The RadioShack team of Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel have released a statement today concerning the recent allegations by Floyd Landis that state that they, along with others involved in cycling, were involved with systematic doping. Landis raced on the United States Postal Service professional cycling team alongside Armstrong from 2002 to 2004.
The statement denies the allegations and reads, “Wednesday evening, after not getting what he demanded when no one in cycling capitulated to his numerous but persistent false threats, demands and rants, Floyd Landis publicly aired the false and incredible concoctions he has been privately making for years. Publicly indicating everything he has said over the last four years, including under oath, were lies, the author of a book aptly called “Positively False” and a man who has apparently decided that since he cannot be in professional racing then no one else should, Landis accused at least 16 professional cycling individuals and organizations of activity that is baseless and quite simply untrue.”
The team said that Landis had been sending threats to several of the individuals named for more than two years.
The statement continued, “The UCI, Dave Zabriskie, Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Jim Ochowitz, Andy Rihs, Johan Bruyneel, and Lance Armstrong, among others, have been and were just a few of his targets and all have responded by pointing out that the contradictory and disjointed accusations from a confessed liar are baseless and untrue. In leveling these false and baseless accusations, Landis provided selected emails to multiple journalists in connection with his public statements on Wednesday evening.
“What was not conveyed were descriptions of the threatening text messages from Landis to others, including Lance Armstrong, that began more than two years ago Mr. Armstrong and others, then, as he has now, told Landis he had nothing to hide and that he was not going to submit to Landis’ baseless threats to “disclose” falsehoods. Lance never has and never will give anyone money, or anything else, to keep them from airing falsehoods,” it concluded.
The team also disclosed an email conversation between the President of AEG, Andrew Messick, the company that owns the Tour of California and Landis:
—–Original Message—–
From: Andrew Messick
Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 8:13 PM
To: Floyd Landis
Cc: Brent Kay; S. Johnson; Steven Hess
Subject: Re: Opportunities
You have misunderstood our position. We are partners with usada and have a strong anti-doping program for our race that enhances the uci’s efforts in this area. We are committed to doing everything in our power to have a clean race. If you have something to say about doping in cycling, tell usada. They have been empowered to investigate possible doping cases and we trust them to do it.
—–Original Message—–
From: floyd landis
To: Andrew Messick
CC: Brent Kay; S. Johnson; Steven Hess
Sent: Sat Apr 24 19:06:12 2010
Subject: Re: Opportunities
Andrew,
Thank you for clarifying the position of the Tour of California on these subjects. I just wanted to be sure that I gave you the opportunity to be involved in cleaning up cycling as I have with so many in positions of power such as Steve Johnson and Jim Ochowitz but as I expected the Tour of California is interested in the status quo as were they and I wish you all luck with that. I certainly understand that my revealing that Lance Armstrong has relied on blood doping, EPO, and anabolics to win the three Tours de France in which I helped him will jeopardize your substantial investment in facilitating his appearance so from a business point of view I understand fully.