A Thought on Floyd Landis
I know what you're thinking: Who the hell is Floyd Landis?
And you wouldn't be wrong to have such a thought occur to you. Outside of the cycling world, Landis was certainly an unknown commodity just a month ago (his support role of Lance Armstrong on a handful of his seven straight Tour de France
notwithstanding). Of course, you all have likely heard by now that Landis extended the American dominance of cycling's premier event by winning the Tour de France on Sunday, battling back from a sure-fire choke job earlier in the week--mostly thanks to an otherworldly performance in Saturday's final time trial.
So maybe ESPN has pounded his name into your skull over the past couple weeks.
Why do I care?
Well, you don't, necessarily. You mostly care about Lance Armstrong... but he's retired. But while Lance Armstrong appears to be a kind of mythical, yet enigmatic, kind of rock star--you know the type: you feel like you know him but you actually know very little about him outside of a few key facts--Landis is a bit more grounded. A bit more human, I suppose.
He talks in post-race interviews about his fondness for beer. He lives in a tiny apartment in Spain during the European cycling season with fellow rider David Zabriskie (who, it should be noted, races for a rival team; not that it matters to Landis).
But, as is outlined in this great article by Daniel Coyle in the July issue of Outside Magazine, Landis' life is more of an open book. He's also a bad mo... well, decorum prevents my base-level analysis of Floyd Landis... let's just say that I think he has the same wallet Samuel L. Jackson has in Pulp Fiction (see page 4 of the above article). Basically, he's a likable guy. He may not be a dominant machine like Lance was on the Tour, and he's certainly not going to be the guy to bring the sport of cycling into the mainstream; if Armstrong couldn't do it, noone can.
Landis, however, is not a mythical rock star. He's just a guy who lives in a tiny apartment, who likes beer, who is as competitive as you could possibly imagine and possibly most importantly is completely unhindered by cycling's doping cloud that Lance Armstrong still cannot escape even a year after his retirement.
He's a guy you can get behind; a guy you can root for because, outside of growing up in a strict Mennonite family and his borderline-psychotic level of training, he's just like the rest of us.
I'm a Floyd Landis guy, and you should be, too.
And you wouldn't be wrong to have such a thought occur to you. Outside of the cycling world, Landis was certainly an unknown commodity just a month ago (his support role of Lance Armstrong on a handful of his seven straight Tour de France
notwithstanding). Of course, you all have likely heard by now that Landis extended the American dominance of cycling's premier event by winning the Tour de France on Sunday, battling back from a sure-fire choke job earlier in the week--mostly thanks to an otherworldly performance in Saturday's final time trial.
So maybe ESPN has pounded his name into your skull over the past couple weeks.
Why do I care?
Well, you don't, necessarily. You mostly care about Lance Armstrong... but he's retired. But while Lance Armstrong appears to be a kind of mythical, yet enigmatic, kind of rock star--you know the type: you feel like you know him but you actually know very little about him outside of a few key facts--Landis is a bit more grounded. A bit more human, I suppose.
He talks in post-race interviews about his fondness for beer. He lives in a tiny apartment in Spain during the European cycling season with fellow rider David Zabriskie (who, it should be noted, races for a rival team; not that it matters to Landis).
But, as is outlined in this great article by Daniel Coyle in the July issue of Outside Magazine, Landis' life is more of an open book. He's also a bad mo... well, decorum prevents my base-level analysis of Floyd Landis... let's just say that I think he has the same wallet Samuel L. Jackson has in Pulp Fiction (see page 4 of the above article). Basically, he's a likable guy. He may not be a dominant machine like Lance was on the Tour, and he's certainly not going to be the guy to bring the sport of cycling into the mainstream; if Armstrong couldn't do it, noone can.
Landis, however, is not a mythical rock star. He's just a guy who lives in a tiny apartment, who likes beer, who is as competitive as you could possibly imagine and possibly most importantly is completely unhindered by cycling's doping cloud that Lance Armstrong still cannot escape even a year after his retirement.
He's a guy you can get behind; a guy you can root for because, outside of growing up in a strict Mennonite family and his borderline-psychotic level of training, he's just like the rest of us.
I'm a Floyd Landis guy, and you should be, too.
posted by Paul at 8:24 AM
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