Monday’s Mailbag: Over Floyd; hold others accountable, too; divvy the samples up; UCI hypocritical

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen in cycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to WebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name and home town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

Floyd Landis is a big boy, he can get his own defense team, I’ve got my own list to work on. Besides, according to Outside magazine, Floyd has a low tolerance for racers making excuses for not winning. “Everybody wants to say, ‘I couldn’t win because of this or that,’ ” he says. “To my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter if your goddamn head fell off or your legs exploded. If you didn’t make it, you didn’t make it. One excuse is as good as another.”

Well, Floyd, to my way of thinking, failing the urine analysis should be just about as unlikely as your head falling off, so I guess you just didn’t make it. Fight to prove your integrity or confess your sin … the Tour is over.

Mike Johnson
Cincinnati, Ohio

Hold coaches, others accountable
Editor:
I think it’s time for coaches, director sportifs, and team management to be held accountable for doping by their athletes (Phonak has six cases in three years?). Coaches of cycling teams are usually control freaks; they know everything about their athletes’ bodies and performances. Many a coach will provide and encourage doping, yet when it hits the fan they fire the athlete. When we start addressing the people that facilitate doping then we will have a chance of stopping it.

Edgardo Reyes
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Give ‘A’ and ‘B’ samples to different labs
Editor:
As I understand it, WADA has accredited more than one lab for performing doping tests. In order to help rule out the possibility of someone tampering with a rider’s samples, why couldn’t all of the “A” samples be sent to one lab and all of the “B” samples to another? Representatives of each lab could be present at the race to collect the samples directly from the rider. It shouldn’t cost significantly more, since the lab responsible for the B samples would only be called into play if one of the A samples tested positive. What am I missing?

David Gilbert
Sierra Vista, Arizona

UCI seems hypocritical
Editor:
I’m amazed that after all the noise the UCI makes about cleaning up the sport, that they won’t give blood samples to help the Spanish government confirm whether they have positive matches to the suspected riders in operation Puerto. It’s because of internal policy. They want to save the samples for “research.” Right.

But didn’t the UCI violate “internal policy” by publishing Floyd Landis’s “A” results instead of waiting for the “B” test to be completed? If they can catch some of the cheats red-handed by providing this information to the Spanish authorities, what are the negatives here?

Can someone explain to me how this doesn’t make the UCI the biggest hypocrites on the planet? Maybe Floyd is right. Maybe they have an agenda that isn’t about right and wrong. What can be more important than identifying the names of riders who may have been using the Operacion Puerto ring to cheat?

Matt Walsh
Derby, Connecticut

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