Looks like Floyd Landis’ return to the peloton is a whole lot closer to reality with today’s announcement that he will be joining the OUCH presented by Maxxis cycling team as soon as his suspension expires. CyclingNews reports that the OUCH Sports Medical Center is picking up the title sponsorship for what used to be known at the Health Net/Maxxis cycling team, which is owned by Momentum Sports.Dr. Brent Kay, the co-founder of OUCH and the long-time personal physician to Landis , played an instrumental role in the sponsorship arrangement and the signing of Landis to the team, and sees it as an opportunity to highlight just what the Smith & Nephew Birmingham Hip replacement allows people to do.
“We are very excited to showcase Floyd’s Smith & Nephew hip, to play on the bionic man theme with his return,” Dr. Kay told Cyclingnews. “We think it is going to set a precedent about what these joints can do.”
According to what Dr. Kay told CyclingNews that the team sponsorship and the signing of Landis was just a matter of all the right pieces falling into place.
“I knew that Health Net was not going to be sponsoring any more, and the opportunity just presented itself, so I jumped on it. I am really excited because I want to help Floyd return and also it is going to help get out message out. We are going to do some seminars next year about joint replacement, not just to the athlete community but also to the general public. “
No word, yet, on exactly what the status of Landis’ legal case is, or whether that has an impact on when he will be able to return to cycling action. Theoretically, Landis’ suspension ends in late January. However, there is still the matter of the $100,000 fine assessed by the CAS panel in June, which is an issue in his current lawsuit. Landis and his attorneys seek to have the $100,000 fine thrown out, along with the rest of the CAS panel’s decision against him. Meanwhile, USA Cycling and USADA have said that he will not be issued a license to race until the fine is paid. The next major milestone in Landis’ case will be on November 24th, when attorneys for both sides are scheduled to appear before a US District Court judge in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile…
Not everyone is happy to see Lance Armstrong back in the peloton. That’s certainly no surprise. This time, it’s Linus Gerdemann who appears to be taking issue with the seven-time Tour champ’s return to competitive cycling. According to VeloNews:
“This is not positive for the credibility of cycling,” said Gerdemann, winner of the Tour of Germany. “But there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
However, over at CyclingNews comes a quote with a slightly different spin:
How does [Gerdemann] feel about the return to the peloton of Lance Armstrong or of those who have served doping suspensions, such as Floyd Landis or Ivan Basso? “You really can’t blame people for wanting to come back, but it is surely not always in the best interest of cycling for its credibility. We must simply wait and see who rides the Tour next summer.”
In the first instance, Gerdemann sounds like he disapproves, but realizes it’s beyond his control. In the second instance, he sounds a bit more understanding. Hmm. Does the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I” ring a bell? Either quote notes that he’s concerned about the impact of such returns on the credibility of the sport. I wonder, though, if he got tagged for a false positive, whether Gerdemann might also be concerned about the credibility of the anti-doping system.
In the VeloNews article, they note:
Gerdemann’s sentiments echo those of German television chiefs at ARD and ZDF, who have refused to cover the Tour de France next year after a spate of high-profile doping scandals, including positive tests by German riders.
“For us, Armstrong is a piece of the past we don’t want to see again,” Rolf-Dieter Ganz, head of communications at ARD, told Die Welt newspaper on September 14.
“The future belongs to young riders, certainly not to Armstrong’s generation, which we had hoped to have seen the back of.”
Somehow, I don’t think that Gerdemann and the folks at the German television networks see eye-to-eye. As CyclingNews reports:
Gerdemann also criticized the German television for canceling its coverage of next year’s Tour de France. The decision is “hard to understand,” he admitted. “I think it is an unusual way to fight doping. I think it hits the wrong ones in the fight against doping.”
He’s got a point there. Punishing the current riders and sponsors for the sins of the past doesn’t seem to be in the best interest of the sport. Depriving the sport of visibility in Germany certainly won’t help cycling grow. Interestingly, Gerdemann will be switching teams next year. As he did in 2005, when he left Team CSC to join the (then) German team T-Mobile, Gerdemann is leaving Team Columbia (the team formerly known as T-Mobile) to race for German team Milram.
“Right now it’s important to give something back to German cycling,which has given me so much. Right now is not the easiest time in Germany, but it is a challenge that Team Milram and I want to accept,” he told Cyclingnews.
The 26-year-old said that it wasn’t so important to him to leave Columbia as it was to join a German team. “Columbia is a very, very good team, but I think that I can accomplish some things in Germany. I think that is the wrong impression, that I wanted to leave Columbia, it is an outstanding team that has deserved its successes.”
According to the CyclingNews article, the young cyclist won’t rule out riding for a non-German team in the future, bur for now, he wants to help improve the state of cycling in his native country.
Anyone know if Floyd will be required to submit to 6 months of testing prior to participating in a UCI approved race, such as the Amgen Tour of California?
Regardless, *venga Floyd!*
I’m not 100% certain, but I think that the 6 months that Lance had to submit to prior to competition had to do with his being retired. In Floyd’s case, he may still have been subject to testing — even if no one ever came to test him. So he may well be able to start again in late January. But will the fine issue be settled by then, and will USA Cycling have issued his license? If not, he won’t be able to compete until that’s settled. At least, that the USADA/USA Cycling corporate line at the moment. We’ll see if the judge strikes down the fine…
VERY COOL that Floyd has inked a deal, it’s great news to think that he is this close to pro cycling again! Now if he can just get that pesky CAS ruling/fine dropped.
As to Gerdemann’s (and others) reactions to the Lance comeback, I have to think it’s a case of sour grapes. I can imagine that a LOT of riders won’t relish the thought of Lance being back. For 7 years he ruled over the peleton with an iron fist.
One thing is for certain: he will bring LOTS of attention and publicity to cycling! If it turns into a circus overshadowing the other athletes remains to be seen. Lance is a smart guy, and I can’t imagine he would make a ‘comeback’ if he wasn’t 100% sure he can do it right. He has a LOT to lose here, and for people to associate Lance with doping in the past is just plain wrong. I know there are MANY who believe that there is no way he accomplished what he did clean. Honestly I can’t say I am totally convinced of that fact myself, but you can’t deny the fact that IF he was doping in any way, shape or form, then he was the Grand Doping Master of ALL TIME to go 7 years and not get caught. Considering that he was the most heavily tested athlete on the face of the planet for many of those years, I think it surely leans towards giving him the benefit of the doubt. Read any of the books about how he trained and you find that he probably worked harder than anybody else, along with amazing his natural talent. I don’t think he needed to cheat. His work ethic is undeniable. He DID need an amazing amount of luck to win those 7 tours, along with an incredible team.
I say WELCOME BACK Lance, I hope you can pull it off! The KING is back. How can that be bad for cycling?
Because Floyd is allowed to come back that means he has done his suspensionunder UCI rules so it was possible to test him.
Sometimes caught athletes retire “without doing their suspension” so when they want to return the suspension begins at that time.
Matt, Lance was never the most tested athletes, not even one of the most tested riders, that is just one of the myths about Lance… he was only tested from 7 to 15 times a year, he got just 2 or 3 Out of Competition tests in his whole career! He was tested less than successfull riders like Cipollini or Jalabert who won more than 20 races each year.
At each T&F events, the 3 firsts are tested so athletes like Marion Jones were tested very more often than Lance and MJ never tested positive like Virenque, Pantani,…
Lance could never have worked more than EPO doped riders or if it were true he would have been stronger by 15-20% of the other riders who doped. At top level a 1% of difference between the 2 greatest atheletes is extremely rare, and there is less than 5% between pro-riders. If you have a look at the first TDF of Lance, you can see he didn’t pass the mountain lossing 20 minutes and more, he was not a good ITT, Indurain beated him each times by 5-6mn. He was a good rider but never showed that he could be a phenomenal athletes like did Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Lemond at the beginning of their career. Of course, since a while we have learnt that he didn’t change his physiology after his cancer as pretended, and he didn’t lost a lot of weight. The only thing he changed for sure was to fasten his cadence.
The return of Lance is bad for cycling, at least in Europe because it will put doping in discussion. That is one of the reason that ASO don’t want him back.
There are lots of ways Lance’s return can be bad for cycling. The plain truth is that people do associate LA with doping. I agree it is wrong. Many people simply associate *cycling* with doping. That is wrong too. There are many, many things wrong in the world of sport, but we have to accept the way things are.
As has recently become apparent, ASO and the Empire of the TdF are not pleased to have LA back. The reason is fairly simple: there is nothing in it for them. There is a tenuous argument that they benefit from wider interest in North America, but that audience is very small, and ASO’s revenues would see little or no direct impact. The bigger issue for them is that there is a real danger that LA’s return makes him, as an athlete, a bigger story that the race itself. To ASO, this will simply not do. It is OK for sponsors to promote teams, but ASO can rightfully object to the use of their property to focus on a non-ASO promoted cause: LA’s cancer message.
Imagine the possible scenarios, and try to pick one that is good for cycling. Absolute best case is LA is proven clean by massive testing, wins the race single handedly against a peloton that is proven by that same testing as clean as he is, and retires again to fanfare. But suppose LA wins, and the second place guy tests (2 months later?) for a drug no one had a test for during the race (sound familiar?) Then watch Greg LeMond go apes*it with “anyone faster than me must be doping” and you’re back to the land of Festina in 1998. There are many, many scenarios that make this kind of innuendo possible (an LA teammate tests positive?, LNDD goes amok and tests the old samples anyway?); the only way to make sure they don’t pop up again is for LA to simply stay retired.
Constrast this with what happened to Floyd. Floyd, by any reasonable measure, got screwed by a system that makes the owners of the specatcle more important than the sport itself. The evidence doesn’t support Floyd’s exclusion, but the Powers can’t admit to faulty testing, as it harms their interests. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am a LA supporter. I believe he won fairly, and I support his cause. I also like to watch pro cycling, and believe it is best served by doing everything possible to assure the sporting spectacle is preserved and focused on the racing, not the doping story. Call me a traditionalist, but I think sport should be bigger than the athletes. LA’s return presumes he is a bigger story than the race.
Rant: I’d believe the UCI regs for testing read the way you suggest. Interestingly, we’d also seemingly have a repeat of “The Rassumssen Situation” with UCI possibly claiming Floyd did not report his whereabouts continuously. UCI is likely willing to accommodate LA from retirement, but I’m not sure how willing they would be to do the same for Floyd. Given too that ASO (a bona bide “we hate Floyd and will get him at all costs” club) has an ownership stake in the AToC, I can also believe some settlement talks involving the UCI-ASO rift would use Floyd as a bargaining chip. That really, really sucks.
Not wanting to put too fine a point on it, but the $100k issue is putatively an assessment of USADA’s costs to Floyd, not a fine. It will be interesting to see if the US Distict Court sees it as a fine, as it really is.
“The return of Lance is bad for cycling, at least in Europe because it will put doping in discussion.” Really?
Can’t have that.
With regard to the 6 months of testing prior to return, my understanding is that it applies to EVERYONE. Lance was given a waiver to compete in the Tour Down Under because he was NOT returning from a suspension.
Jean C, you dont have a clue what ur talking about.. If you had done some research before ur post, u would also have found lots of LA testresults. F.ex. by dropping his bodyweight the exact kilos before a big race, he gained 10-15 percent more musclecapasity and strenght. Theres lots of documentation that lLA actly is superman vs oter riders, you just have to read it.
Second, where do you get the idea that .eu and ASO isnt too happy about his return?
I read most of the big cyclingsites- and forums in europe, and id say 75 percent welcomes him back with great excitement, and ive never heard aso said they dont want him back, hmm…
Matt’s comment above about LA ruling the peleton with an iron fist may be why some are not happy about his return. Let’s face it: the drug-cycling connection is pretty strong in many people’s minds, and is likely to remain strong for some years, Lance or no Lance. There has been plenty of discussion here and elsewhere on the net, at least since the events of 2006, about whether or not Lance doped, so I don’t think his return will affect talk about doping in general or in his specific case, unless he were to test positive.
But there was a pretty wide perception that from 1999 through 2005, he did rule the peleton with an iron fist. If that is indeed true, and he can resume this rule in 2009, promoters may be afraid that races will be less exciting, with LA clamping the lid down when it suits his purposes. Riders may feel their own chances reduced, even riders that may not be directly competing with LA (say, going for the green or polka dot jersey).
AFAIK, Landis has never been out of the OoC pool, so the 6 month pool is not a question. I have no idea if he has had any tests, but it is not up to him to schedule them.
TBV
Frenchtard,
Gaining 10 or 15% of power by dropping weight can only do by dropping 10 or 15% of the weight.
Dr. Coyle, who published the erroneous study about Lance’s changement of physiology, weighted him at 79kg in 92 , 76kg in 93 and more than 79kg in 97 and 99.
We ca assume that he was weighted off season. So we can take 75kg as weight of form. To gain 10% of power, Lance would have to drop 7.5 kg and 11kg for 15% !
The only superman able to do that was Ullrich but he dropped 10kg and more of fat. Nobody have seen Lance overweight!
A real clue of real capacity of aerobic athletes is the VO2 max:
Lance was around 85ml/kg/mn that is pretty good but far of Indurain, Lemond or Hinault who were around 95!
From http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/anatomyandphysiology/a/VO2_max.htm
As you can see I am not the only to have no clue about what should be the real capacity of an athlete.
70% of the french were unhappy and very unhappy (the most numerous) of the return of Lance, results from a sondage made by french TV.
German TV was unhappy too.
Prudhomme said clearly “Armstrong can come back BUT … he has to explain his 6 EPO samples!”, a polical correctness to say “No you are not welcome”! Can you see the difference with Giro where a red carpet was out for him?
tbv,
That’s my understanding, too. One has to formally retire before being removed from the out-of-competition testing pool. What happened to Ian Thorpe a couple of years ago is a good example. He’d stopped competing and intended to retire, but never formally did so. So the following May, when the vampires showed up, he had to submit to the testing. And it was that test which caused all the ruckus. Some time later, he formally retired from competition, and now no longer has to worry about unexpected people showing up to demand samples. Since Floyd hasn’t retired yet, I’d assume he’s still part of the testing pool. But, as you said, whether or not they’ve tested him is another matter. It can’t be much of a surprise if the testee has to schedule his own surprise tests, can it? 😉
I may be totally clueless here, but isn’t the whole point of EPO doping to increase red blood cell counts and hence VO2 max?
It seems to me that all this opinination going on about LA – is not exactly hitting the mark.
The Germans are not “happy” about LA’s rturn because they have made it much easier for themselves by “blaming” Lance and the so called “old-school” riders for being cheats and dopers. So it is much easier to “respond” to the theme of LA’s return then to state truthfully that the majority of the old Team Mobile was under clinical enhancements. It is much easier to cast doubt and suspicion on the top man then to accept that EVEN doped they couldn’t manage to be the number one.
As for the French – well – I think the populace have been fed a load of manure. The real reason the French don’t like LA is because he broke their sayndicate hold on controlling the race. The “opinions” of the masses as far as cycling goes is due to what is printed in that rag le Equipe.
The Tour should be glad that LA is coming – here in Europe – their “handling” of the whole “doping/cheating” mess has made them less then popular. Then playing who’s in who’s out – sunk them. The TdeF needs “publicity” that will again put the race in the place where it should be…of course – what if Lance comes and takes the win! I think people will be falling on their epes by the thousands.
Jean C – the German broadcasters were not “unhappy” with the return of LA – they are pissed about the French playing politics with the Tour – that is what they are unhappy about.
Morgan,
It seems that you are a bit anger probably because now you feel that you have been cheated for a long period.
To be clear, yes Lance Armstrong doped, that is difficult to deny it when we are looking at all facts, evidences and clues. I will nit cite each of them I would need to write a full book! ;D
As I stated ealier, Lance’s physical abilities are common among the world of top athletes, far from the best recorded like Daehli, Lemond or Hinault.
Until his cancer he didn’t have done strong performances. He was never able to challenge the first ranks on mountain stages or ITT!
He became much stronger after his cancer. Why?
No physilology change. No significant loss of weight. Just high cadence but that can’t never explain a such gain of more than 25% on mountain stages on a so short periode and especially after a cancer.
What are the evidence and clues about doping linked to Lance?
Testicular cancer produces bêta-hCG, this kind of substance is used to increase T so it is systematicaly tested. Lance’s cancer was only detected very late at the phase III of the illness. In 96 Lance won at least two races, he was tested but his cancer should have provoked a false positive!
Why? No tests or masking agent use?
In 99 he tested positive for stage Jul 4th but on Jul 17 before the revelation of his doping case Lance said to reporters that he had no TUE for the current TDF. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sport/tour_de_france/397095.stm
He has very bad doctor to use that kind of cream for the alleged problem! An injection or oral/rectal means would have been much better to treat inflammation.
2000: the affair of the US Postal rubbish: around 200 seringues, Actovegin, many other products and many pieces of medical textile fabric sullied with blood.
And of course you have many straneg performance like the heaviest riders able to climb and to win mountain stages! A whole team unable to climb a small pass, but able to lead the peloton the next stage all along a day,…
Most of the USPS/disco riders who have left the team became weakener despite they often tested positive. And some of them and management people have done testimonies against Lance.
Finally EPO was found in the 1999 samples. Why Lance didn’t sue L’Equipe as did Barcelona FC with Le Monde about Fuentes? There were a lot of money to earn… if he were clean!
So it’s very difficult to believe that Lance was clean in a suspicious team with a dubious manager in a sport with many PED abuses.
That is like to believe that Universe is just 4000 years old or human people have not ancestor!
Jean C.
I am sooo tired of the incoherent Euro’s who post that Lance was a doper! He was not and is not! He had a life changing experience that caused him to tap another part of his physical ability to endure true suffering. His experience with cancer and training while on Chemo therapy taught him the meaning of inward reflection. This is no different than someone who is able to slow their metabolism through meditation. Marshall Arts experts are able to connect with that part of the brain through meditation as well. Your problem with it is that he is a Yank!!! If he were French you guys would kiss his a** daily but God forbid a Yank is the Greatest of ALL TIME. Shut up and watch him this year it is good for the sport. You will all be happy because he can’t beat Contador anyway! No one can right now he now rules the peloton as Lance once did.