Landis Result Hurts Us All

We don’t cheer for the games, we cheer for the magic.

We cheer because sports is still the only area of life where every ticket could include a miracle.

You take your seat, and three hours later you could be watching Kirk Gibson hitting a one-legged home run to win a World Series game.

You pay big bucks to sit in a cramped rafter, but that price could include watching Derek Fisher hitting an off-balance jumper with less than one tick remaining to win a playoff game.

Where else can you see someone alter the future in four-tenths of a second?

How else can you witness a fortune change with one swing of a bat?

For more than a century we have cheered through wars and disasters and scandal, all for the chance to witness an outcome so steeped in surprise, we can laugh at a loss and cry at a win.

Sports survives through the wonder of the last-second shot, the two-minute drill, the walk-off homer. Sports lives through the awe in the underdog, the overachiever, that miracle.

All of which leads us to Thursday’s news that the small-town Mennonite kid who just won the Tour de France after an incredible uphill comeback could be a cheat.

His name is Floyd Landis, and days after he captivated a nation, it was revealed he flunked a drug test.

Days after being commended by President Bush for “great courage,” he was cited by drug testers as having “high testosterone.”

And in case there was any wonder how the alleged steroid changed his performance, well, the dirty urine sample was taken immediately after he used an unprecedented late-race climb through the Alps to vault from 11th place to third place.

In other words, he allegedly injected himself with an anabolic motorcycle.

After that climb, race director Jean-Marie Leblanc called it, “The best performance in the modern history of the Tour.”

Now, pending the results of a “B” urine sample -- usually the two are identical -- it could be one of the sleaziest performances in the modern history of sports.

Landis is claiming his innocence, saying he is guilty of nothing more than pounding Jack Daniels the night before his last climb (so that must have been the whiskey pedaling?).

He also wondered whether the positive test could have resulted from his thyroid medicine or medicine for his chronically injured hip.

But after living through all the Lance Armstrong accusations, how can any American cyclist not know exactly what he’s putting in his body?

“I think there is a good possibility I can clear my name,” said Landis.

For the sake of sports, let’s hope so.

If a kid who grew up without TV, radio or movies is capable of a Hollywood-style hoax, how can we trust any of our athletes again?

If this ultimate fairy tale proves fractured, how can we believe any of those miracles again?

From McGwire-Sosa to the Russian figure skating judge to Pete Rose’s book to Tim Montgomery’s sprints to every time Barry Bonds swings a bat to ... the Mennonite masquerader?

Enough is enough.

Landis has pedaled us ever closer to the cliff carved from steroids and gambling and cheating, the precipice over which sports will eventually tumble, the edge of the worst kind of cynicism.

If Floyd Landis is guilty, then isn’t former teammate Armstrong also probably guilty?

And if icon Armstrong is guilty, then shouldn’t we also look closer at those muscles on another icon named Albert Pujols?

And if you’re going to go after the hot Pujols for juicing, shouldn’t you also look to those pro-Heat referees in the NBA Finals for cheating?

And once you look at those officials, how about the ones who gave the Super Bowl championship to Pittsburgh?

And while we’re in the Steel City, do we really believe Ben Roethlisberger when he said he just forgot his motorcycle helmet?

And on it goes, the sports world bleeding belief, gasping for faith, losing all fun.

Robert Rhodes knows what life looks like from this cliff. He is the assistant editor of the Mennonite Weekly Review, a national newspaper serving the Mennonite community.

When Landis won, Rhodes wrote an editorial citing the purity of the symbolism.

“Landis’ hour of fame might be an hour of opportunity for the rest of us, a chance to let people know who Mennonites really are ... followers of Christ and makers of peace,” he wrote.

When Landis’ failed drug test was announced Thursday, Rhodes was in a market in the Amish community of Yoder, Kan., and the reaction was equally symbolic.

“People were astonished,” he said. “They were walking around saying it couldn’t be true, that it has to be a mistake, they were totally stunned.”

But after a while, he said, the realities of sports became clear.

“After it sunk in, you think, you know, it could have happened,” said Rhodes. “Maybe he did it.”

Rhodes soon found himself discussing the possibility of writing a second Landis column, if the star is proven dirty.

You ask me, he should begin it now.

You ask me, the next time somebody pulls off a sports miracle, the only miracle would be if it’s real.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Voices

‘It’s hard to put into words. I had everything I could possibly have hoped for and dreamt of. At the exact moment I was told, every single scenario went through my head about what was going to happen. There was no way for me to tell myself that this wasn’t going to be a disaster.’

Floyd Landis

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‘It hurts a lot, it hurts for Landis and for the sport. The sport had just been recovering after what happened before the Tour began, and this just hurts it when it was beginning to get over the past.’

Oscar Pereiro

Spanish cyclist who finished second in the Tour

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‘There is always someone who wants to make a bigger bet than everyone else. It saddens me. We established rules in 1998 that some people still choose not to respect.’

Laurent Brochard

1997 world champion

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‘He said, “There’s no way.” I really believe him. I don’t think he did anything wrong.’

Arlene Landis

who said her son called her Thursday

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‘You build up and create a new hero, and he gets slapped down. It’s a serious blow.’

Dick Pound

leader of the World Anti-Doping Agency

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‘People have been saying this is a clean Tour, the real values of the Tour are back again, and this is a big disappointment for everybody.’

Stephen Roche

1987 Tour de France winner

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‘We will be saddened if, unfortunately, the [backup] test confirms what the first test showed. It’s anger more than anything else. ... We are going to have to make those who haven’t understood it yet understand it now.’

Christian Prudhomme

Tour de France director

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‘He will be fighting ... waiting for the B analysis and then proving to everyone that this can be natural.’

John Lelangue

Landis’ team manager at Phonak

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Not a positive history

The Tour de France has been embroiled in several doping cases in recent years. Here are some of the most notable:

2006

* Tour champion Floyd Landis is told he tested positive for high testosterone levels after his gritty Stage 17 comeback. The Swiss Phonak team suspends the American, who denies cheating and is awaiting results on the backup sample.

* On the eve of the Tour’s start, nine riders -- including pre-race favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso -- are ousted, implicated in a Spanish doping investigation.

2005

* The French sports daily L’Equipe reports that six of Lance Armstrong’s urine samples from 1999 were positive for the endurance-boosting hormone EPO when retested in 2004. Dutch investigators clear him of the allegations the following year.

* An unidentified second-tier rider tests positive for traces of a restricted substance, norpseudoephedrine, after the fifth stage.

* Italian cyclist Dario Frigo and his wife are arrested after about 10 doses of EPO are found in her car at a toll station.

* Evgeni Petrov of Russia is kicked off the Tour before the 10th stage for failing a blood test.

2004

* Three riders under investigation for suspected doping are banned from the race: Danilo Di Luca of Italy; David Millar of Britain; and Cedric Vasseur of France.

* Two positive tests from the Tour both belong to Belgian rider Christophe Brandt, who is expelled for using a heroin substitute.

2003

* Spanish cyclist Javier Pascual Llorente tests positive for EPO, the race’s only positive test.

2002

* Lithuanian cyclist Raimondas Rumsas is arrested in Italy for doping charges stemming from his participation in the 2002 Tour. All samples collected from cyclists during the Tour this year, however, are negative.

2001

* Spanish cyclist Txema Del Olmo fails an EPO test, the only positive test from the Tour. His team drops him from the race.

2000

* Three riders are expelled from the Tour hours before it begins after failing blood tests.

1998

* Six Festina team members are kicked out of the Tour after team director Bruno Roussel and team doctor Eric Ryckaert are placed under investigation. Armin Meier admits taking EPO.

* Several teams pull out of the Tour, including Dutch team TVM.

Source: Associated Press

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous Plaschke columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.