Landis vs. McQuaid. Comedy skit continues.

//Landis vs. McQuaid. Comedy skit continues.

Landis vs. McQuaid. Comedy skit continues.

Landis & McQuaid. Comedy team!

Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Chris Farley & David Spade. Only those funny men could truly appreciate the genius of the comedy duo of Floyd Landis & UCI President Patrick McQuaid.

Their hilarious exchanges and legal battles are more entertaining that half the bike races on the calendar. What would you rather see — the Tour of Poland or Landis and McQuaid locked in a room together? Poland loses every time.

The comedy duo is back in the news with more hi-jinx and laughs over the McQuaid lawsuit that never materializes. Five months ago the UCI president and his minions threatened Landis with legal action if he did not retract statements about UCI corruption, bribe-taking, dope test manipulation and cover-ups.

The brilliance here — and let’s not rule out the possibility these two actually write their material together — is the finely calibrated comedy roles each man has mastered. Pat McQuaid is the all-bark, no bite buffoon, huffing and puffing and playing the clueless, autocratic corporate head man. A exceptional piece of character acting and the Irishman must surely have spent time on stage in Dublin.

Meanwhile his comedic foil is Floyd Landis, the wild man, the loose cannon — you never know what he’ll do next but you know it will be outrageous. Floyd is a self-taught performer with an innate sense of pathos and the theater of the absurd. Again, genius.

When McQuaid had his law firm fire off their legal threats, Landis responded by creating a fake law firm called Greymanrod and a fake lawyer to represent him. As Cyclingnews.com noted, the firm specializes in things like Vegetable Rights Abuse Advocacy.

But McQuaid doesn’t simply play the straight-man in this skit. Witness his delicious parody of organizational nonsense as he responds to questions about the nonexistent lawsuit. “It’s definitely going ahead but I don’t know when. I haven’t spoken to legal but they’re looking after it. You can’t dictate resolutions on legal cases. They go at their own speed and you have to let the lawyers take care of it. It’s ongoing but the legal team are dealing with it.”

The question becomes, when is the movie coming out? How do we bring these two brilliant comedians to a wider audience? If there is any hope or irony in the world, there’s already a script in the works.

By |2019-02-03T16:15:52-08:00September 28th, 2011|Uncategorized|3 Comments

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3 Comments

  1. Sam September 28, 2011 at 10:45 am - Reply

    I think what is sad is that this stuff hits with such impact and immediate reaction when it is splashed, but fairly quickly, it loses that impact and begins to become irrelevant the longer it goes on. Maybe it is just me…

    • TwistedSpoke September 28, 2011 at 11:10 am - Reply

      Well, it's the joke part of the sport. Have a laugh, move on. The sad part is that nobody takes it seriously enough to get rid of McQuaid and people like him that are destroying the sport. Matt

  2. Franco October 1, 2011 at 3:40 pm - Reply

    it is sad…and funny. I like to think that Greymanrod's specialization in Vegetable Abuse Rights Advocacy is a dig at ole Dave Z's vegan-ness. Dave Z and Landis were hilarious together…I hope their relationship has survived all the Landis drama.

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