The melancholy Dane
Posted May 26th, 2007 in Dope
“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Or in the words of Bjarne Riis.
That also means that I did things that I shouldn’t have and I have regretted that ever since. Those were mistakes that I take the full responsibility for and I don’t have anyone to blame but myself. We all make mistakes and I think my biggest mistake was to let my ambition get the better of me. That I have had to deal with a long time ago and I am glad to say that I am a lot wiser now. Both in my personal and in my professional life
I don’t want to riff on this too much, we all know how important this mea culpa is. It comes from someone who has won the Tour de France and as such has implications for all other tour winners past and present.
I also don’t like this focus on the nineties; as if doping on a grand scale somehow went away at the turn of the milleneium. Puerto should tell us that doping is also a scourge of the noughties and if anything it’s even worse, with a conspiratorial and criminal look to it.
In fact Riis’ admission is absolutely in the present tense because he is actively involved in the sport as a senior member, in a sense time has stood still.
One thing I do have to question is Riis’ statement that he bought the drugs himself. While this may be so in a technical sense, looking at the Telekom roster of admission one would have to say that this is nonsense, with so many admissions one has to assume there was a team wide systemic approach to doping.
As for this quote.
My yellow jersey is in box at home, you can come and collect it. What matters to me are my memories
He can keep it, anyone who would place their ethics and health in such conflict should have to live with the consequences of their actions.
Which brings me to Floyd Landis. Based on the news coming from Denmark and the farce of an inquest conducted by USADA, Floyd Landis not only deserves to be aquitted on the basis of the evidence presented, he also deserves to be a Tour champion.
Landis doesn’t need us, a judge nor a jury to decide if he has been true to himself, like the melancholy Dane, I think he’ll eventually work it out.
technorati tags: cycling,, doping, riis, landis
What others have to say…
Bjarne Riis has now confirmed four things for us all:
1) he has a long history of doping
2) he has a long history of lying
3) he is a Team Director of CSC
4) pro athletes cannot never be trusted
Floyd Landis will soon lose his USADA doping case.
And where was Lance Armstrong hiding?
Rant, as you can see from what I’ve written, I’ve put aside personal questions of Landis’ relative guilt or innocence because the evidence as I now see it isn’t there.
In all of this I have always come down on the side of the good people who do the testing, LNDD aside, and wish that others will take from this a similar perspective.
We need to stem back from the heat of the moment and assess where we go forward from here.
Re: “Curt Schilling”, not the Red Sox Curt are you? Though I don’t expect you to confirm that. Yeah, I know baseball too.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Phil,
Well put. None of us can ever truly know whether Landis did or didn’t do what he’s accused of, but the hearings and the process he’s been tried under is a farce.
Only Floyd knows what’s true and what isn’t. If he’s not being honest, then it will eat at him until someday, like for Riis, it will be so much that he can’t keep it in any longer. And then, if he is telling the truth, he should be left in peace to carry on.
For the rest of us, even those who support him, we can only go by our own impressions as to what the truth of the matter may be.
- Rant