Thursday Hate: I'm with Floyd

A comment posted in response to Adam Myerson's brilliant blog/essay today on Floyd Landis' stunning (to some) confession that he did indeed use performance-enhancing drugs:

Landis is a sucker - cool if he wants to call himself out but naming names is b.s. - a snitch. He better have some serious proof too if he’s going to start this. My guess is that he’s run out of $$$...again and is looking for another book deal. Chump.

I'm sorry, but are you mad because you bought his book or donated to his Fairness Fund thinking that he was actually innocent? Are you mad because he's implicating your other heroes, George and Levi?

If so, it ain't Floyd that's the chump.

Firstly, it was called the Floyd Fairness Fund. Not the Floyd Innocence Fund. And was aptly named. Landis was being made the scapegoat. This commenter would be just as pissy and indignant if Floyd had named names when he was busted in 2006. It has nothing to do with his timing. It's that he's blowing the whistle at all.

As a friend of mine pointed out, Jose Canseco had little credibility, as well. Everyone said he was full of it, that he was all sour grapes, that he should keep his mouth shut because he had no proof. It literally required an act of Congress (which had much better things to do) but everything he said about drugs in baseball was all true.

Anyone who’s ever ridden under Bruyneel and Armstrong are immediately suspect. When Vaughters bolted, anyone who stayed on was doping in my book. If you believe that Bruyneel is the Grand Moff Tarkin and Armstrong the Darth Vadar of doping, I don’t see how the hell you can think anyone who raced was them was clean during that time.

What would you have done? After having reaching the absolute pinnacle of your chosen profession, only to see it all stripped away only because of doing what everybody else was doing? Could you look your mom in the eye and tell her the truth? How can you even fucking answer that question? None of us can even imagine how tough the choice would be to walk away from cycling once introduced to the truth of how the pros really do it, after sacrificing everything to get to that point.

Because at that point, choosing to dope is just one small link in a much longer chain. And until that day, which thankfully will never come for nearly all of us, I’ll reserve my judgment of whether dopers are bad people or not.

Yes, we can point to Vaughters, Pate, or Millar as beacons amid this darkness. Doping sucks, but as long as you're watching the races, and cheering on your heroes, and patronizing the sponsors who want winners, sponsors who look the other way, along with race officials who take bribes...you all are complicit in it, and you shouldn't act so fucking shocked.

So finally, after everybody else who's as guilty as Floyd turned their backs on him with magnanimous proclamations of their hope for his innocence, Floyd has finally decided to come clean, because why should he continue to cover for them?

I for one applaud it. Others, not so much, apparently.

A “snitch?” Really? We all love to take a stand and to say we want doping gone. But when it comes time to do the requisite dirty work - overturning rocks and naming names - we hang those that dare - the whistle blowers - out to dry.

We all want the truth. Until that truth hurts us.