mountain, and ride up a 16% grade at speeds I can barely maintain on a mixed-use bike path. Then I will shrug my shoulders, wonder if they were clean, and ride my bike."
I think J-Will hits upon a common theme for cycling and baseball fans alike. The majority of us don't condone the use of steroids. We are aggravated by it. But at the end of the day, we love the sport too much to stop caring. If anything, we become numb to it all - but we never leave.
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