Floyd Fails Again

It was simply distasteful when millionaire doper Floyd Landis started begging for money. And now that he has fallen well short of his goal of two million dollars it's simply pathetic. Think about this for a minute; Landis has been a highly paid cyclist for many years (At Phonak he made $1 million base salary - annually. Added to that was sponsorship money which for Landis should have been in the $1-4 million per year range. Then bonuses, appearance fees, speaking fees, Floyd's goofy training camps and so on.), yet here he is acting like a regular street bum. But aiming high. He may be out of work but he's not homeless. Since 97.5% of us have net worth's less than $1 million it means that roughly 97.5% of the suckers who sent money in had net worth's significantly less than that of Landis. Doesn't this seem backwards to you? Still, there were enough idiots out there sending money to the Floyd Fund that it's collected $150,000.00 so far. Must be the same idiots that sent money to Tyler Hamilton. That was money well spent, wasn't it?

Wait? Did I call it the Floyd Fund? My bad. It's called the Fairness Fund. See, it's not about Floyd, it's about fairness for all of us. Nice marketing spin Floyd. By claiming that he needs the money to, "attain a fair and just hearing", he suggests two incorrect premises. One, that he needs the money. This is just plain bull crap. He has more than enough money enough to defend himself. He would rather use your money though, apparently saving his own cash for things like houses in expensive gated communities so that he can hang with his neighbors Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Queen Elizabeth II and Barry Bonds. Hmm.. Barry Bonds? I wonder what Barry and Floyd have in common? See below for more on Bonds.


The Landis home (center-left) in gated community. The Landis' need your help.

And two, that he is somehow not getting a fair hearing. He's free to get hearings from the International Cycling Union, the French doping agency, the US Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency. But like his mentor Lance Armstrong, Landis seems to be claiming that there is a world wide conspiracy that's out to get him. Landis is even claiming that he is being denied basic human rights. What? Is he being lowered, alive, into a meat grinder, hanging by his testicles like Saddam Hussein used to do to people he disliked? Is Floyd being held in a feces filled, windowless, eight-by-eight jail cell for months on end? Is he being tortured in an effort to get him to spill the beans on how doping is rampant in the pro cycling world? Get a grip Floyd. You exercise your right to free speech (continuously), you exercise your right to petition for redress of grievances (continuously), you exercise your right to pick a religion, peaceably assemble, vote in free and fair elections, you have not been deprived of life, liberty or property. In a nutshell Floyd, from the perspective of most of the people that populate this planet, you have the world by the tail. You are rich, famous and are free to pursue whatever kind of life that you want. You are shameless in suggesting that somehow you are being denied basic human rights. You wouldn't know the first thing about it. If you'd like to know what being denied human rights means maybe you should ask one of the millions (that's millions Floyd) of refugees in Pakistan, Somalia or the Sudan.


Thanks to the Fairness Fund, Floyd Landis was able to get a bicycle and some basic food supplies.


Only in America can people cheat at something, lie about it and then, in effect, get a license to steal. Only in America do poor people feel sorry for the rich. And now, to bring his pathetic panhandling directly to the people of America, Landis is planning to, "hold town hall-style meetings in Southern California and across the nation where Landis will discuss his legal defense and raise money through auctions and by signing autographs" (read HERE). That's great; town hall-style meetings, where, like politicians, Landis can lie about his behavior and beg for money. Landis, like a good politician, knows that the public gets their information from the media and rarely do they delve into the actual facts surrounding an issue. So Landis will continue to spew his lies in an effort to get public opinion on his side in hopes of duping the public into sending money his way.

Finally, if Landis was truly innocent of the doping charges, and if he really was to make $8-10 million in endorsement deals plus $2.5 million in winnings, he could sell a stake in his earnings to an investment group. This happens all of the time. For example, if you are suing for financial damages you can sell, in advance of winning or settling the case, some or all of your potential income. The trick, of course, is to convince the investors that your story is true and that you are likely to prevail. With up to $12 million (Floyd's claim, read HERE) in potential income he could easily find suitors to fund his defense costs. If, and that's a big IF, he could convince someone, anyone, of his innocence. Under these arrangements Landis would have to share a percentage of this income with the investors. And that, I suppose, is the rub; Landis is obviously greedy and wants all of the money for himself, thus the begging instead of a market driven and value considered buy-sell arrangement. Still, and as a further service of elviskennedy.com, I'll provide to Landis links to two such organizations (HERE and HERE). Good luck Floyd.

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To those of you who wonder why Landis would have taken testosterone instead of the usual EPO in anticipation of an epic ride, how about this for a theory on why Landis' blood had unusual amounts of testosterone; EPO, as you know, is a synthetic replacement for human blood and is used to boost performance by raising the amount of red blood cells to increase aerobic capacity. Let's say that the night before Landis' other worldly ride at the Tour de France Landis was given a bag or two of his own blood. This is an old-school (non-EPO) and classic method of blood doping. And let's say that the added blood was taken from Landis earlier in the year when he was taking synthetic testosterone for muscle building purposes, say, during February or March when he was in a training and muscle building stage. Is it possible that Landis and his doctors spent so much time calculating just how much blood they could add to his system without tripping any drug test red flags that they forgot that the blood was laced with remnants of synthetic testosterone? This could account for the unusual levels Landis had in his system and it would answer the question of why not EPO. Does this make any sense whatsoever? Hey, it's just a theory.

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Lance Armstrong as baseball player


Baseball's Lance Armstrong, better known as Barry Bonds, has failed a drug test. Read HERE. Why is this item here in a cycling related blog? Well, in addition to the obviously parallel careers of Bonds and Armstrong (swell athletes at the beginning of their careers, superstars after drug use) you'll note other eery similarities. For example, both of these knuckle-heads are fond of saying, "I've never failed a drug test". They both claim to be the most tested athlete on the planet. This is malarky and both of these guys know it, and they also know that the statements get printed every time they are uttered. Useful to cast doubt. There is indisputable evidence that both of these guys took drugs in the past and they both used the same sorry excuse; someone (or everyone in Armstrong's case) is out to get them. For Lance it's the entire country of France, the laboratory that tampered with the testing system and ex-friends trying to extort money, for Bonds it was doctors and friends giving him things he thought were multi-vitamins. Armstrong has never fully answered why EPO was found in his blood from the 1999 Tour (see HERE) and Bonds has never fully answered the same types of questions (see HERE). Both guys claim problems with the testing system at the same time they both used sophisticated methods to manipulate that same system to avoid being caught.