The Mad Mennonite is back.
Floyd Landis, the man who destroyed the legend of Lance Armstrong, has returned to the sport. Banned for doping and stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title, Landis is coming back in style.
He’s sponsoring a continental squad with the money he acquired from the settlement of the whistleblower lawsuit he and the US government pursued against Armstrong.
Once you subtract years and years of lawyer fees, Landis ended up with $750,000 and he is taking every dollar to fund the Canadian Silber team managed by Good Frazier, a former teammate.
Landis plans to also use money from his Floyd’s of Leadville business that sells cannabis based products. The team will certainly take advantage of Floyd’s range of CBD options for recovery, pain relief and sleep.
While Lance Armstrong has a lifetime ban from pro cycling, Landis is now back in the sport that threw him out over ten years ago. He’s got money, drugs — and the front seat of the team car anytime he wants it.
“I have a conflicted relationship with cycling, as everybody knows, but I still like it, and I still remember what it was like to be a kid and race on a domestic team. It was some of the best years of my life,” said Landis.
Not everyone is likely to applaud the re-appearance of Landis anymore than they’d cheer Johan Bruyneel or Riccardo Ricco getting a team to play with. That’s all fine with Landis.
“They can put me in the same bracket as everyone else they want to go away, but at the end of the day, rather than yelling and screaming on the internet about how I should go away, they could go out and find some other sponsors to help them promote the sport,” he said. “Those people are going to continue to talk like that and that’s just who they are.”
Personally, we welcome Landis back with open arms. Pro cycling is chronically short on showman and entertainers. If it weren’t for Peter Sagan, there would be a personality vacuum so massive it would threaten to kill the sport.
Floyd always had a way with words and wasn’t afraid to say what needs to be said in his own inimitable way. Still, I wish he’d rename his new team the Vapers. That would be soooo cool.
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