Lance Armstrong tager til genmæle overfor Floyd Landis, der har sendt grove dopingbeskyldninger afsted mod den syvdobbelte Tour-vinder.
Floyd Landis har efter flere års forgæves kamp for at blive renset for doping-anklager nu indrømmet, at han har snydt i årevis.
Samtidig forsøger han at trække Lance Armstrong, manager Johan Bruyneel og en række andre i cykelsporten med i faldet. Læs historien her
Herunder kan du se, hvordan Lance Armstrong reagerede, da han før femte etape i Tour of California gav igen på beskyldningerne fra Floyd Landis.
Udskriften af Armstrongs udtalelser er en pressemeddelelse fra Armstrongs nuværende hold, Team Radioshack. Nederst kan du læse, hvordan manager Johan Bruyneel reagerede på beskyldningerne fra Landis. For at gengive Armstrong og Bruyneels svar korrekt og fyldestgørende, har vi valgt at gengive dem på engelsk, som de er sagt.
Lance Armstrong
- Obviously everyone has questions about Floyd Landis and his allegations. I would say that I’m a little surprised, but I am not. In all honesty, this has been going on for a long time. The harassment and threats from Floyd started a few years ago and really, at that time, we largely ignored him. Johan can speak more to what Floyd exactly wanted from us and the team. A year ago, I told him, ‘listen, you do what you have to do.' We have nothing to say and nothing to hide.
- They started again with some consistency and with some energy about a month ago before this race when Floyd continued to email, text and harass myself, Johan, Dave Zabriskie, Levi (Leipheimer), Andrew Messick, the CEO of Amgen, right around the time that they were trying to get into this race. Floyd made pointed threats to Messick and to the leadership of Amgen that if he wasn’t let in the race he was going to say X, Y and Z about their product.
- I would remind everyone that this is a man that, first of all, from our perspective and from what’s gone on at US Postal and Discovery and all of those Tours, we have nothing to hide. We have nothing to run from and if anybody has any questions we would be more than happy to answer them.
- I would remind everyone that this is a man that has been under oath several times with a very different version. This is a man that wrote a book for profit that had a completely different version. This is somebody that took close to a million dollars from innocent people for his defense under a different premise and now when it’s all run out the story changes. So we are a little confused. Maybe just as confused as you guys.
- But with regard to the specific allegations and the specific claims, they are not even worth getting into. I’m not going to waste your time or my time. I think history speaks for itself here. We’ve all followed this case for the last four years. We’ve followed Floyd winning the Tour and we don’t know what he did or didn’t do when he was on that team. We can only speak about what he did when he was on our team. We followed the case, we followed all the drama with regard to the case and now we see something different. That is about it.
(Asked about allegations that the UCI was paid off in a bribe)
- Absolutely not. No. That is the other thing, if you get into it. Obviously we’ve seen the email and that is not correct. But a lot of other things in the email, the timeline is off, if you go year by year.
- Ultimately all of the other emails that have been sent around will come out. The emails to myself will come out. All of the emails to Andrew Messick will come out, to John Burke from Trek. For someone that says he is here to clear his conscience, why are you sending emails to other people’s sponsors, other people’s partners, to the organizer of a race, to the sponsors of a race? That has nothing to do with your conscience. Eventually that will all come out. But, no, absolutely not.
(Asked why he pin-pointed he and Johan)
- He didn’t. He pin-pointed a lot of people and I mean, let’s be honest here. Obviously my name will be at the top of the story and my name will be in the headline. But, it goes from myself to Johan, to Levi, to Zabriskie, to Andy Rihs, to Jim Ochowicz to Michael Barry, to Matthew White, to Steve Johnson, to Pat McQuaid. At the end of the day, he pointed the finger at everyone still involved in cycling, everyone that is still enjoying the sport, everyone that still believes in the sport and everyone that is still working in the sport was in the cross hairs.
- I’m standing here with you guys because I won the Tour de France seven times. But, you have to keep in mind that the yellow jersey of this race is also in the cross hairs and that is not by accident. Maybe that is a good strategy to get as much attention as possible but if I look at, I can use Allen Lim as an example, someone that I view that has the highest standards and the highest ethics of anybody in this sport, the fact that he is thrown in there speaks volumes to the credibility of this and I think that’s, if I walk away with one word to sum this all up - credibility. Floyd lost his credibility a long time ago.
(Asked to comment regarding the details of the emails)
- I think if anyone browses the internet or the news groups of anyone’s Wikipedia page, that time line is easy to put together. I could have made it even juicier. Some of it is off, obviously the timing and the dates and the people are off again. If you saw the rest of the emails that we have it speaks volumes to his mental state, and, the time of the day that they were sent it. I don’t need to fill you guys in on people’s habits or lifestyles.
It started a couple of years ago and as texts and I wrote him back after a while. Johan can speak more about what he wanted from the team but after a few of them they got to be so annoying that I wrote him back and said, ‘Floyd leave me alone. Do what you have to do, I’m going to be fine, don’t worry about me but you have to stop texting me, annoying me, you have to stop harassing me.’"
(Regarding racing with him at an event in April)
- I saw him every day at the Tour of the Gila. Not one word was said. It was ironic because not one word would be said to any of us during the race. We heard stories about him talking to himself. But we would get home and all of a sudden we would have these emails from him at night. Strange.
(Regarding the timing, to reveal this during the Amgen Tour of California)" I think the timing of the race is obvious. As I mentioned, he didn’t get in the race. To be honest, I was surprised that it didn’t come up in Sacramento. We were all fully expecting it to come out then. These emails have been out for quite some time. We were fully expecting this then.
(Asked if he will take legal action)
- No, my days of legal action are over. Legal action takes time energy and a lot of money. I have sued a few people in my day and have been successful there and proved my innocence. But, I don’t need to do that anymore. My energy needs to be devoted to the team, to Livestrong, to my kids. I’m not going to waste time on that.
(Asked if he will cooperate with a Federal Prosecutor if asked to)
- Absolutely.
(Regarding the affect on the Tour of California and the Tour de France)
- It’s definitely news and juicy and salacious, but at the end of the day bike fans are going to see the people talked about here, myself, Levi, Zabriskie, George, Johan, they know the truth.
(Asked if this changes plans for the Tour de France )
- Absolutely not. We all know that Floyd won’t be in France telling the story.
(Regarding if ASO reacts negatively to the team selection for the Tour de France)
- At the end of the day why would they do that? We have a person who has been under oath several times with a completely different version, written a book with a completely different version, someone that took people’s money. He said he has no proof. It is his word verses ours. We like our word. We like where we stand. We like our credibility. I don’t think there is a lot of credibility on the other side so why would ASO think any differently. Keep in mind back in the day there was all this talk that Floyd said he had pictures of a refrigerated motorcycle. Where is that? It’s all a bunch of bullshit and never existed.
It is very sad. At one point or another, all of us implicated have cared about Floyd, that is one thing that we have shared in common. We might be on different teams, come in different backgrounds or be at different places in our lives but at some point or another we share this bond that we all gave him a ladder at some point in his life when he dug himself a hole. We gave him the ladder to dig out of the Mercury situation. Andy Rihs came along and gave him a ladder to dig out of that hole. People aren’t throwing him ladders anymore. I don’t want to make a personal attack on Floyd Landis. I don’t think he is a good guy or a bad guy, he certainly has some issues. You know that as well as I do. I’m not breaking any news here. Floyd is an interesting character. He’s volatile."
(Asked about allegations that Johan taught riders to dope)
- Other than saying it is not true? We can only speak about what happened on our team. I can’t tell you what happened at Phonak and I can’t tell you how he won the 2006 Tour de France. The one thing that brought this about was him testing positive for the synthetic testosterone. He denies that still which is slightly odd. We categorically deny Johan teaching anybody, forget about Floyd teaching anybody to do that.
(Asked about the impact of this situation on US Cycling)
- No doubt it is not a good story. This is a distraction. If you look at this race and the turn out I’d say things are strong. The sponsorship is strong and I feel that the teams here will be in the Tour this summer and I am optimistic that this will, but this is something that we have to deal with.
Johan Bruyneel
- I absolutely deny everything he said. I will reiterate a little more what Lance said. It’s not a surprise to us, we’ve been expecting this for a long time. Floyd started contacting us, me in particular, four years ago, almost as soon as he tested positive. He threatened, blackmail, whatever you want to call it, asking for certain things, asking for a job when he was able to race again.
- Obviously we did not respond to that request. From there on it’s been a constant roller coaster in that Floyd has changed his story too many times. He’s been saying something for four years. I’ve seen him on TV and in court. He wrote a book, set up a fund once he found out a legal defense is very expensive. All of a sudden this changes. He’s pointing at me, he’s pointing at Lance but he’s pointing to all the people that are still there. He even goes after Andy Rihs or Jim Ochowicz, all people who are still in the sport. For me it’s clear we’re dealing with someone who is bitter.
- To me Floyd has always been an angry person, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. Sometimes he used anger in a race to motivate himself. But really he’s angry with the world. To me it sounds like he wants to drag down people that are still here and he’s enjoying this. There’s not so much else I can say about this. Except to say it’s another fact in a long line of things that happened in the past and coming from Floyd it’s no surprise.
(Regarding the timing)
- You can ask what his drive is and I still don’t know. I know his team and his new personal sponsor had been trying to get into this race, so he was not only threatening us but also Andrew Messick and the sponsor of this race. They didn’t respond the way he wanted. Who knows? I think he finally found someone who wanted to write his story. I’m pretty sure some people standing here have had the story for a few weeks but didn’t give it any credibility, but now here we are. Who knows, maybe by the end of the race he shows up. I’d totally expect that too. It’s definitely an unpleasant fact and a distraction for this race and for us, but it’s nothing that I’m going to lose my sleep over.
- This (story) came late at night yesterday but it’s not like it all-of-a-sudden fell out of the sky. We’ve known since Sacramento, actually a little earlier. Obviously I was aware of it, Lance was aware of it, the teammates were aware of it. We’re going to try to not let it be a distraction as best we can. I’m going to go in the bus and talk about today’s stage and see how we can go about winning this race.
(In regards to the demands made by Landis)
- He was basically asking for two things after his positive test in the Tour de France in 2006. First he has been asking us for money, a lot of money to help pay for his legal costs.
(Asked if he gave him any)
- No, of course not or we wouldn’t be standing here. Also after his suspension was over on two occasions he has asked me for a job on the team, which also, of course, I didn’t respond positively to. The history shows that this is the time we’re going to talk about it and I hope we can address as much as we can but after I walk onto the bus, I’m done with it. We’re here for the Tour of California, this is a very important race for us, obviously Floyd chose this moment. Whether he first wanted to put pressure on the organization to put his team in the race and didn’t get it, then saw that all the doors were closed so he comes out with it when the Tour of California gets to a high point since tomorrow is the most important day…..his timing is obviously not a coincidence. For us basically this is nothing new.
(Rather than characterize it as extortion…)
- I would rather call it a sad story. Knowing the personality, his history, having had him on the team, I mean we took Floyd on the team when he was in bad financial shape after the Mercury fiasco and he had no money. I remember he told me, “Luckily you got me on the team because I was almost forced to sell my house to pay my bills.” Since then I think it’s been up and down for Floyd and I would advise him to look for professional help, and I’m not talking about lawyers, I’m talking about other help.
- When I read the part of the email that said I’d taught him the doping, I thought, Wow, I must have some special qualifications. I deny this completely. This part just came out, these specific allegations against me I only learned of a few weeks ago. I’m not the only one who received this email.
- What can you do? We can say what we think and feel about it and say we feel bad for Floyd. He went from a high point and then basically two days later had lost everything he had. All the people in cycling received these emails, they were copied, so everyone knows what was said. This is another incident in a long line. To me it comes to what kind of credibility you can give to Floyd Landis after four years telling his story. I recently saw him on “Larry King Live” and he was talking about something else but if this is true then he’s been lying to everyone for four years. The credibility of Floyd Landis is really at a low point right now. I think he needs help.
