Shameless pursuit

Following cycling these days is like the first time you saw Pam Anderson in a bathing suit – you wanted to believe it was for real, you wanted to dream it was possible, but …

Now it is Floyd Landis, the American, who has tested positive for emitting more testosterone than a cheesy Jersey Night Club, just days after winning a Tour de France that featured mass suspensions of almost all the top riders.

Of course, this was supposed to be the start of the post-Lance Armstrong Era, which most non-American cycling fans believe was more juiced than a Florida Citrus Convention.

What a complete and utter joke, what a sad, sorry spectacle this truly great sport has become.

There isn't a more ruthless, taxing, brutal athletic pursuit on the globe than cycling, a sport that should be full of honor for the incredible commitment it requires from its participants.

Instead the sport has become the standard bearer of corruption, surpassing the Southeastern Conference, the House Ways and Means Committee and the 1998 home run chase in annals of consistent ridiculousness.

A great sport has been ruined by pharmaceutical frauds and cheats more concerned with steroid cycles than bicycles.

The announcement came Thursday morning after Landis mysteriously didn't show for a scheduled race in Europe. The positive test came after a stage of the race in which Landis made a remarkable comeback, surging from 11th to 3rd, in this case an accomplishment that was too good to be true.

"The Phonak Cycling Team was notified yesterday by the UCI of an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio in the test made on Floyd Landis after stage 17 of the Tour de France," Phonak said in a prepared statement.

The sad part is this can't even be a surprise to anyone paying attention. At this stage of the game, winning the Tour de France without doping seems about as plausible as taking the checkered flag at Daytona behind the wheel of a four-cylinder Prius. Word that a cycling champ is a cheat is less shocking than the revelation that Lance Bass is gay.

The scary part is Landis was the guy the French actually liked.

It is Armstrong they hate. It is Armstrong they believe is a cheat who by means of superior chemistry turned their beloved race into a fraud show.

Armstrong has never tested positive for anything, but the circumstantial evidence continues to mount and mar. With Lance it isn't just who knows as much as it is who wants to know?

In America he remains a hero, as much for his battle against cancer and his tireless work against the disease as his accomplishments on the bike. "It's Not About the Bike" was the name of one of his autobiographies and as his sport continues into the cesspool, that is about all his fans are left with.

It is possible that in a sport overloaded with cheats Armstrong overcame cancer and utterly dominated for seven years, but is it really probable?

If everyone is cheating then the world's best clean cyclist probably rolled into Paris in 38th place last week. Or, more likely, he didn't even qualify, content to ride in obscurity without selling his soul – and his health – to the devil.

It is unlikely that Armstrong could be both the only clean competitor and the most indomitable cyclist since Belgian great Eddy Merckx, who, we presume, was as pure as the driven snow (pre-acid rain, of course).

None of the mounting suspicions change Armstrong's non-cycling accomplishments. His Livestrong fund-raising, his ability to increase cancer awareness, especially among young men, and his incredible motivational work are bigger than sports.

If Armstrong had to cheat to reach a profile where cancer ward patients around the globe were inspired to begin beating back that despicable disease then so be it.

In this case, the end would justify the means. Sports is sports, life is life.

And, besides, if everyone else was cheating, what is someone like Armstrong or Landis supposed to do?

The ethical thing was to go clean and lose. Human nature is another thing – the rest of the girls on Baywatch just went to the store and bought what Pam Anderson was flaunting.

And that is the inherent problem. There is no one left to believe, no one remaining to root for, to trust, to celebrate.

Cycling continues to take swollen eyes and stomach punches at a remarkable rate, a sport in need of a complete and utter overhaul, losing a battle to corruption that has destroyed the purity and passion of the pursuit.