It can get you in trouble, especially when the cards are stacked against you to begin with.
Floyd Landis — who claims to not know how one of his eight Tour de France doping tests came back fishy — now thinks his immediate scramble for an explanation has done more harm than good.
In more desperate straits than when everyone counted him out of the Tour before Stage 17, Landis has been fired by his Phonak team and the Tour de France no longer considers him its champion. Landis said his biggest mistake has been offering daily excuses for his positive test.
“I’ve been catching a lot of grief in the press: ‘Floyd has a new excuse, a new reason for what happened,’ ” he said. “This is a situation where I’m forced to defend myself in the media. It would never have happened if UCI and WADA had followed their own rules.”
His own team has fired him, so it would seem he’s on his own with regards to finding and funding someone to help him navigate future public statements.
5 Responses
Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Most damning of all, is his failure to provide any explaination of how that synthetic testosterone got into his system.
Comment by Southtrek — August 7, 2006 @ 8:38 am
It probably would not have been that bad if he had stayed quiet until after the second test had been completed. It seems as though he is now dealing with the court of public opinion because he’s provided too many excuses. Though he really needs to explain the presence of synthetic in his system for any hope of returning.
Comment by Dre — August 7, 2006 @ 10:33 am
Silken Lauman did a good job in 1995 of defending her reputation when a drug test showed a banned substance in her blood.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0010416
The news coverage featured her holding up a box of Benadryl that was approved for use, and an almost identifical box of Benadryl that had a banned substance in it.
She argued mistaken identity and bad advice from two different doctors, and won her case with the public and with sports officials. Her team still had their Pan Am games gold medal taken away, though…
Comment by Eric Eggertson — August 8, 2006 @ 1:40 pm
You can talk all you want. When you get caught with your hands in the cookie jar… It’s getting pathetic if you ask me. Thank god over here in Europe we don’t have to watch him appear in just about every tv show. Apparently he hasn’t learnt his lesson yet – he is still talking. And the more he talks, the less he’s likely to get heard…
Comment by Serge — August 12, 2006 @ 7:12 am
Hey Serge — trust me. No one is watching him here, either.
Comment by Ike — August 12, 2006 @ 8:05 am