The public relations offensive by Team Landis seems to be gathering steam with Floyd’s appearance in Arlington, VA last night. By all accounts, he received an enthusiastic response from several hundred supporters. And he raised somewhere between $5000 and $6000 towards his fight against the doping charges that have dogged him since a few days after the 2006 Tour de France ended.
An article by Sue George at cyclingnews.com includes this tidbit, which has gone unreported in the story distributed by Reuters:
“It’s a grass roots effort to put Floyd in front of his fans and supporters and those who don’t know what to make of his situation,” said Henson to Cyclingnews. “We feel the town hall style fits Floyd because here people can ask questions and he can answer honestly.” Henson speculated that more gatherings of this type could occur elsewhere.
All one has to do is peruse the Floyd Fairness Fund website to know that Henson and the rest of Team Landis are targeting some grass roots efforts to draw attention to Floyd’s case. And it appears that they’re succeeding in getting the message out, judging by the reported reaction of the audience, as well as the media coverage of Floyd’s response to the latest Poundifications in Michael Sokolove’s recent New York Times Magazine article.
Henson also told Cycling News:
“We want to hear what people have to say. Part of what we’re looking to do here is to bring a greater sense of democracy to the sport and the process,” said Henson referring to what events have followed Landis’ positive doping test, “therefore, it’s appropriate to have it in DC.”
Steve Ginsburg, writing for Reuters, paints a picture of Floyd Landis as a relaxed, jovial, confident and determined man, who also has a realistic sense of what’s to come:
“I don’t think the connection between what happened there and winning the Tour will ever go away,” he said.
“Whether I change the minds of some of the people who think I’m guilty, that depends on how the hearing goes.
“My concern now is that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. I really have never been treated this poorly by anybody in my life.”
The only disturbing note to the Reuters piece is the comment, attributed to Landis, that the arbitration hearing may not occur before July. What’s not clear in the article is whether Floyd meant the USADA hearing, or the hearing before the CAS. Prior to this article, the guessing was the USADA hearing might happen in March.
I can’t imagine why USADA, WADA or anyone else would want to drag this process out — except as a way of “punishing” Floyd by keeping him out of competition for as long as possible. Which would be an extraordinarily cynical thing to do. Then again, given the behavior of some of the main characters in this saga, maybe it’s not too surprising. If the hearing doesn’t happen until July, then by the time the judgment is announced and the appeal decided, it would probably be early 2008.
Apparently there’s no right to a speedy trial in the current anti-doping system, and the prosecution are obviously using that fact to their advantage. Or at least, their hoped for advantage. It seems clear that the main idea is to drag this out so long that Landis will just give up. If that’s what their strategy is, I suspect they’ve picked a fight with the wrong person. As Ginsburg relates:
“What I have to do is focus on what I’m doing now with the same determination that I spent 15 years training to win the Tour in the first place,” [Landis] said.
“I’m sure this will get resolved in the right way.”
Sounds pretty darned confident and determined to me. It’s a shame that I wasn’t in the DC area on Wednesday. I would have liked to attend. I wonder: What other cities and towns are planned stops on Le Tour de Floyd? Maybe Floyd and company can be convinced to make a trip to the Chicago/Milwaukee area. I know a good place in downtown Milwaukee …
