The new Robert Pattinson?
Why Floyd Landis is clearly lying about Lance Armstrong: This vampire doesn'tshare
Maybe, Lance Armstrong can get a part in the new Twilight movie.
The Texas sports icon — held up as an inspiration by so many cancer patients — finds himself being accused of storing blood (his own and other cyclists) in his refrigerator. Floyd Landis — the American cyclist stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for failing a performance-enhancing drug test — is charging Armstrong with being a sports cheat, while finally admitting that he is one himself.
This is the same Landis who wrote an entire book (Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France) that vehemently proclaimed his wide-eyed innocence of any drugging, the same Landis who tried to use his devout Mennonite upbringing in Pennsylvania as proof that he couldn't have cheated. Armstrong, of course, denied the new Landis allegations before crashing his bike and getting bloodied but not broken (just released X-rays show that Armstrong's elbow is not broken) in a Tour of California race.
Denying allegations of performance-enhancing drug use has become almost a full-time second career for Armstrong.
And Lance can rail about how he's never failed a drug test all he wants, there's plenty of smoke billowing around him. You'd also have to be more than a little naive to assume that anyone in high-level, competitive sports is clean these days. Yet with all that said, Landis is probably lying in this case.
Landis comes across as whistle-blowing fraud because Armstrong is way too calculating, controlling and careful to have revealed anything to this nut job. Landis has never come across as the most stable guy in sports. Other cyclists would roll their eyes at Landis long before he became momentarily famous.
Do you really think that Lance Armstrong is giving that guy a key to his apartment in Girona, Spain and charge him with making sure that the stash of secret blood (for illegal blood doping transfusions) kept in a fridge in the closet doesn't go bad as Landis alleges? If Armstrong did have a fridge of blood in his closet is Floyd Landis the guy he'd entrust with checking up on it (ensuring the power doesn't go out in the apartment) while he's away?
Sorry, that doesn't add up.
Armstrong is not Texans linebacker Brian Cushing. He's not some dumb jock who got caught by a system (the NFL's near-token drug testing) that's almost designed to snare as few people as possible. Armstrong's either shockingly clean or he's avoided being nabbed by some of the most sophisticated drug testing in the world for years.
Either way, Armstrong is the control freak of control freaks.
I've covered him at the infamous Tahoe celebrity golf classic — the summer escape where the biggest names in sports really let loose and in Ben Roethlisberger's case get accused of rape. This is an event where athletes completely let down their guard and party — everyone except Lance Armstrong. He came into Tahoe like he was a U.S. president visiting Iraq.
Even in that setting, Armstrong and his team micromanaged every detail, limited his public exposure and insisted that there not be any 1-on-1 interviews. Armstrong's security was so tight that you literally couldn't get within five feet of him. This guy couldn't relax in a hot tub.
Yes, Landis used to be Armstrong's cycling teammate (really Armstrong was his boss). But that also means that Armstrong would have been even more aware of how unstable and often stupid Floyd Landis is.
No way, he trusts that guy with his ultimate secrets.
Lance Armstrong might have a vampire fridge (or several) hidden somewhere. But if he does, it seems fanciful to think that Floyd Landis would ever be in a position to more than imagine it.