Floyd Landis might be on to something.
Lord help the sports world if he is.
With a request to dismiss the doping case against him denied three weeks ago, the cyclist and his handlers have decided they won't stand pat during the three months before Landis' arbitration hearing is scheduled to begin. So he's going public with his latest defense, apparently undeterred that a half-dozen previous attempts were huge flops.
This one will be online at his Web site, http://www.floydlandis.com, complete with a PowerPoint presentation, digital slide show and more than 300 pages of documentation. Rumors that Pinocchio was being cast as the lead investigator for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency appear to be just that.
"He wants everything out in the open," San Diego physician and cycling coach Arnie Baker, who has worked with Landis and other top U.S. cyclists, told USA Today last week.
"The hearing may not happen for a long time," added Baker, who prepared the PowerPoint presentation, "so Floyd felt it was necessary to let the public see everything, to get all the information that they need right now."
More likely what we'll get, though, are warmed-over versions of the excuses Landis tried out previously in news conferences and on shows ranging from "Larry King Live" to "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Several new arguments Jacobs raised in a failed attempt to have the case dismissed are also included, apparently on the theory that they're confusing enough to fool the public, if not the review board that denied the request.
It's enough to make you wish the whole thing could be turned over to Judge Mathis tomorrow instead of waiting for a panel from the American Arbitration Society to clear its schedule sometime in late January or early February. But no such luck.
One of those arguments, for example, goes into some detail about how Landis' urine samples were labeled, presumably raising questions about how they were handled. It sounds promising, until you learn that the cyclist's spokesman, Michael Henson, also told the newspaper that Landis does not deny the sample is his.
A second argument has to do with a carbon isotope test that established the testosterone detected in Landis' sample was from an outside source. In his request, Jacobs pointed out that Landis' results showed he exceeded the acceptable range in only one of four metabolite measures that were part of the test - and contends all four must be abnormal. The actual language in the USADA code says "metabolite(s)," meaning one or more.
There are more examples, but you get the point. None of Landis' arguments have scored points with the experts, so his handlers have repackaged the presentation in a one-sided, high-tech attempt to confuse the issue just enough to win support in the court of public opinion. USADA's rules prohibit the agency from commenting on an active case.
But just as with cyclist Tyler Hamilton and sprinter Tim Montgomery, you get the sense officials there are bristling at their inability to respond to what they consider disinformation campaigns and ginned-up science trotted out on behalf of athletes they've got dead to rights. So much so, in fact, that the most exciting prospect at a recent meeting wasn't new beakers or an improved mass spectrometer, but by a proposal to change the World Anti-Doping Agency code to let researchers and scientists respond immediately to some of the more outrageous claims.
On the other hand, the anti-doping forces already boast considerable powers and almost-limitless resources, so maybe it's a fair-enough fight already. And their record in doping cases suggests as much.
The real danger, then, might not be whether Landis succeeds in lining up public support, especially since it won't matter if the evidence USADA presents at the arbitration hearing is as airtight as it sounds. What could pose a problem, though, is if enough athletes and their high-priced legal helpers decide to pursue the same strategy.
In just the past few weeks, we've seen an NFL lineman stomp an opponent, an NBA player draw a gun and fire a warning shot during an altercation outside a strip club, and the customary number of assaults and drunken-driving arrests. If Landis beats his rap, the first request out of these guys' mouths will no longer be to see their lawyers, but to borrow a laptop loaded with PowerPoint.
