Common Sense
A much-needed voice of common sense emerged on Friday, in the guise of French Sports Minister Jean-Francois Lamour advocating that the AFLD postpone hearings into doping charges against Floyd Landis set for this coming Thursday, February 8th, until disciplinary proceedings in the United States are finished. Lamour, speaking in his capacity as the vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said:
It’s wiser to await the hearing of Landis by the USADA [actually, an arbitration panel is hearing the case, not USADA].
It’s not a recommendation but an opinion. It’s more productive to focus on the American hearing rather than maintaining a summons to France which the concerned party will not attend.
Lamour’s position, while it may have no bearing on what the AFLD will decide, speaks of moderation and caution in dealing with such a highly-charged case. Given the notoriety the Landis case has achieved, and the intense emotions and extremely strong opinions that people have on this matter, taking a cautious and prudent approach can assure all parties that whatever proceedings take place and whatever decisions are made, the process itself will be conducted in a manner fair to everyone.
The Floyd Fairness Fund issued a press release on Friday in support of Lamour’s efforts. In the document, Floyd Landis is quoted as saying,
Mr. Lamour’s comments give me hope that WADA’s future can be shaped by a more professional and ethical approach than has been previously adopted.
Landis is not expected to attend the hearing in Paris on Thursday.
It’s a shame that such a common sense approach hasn’t been applied to the rest of the Landis case.
Cover Your Arse
On the other hand, new articles quoting John Lelangue surfaced late in the week, in which Lelangue trash-talks his former rider who won last year’s Tour de France. Lelangue told Belguim’s DeMorgen 247 (machine translation over at Trust But Verify),
It was an enormous disappointment. Landis has really betrayed me.
It’s not clear to me whether this is a new interview, or an article based on previously published comments by M. Lelangue. Lelangue’s job, as directeur sportif, was to know what his athletes were up to. As I’ve said before, if there were riders on Phonak who were doping and he didn’t know, then he was a failure at his job, especially as far as cleaning up the team goes. And not the kind of person I’d hire to run a team in the future, were I in a position to do so.
Lelangue told the press shortly after Floyd Landis was dismissed from the Phonak team (following Landis’ B sample results) that Landis was on his own and would get no help from the team. Perhaps that’s what is required under the so-called ethics rules. But even so, there are more diplomatic ways of saying such things. Clearly, M. Lelangue is no diplomat.
But what he does seem to be is a person looking after his own self-interest by trying to suck up to those people he believes will help his career in the future. As TBV noted in a response to a comment about Lelangue on his site,
[H]e’s a feather in the wind, and would be the first to apologize and recant everything bad he said should the weather change.
He is of little consequence.
I’m inclined to agree. Lelangue’s continuing protestations remind me of a quote from Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2):
Hamlet: Madam, how like you this play?
Queen: The lady doth protests too much, methinks.
If Landis did dope intentionally (which I do not believe), Lelangue knew all about it. If someone slipped him a mickey, it wouldn’t surprise me if John Lelangue knows who did (and perhaps is even the guilty party). Regardless of either possibility, I don’t buy Lelangue’s protestations of shock and disappointment one bit.
At the end of this long ordeal, if Floyd Landis is exonerated, one of the first voices to speak out will be John Lelangue. And what he’ll say is that he had faith in Floyd all along, but was hampered by the system from saying so. Perhaps, given the politics of the ProTour, that may even be so. But when he does, I (for one) won’t believe a word of it.
