Blah…Blah…Shut this guy up!

The big news was announced recently that the USADA hearing with Floyd Landis will not be held until May.  Thus, it appears he will not race the Tour de France as by the time the hearing takes place, the decision comes down, the appeals are finished, the Tour will be over. 

 There is so much out there it is hard to know what is accurate.  Is Floyd still the Tour de France Champion?  Is the USADA causing delays?  Is Landis’ side causing delays?

There is something that the public just doesn’t seem to get about this whole thing.  The USADA is an enforcement agency.  It is not the job of the USADA to determine the guilt or innocence of an athlete.  It is the job of the USADA to prosecute all viable cases.  Do they have a viable case in the Landis’ case?  Who knows?  Landis’ side will obviously tell you no; however, there are two sides to  every story and we only know one side.  We don’t know the USADA’s side because they will not tell us their side.  Why?  They have ethics.  They are following their own rules not to comment on pending cases.  This just gives Landis’ camp, and his supporters, fuel for the fire.  While PowerPoint presentations are being made, revised, and sent all around the world via the internet, the USADA must patiently wait for a hearing date.  These same people supporting Landis will be the first to fire off on Dick Pound when he violates his own rules and runs at the mouth.

Do I think Landis is guilty?  No.  I do know this though, I have only heard one side of the story.  I also know that the USADA would not be pursuing this case if they did not thing their case was viable.  The power to prosecute is almost as important as the power not to prosecute.  All prosecuting agencies know this and don’t take their jobs lightly.  So, unless the USADA is a bunch of unethical cheats, which I would say they are not, they must believe their case is enough to prove Landis guilty.  If anyone thinks they are prosecuting Landis for any other reason than this, they have never worked in a prosecutors office.

I am sure people work at the USADA because they are sports fans.  They don’t want a national hero like Landis to be guilty.  However, they have been charged with the unenviable task of not being judge and jury, but a prosecutor.

Today is a special day in the sports world.  It is the day that the Baseball Hall of Fame inductees are announced.  This year Tony Gwinn and Cal Ripken Jr.  were elected into the Hall of Fame.  One eligible member was conspicuously left off.  His name was Mark McGuire.  Although sports-news outlets are trying to focus on the good, they would be irresponsible in not stating the obvious.  McGuire has the “magic” numbers to be in the hall of fame.  He hit over 500 homeruns and broke the single-season homerun record which stood for 27 years.

Why didn’t he make it into the Hall of Fame?  One could only speculate, but it is not a far reach to think the sports writers are of the opinion he used PED’s.  Is it right?  I do not think so.  McGuire was never cited for breaking a rule.  He was never charged in a crime involving illegal performance enhancing substances.  His two downfalls are admitting to using “andro”, which can be bought at any GNC and was not on baseballs “banned substance” list, and weak testimony in a congressional hearing.

Although I agree the “innocent until proven guilty” axiom does not apply to sports, it is an ideal our country is founded upon.  Unfortunately, the sports writers missed that day in junior high.  The have decided it is their duty to punish someone even though there is no proof of their allegations.

Maybe the sports writers would realize the error in their ways if every time someone sued them for libel for one of their articles or columns, they were assumed guilty because of rumors.  Maybe they should have to prove that everything they write is the truth before it is published.

I do not blame sports-news outlets for stating the obvious as to why McGuire did not get into the Hall of Fame.  I blame the sports writers who have taken it upon themselves to be judge and jury.  They will continue to do so over the next two decades as the “steroid era” has a plethora of players up for induction.  In judging without fact on McGuire, they have taken interest away from the real story and diminished the game they are supposed to love.

Okay, in text the title doesn’t come off with the sarcasm I am heard in my head as I typed it.  I am referring to this:

 http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/11252.0.html

Another athlete, accused of doping, claims she never took anything.  Listen, sometimes people in any type of discplinary proceeding, whether at work, school, criminal, licensing board, ect do accept plea bargains when they haven’t done anything wrong.  Once you are accused of something, you have to weigh the risks of losing versus the offer in front of you.  So, even innocent people are forced into plea bargains.  I am just sick of every athlete telling me they are innocent.

I guess that is status quo.  Reagan knew nothing about Iran-Contra.  Clinton didn’t inhale or have sex with that woman.  Bush jr. really thought there were WMD’s.  Deny enough and people eventually will believe you.

Aren’t we lucky that all the athletes that have tested positive are innocent?  What are the odds?  After all, it is normal for a guy that is 6′6″ and 310 lbs to be able to bench 500 lbs and move from one side of the offensive line to the other in like half a second.  It is normal for a baseball player to enter the league weighing like 190 and leave weighing like 230 with 40 lbs more muscle mass.  It is normal for a sprinter to have the upper body mass of a NFL cornerback.  After all, they need those chest, back and arm muscles to do that 100, 200 meter dash.

 I hate to say I believe this, most athletes, in any sport that pays a signficant amount of money, is on some type of performance enhancing substance.  Heck… if I had the money I probably would take HGH.  After all, by all reports it makes your feel 20 years younger and has great health benefits, on top of athletic improvement.  It is a banned substance though… fortunately for athletes there is no easy test to detect it.

I do believe there is a sliding scale.  The less money an athlete can make in a sport, the less likely they are on something.  At least that is my opinion.  Money corrupts.  Baseball, football, and even cycling has enough money for the top athletes to consider doping a necessary “evil”. 

 I believe that Carl Lewis, and the more I read Greg LeMond, marked the end of an era.  Those are the last champions I will look at and believe they were not doping.  Everyone else, I will always wonder.

Working in a law enforcement office, when a person makes a procedural argument, it is usually a guilty man’s argument.  I have to write though, I don’t think this is true in Landis’ case.  First, the nice powerpoint presentation points out some horrific errors in the handling, labeling (actually mislabeling) and use of ID numbers made by the French lab in the testing of Floyd Landis’ samples from the Tour de France that are in question.  Now, the French newspaper L’Equipe is reporting that the French lab has admitted to making “administrative errors” in the handling of the B sample.

 Something is wrong.  There are so many errors with the lab it is ridiculous.  They have destroyed a man’s reputation yet they cannot even get samples labeled correctly or follow the proper procedure for the re-labeling of samples.  Meanwhile, Dick Pound, President of WADA, continues to defend the mistakes.  After all, this guy doesn’t care who he tramples in the process of boosting his own ego.  He is still bitter from not being named head of the IOC.  So, he has made it his personal goal just to ruin sports for his own gain.

 At some point you have to state enough is enough.  Pound needs to respect the rules that are in place if he is to have any credibility.  The French lab needs to start answering for how it leaked information about Landis, how it mislabeled the samples and even how it let out the information on Armstrong.  Isn’t there a pattern here?  The lab is not reliable.

 The rules also need to be changed under WADA.  A and B samples cannot be tested by the same lab.  It would help solve a lot of these problems and prove that some of these labs are not as accurate as they are thought to be.

Last night, I stayed up too late doing something frivilous. I watch the Agassi-Baghdatis match until midnight. I couldn’t look away. If this was going to be Agassi’s last match I wanted to see it. Why? Well, I have been watching him his whole career. 

Back in high school I didn’t swim, bike or run, I did something else. I played tennis. About a year after I started playing, this young kid (who is actually about my age) was hitting the pro scene. Andre was all over. You couldn’t miss him. His hair, his commercials, his defiance for tennis tradition and most of all his stunning defeats of those more mature than himself. For someone that like the machine like performances of Ivan Lendl, Agassi leaved little to be desired. 

As the years went by, I actually liked the fact that 3 other Americans won grand slams before Agassi (Chang, Courier and Sampras). Every time Agassi lost a big match, it was funny to me. After all, the brash, punky kid choked again. 

Andre then fell off the face of the earth. He dropped out of the rankings. He came back to play at Wimbledon in 1992. At this time I was going into my senior year of college and the young kid from Las Vegas has suffered six years of defeats in the big matches. This tournament he did not. Somehow he crisp, compact ground strokes, were enough to overcome the games best server-and-volley players. He won Wimbledon as an unseeded player. Only the second player to do so. I watched that tournament intensely. I remembered there being something different about him. He was more focused than before. When I saw him win that tournament, I thought to myself, “He might be the first player to win all four grand slams since Rod Laver.” After all, grass was supposed to be his weakest surface. 

I still didn’t buy into Agassi at that point. Still a little too loud for my taste. But, over the years he has changed and so has my attitude towards him. I cannot help but root for him in all of his matches. His subdued manner is a far cry from the teenager that hit the scene in 1986. He is now a mature 36-year-old man that appreciates the talent he has been given. 

Agassi probably suffered from the same syndrome that any of us would fall victim to at a young age. He achieved too much, too soon and was having too much fun doing it. Can I blame an 18-year-old millionaire with women throwing themselves at him for not being focused? I couldn’t focus in college on just making it to three hours of class a day. 

Agassi could have been the greatest of all time (okay maybe not better than Laver). I have no doubt about that now. He could have easily racked up 6 more grand slams if he took tennis more seriously. He wouldn’t have had to rely on a single tournament like Sampras to define his greatness (seven of Sampras’ 14 grand slams are at Wimbledon). But, he probably learned a lot more achieving greatness this way. He learned to appreciate what he was given. 

I hope as I watch Agassi play out his last match, that I can learn from Agassi to appreciate what I have been given.

I had my “Big Family Picnic” this Sunday. It in essence includes all of my maternal grandmother’s family. So, there are tons of my second and third and now even fourth cousin’s there. One of the most refreshing things was the fact that it seems my family is really into the non-American sports. Sports conversations didn’t revolve around the White Sox, Cubs, Bears or Bulls. Instead people were talking about World Cup Soccer, Wimbledon and the Tour. I began to wonder if there are small fundamental shifts in suburbia and the sports they follow. 

It was 20 years ago that Lemond won his first Tour. Probably not a single mainstream sports fan could have told you his name on July 9th, 1986. Now, it seems Americans are interested in who wins the Tour. Twenty years ago, I cannot imagine many Americans followed World Cup Soccer. Now it is televised on national television with people actually rooting for a team. Twenty years ago, Wimbledon was still the on NBC at 8 am. Boris Becker captured his second Wimbledon title at age 18. We have come a long way in the non-traditional sports here in the United States over 20 years. Who knows, maybe by the time my sons are riding there bikes on the Illinois and Wisconsin roads, it will be accepted as a major American sport.

I have a few blogs I want to write, but this is the shortest, so I will start with this one. 

I took my brother-in-law out for a bike ride this Sunday. I had just finished my cycling camp up in Platteville, WI (North Branch is awesome). My brother-in-law is the same age as my wife, 28-years-old. He is a big guy at 6′5″ and weighs about 300lbs. He is aware that he needs to do something, so we bought him a hybrid bike this year. That was about 5 weeks ago and it has been sitting in his garage. 

So, I wanted to bike with Ethan on Sunday so the three of us went out together. I learned something on this ride, fitness is earned. We pulled out from his house and headed toward the forest preserve which is about 2 miles away. 

To get to the forest preserve, you cross under Arlington Heights road and emerge on a crushed gravel path. It was a slight uphill, but sandy, so while pulling Ethan I had to get out of the saddle to maintan control. I get to the top and look back and he is walking his bike. 

I was giving him a hard time as he is a pretty competitive guy. So, it was a good chance to rib him. So, we got to the top, desended down another “hill” and he was falling behind. Now, remember, I am just cruising along and have my son in tow. I took him on the whole path which cannot be more than 3 miles. Despite there being no hills per se, he was toasted and asking when it would flatten out. I smiled and he reminded me that I have done Ironman’s and ride my bike all the time and he hadn’t ridden in 12-14 years. 

That is when once again came to the self realization that fitness is something we have to earn every day. It goes away if we neglect it and we can lose it at any age, no matter what our past is. So, is it hard work? I guess, but an 88-mile ride through the hills of the Platteville area is actually fun. Riding is just fun. Running is fun (when you are doing it). 

So, I am going to enjoy my fitness. I am lucky to have it. I also intend on getting my brother-in-law out there more so he can gain some fitness and enjoy it too.