Leave it to a crazed wolf to nail the Armstrong on his “pure bullshit” remark about the UCI’s retro two year ban on former pro doper Michael Boogerd.
Floyd Landis, the Man who Shot Juan Pelota, rightly pointed out that Lance has become the “Self appointed hypocrisy police.”
That was a nice turn of phrase but Landis saved his best of the summation: “For him to use the word hypocrisy in any context other than when facing a mirror is simply laughable.”
That is is “pure brilliance,” to twist the Lance tweet. It’s just a reminder to Twisted Spoke that we will always miss the mad Mennonite and his freak flag style.
Landis is a polarizing figure for those cycling fans who live in a black and white world with no human understanding of empathy and comedy. Most folks don’t like the color gray or the messy moral complexity of life.
Sure, Landis doped and paid the high price but once he returned to the basic ethics of his upbringing, he was a purifying fire. He’s essentially the Conor McGregor of cycling — a funny, unique and hardcore ultimate fighter.
He went at Armstrong with a scorched earth offensive and simply didn’t care about the consequences, one way of another. He did it for reasons good and bad: spite, anger, pettiness and redemption. He went full gas, no looking back and damn Armstrong’s hundred lawyers and massive war chest.
There is nobody we’d rather interview than Landis and we count it as a disappointment we never got to experience the show up close and personal. That’s not a popular opinion but we’re sticking to it. Not all whistleblowers are saints and few matched Landis’ fury or all-in mentality.
Landis wanted to make Lance suffer and regardless of how this US government-backed lawsuit again the Texan turns out, who would ever argue that he didn’t destroy the legend of Lance. It wasn’t about the money — although he’d happily take his large cut and probably needs it.
The whistleblower suit against Armstrong continues to be a fascinating high stakes chess match-cage fight. There are plenty of twists and turns yet to be seen and we don’t expect a verdict for quite a while.
However, we’d have to say that Landis and the mirror have already won.
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