Floyd Landis Admits Cheating and Channels His Inner Canseco

So Floyd Landis, the disgraced American bicyclist, has finally admitted that he cheated when he won the 2006 Tour de France.

Raise your hand if you're shocked.

I don't follow pro cycling any more than I follow pro badminton, but this news is on par with "Ricky Martin admits he's gay" in terms of the surprise factor.

Landis has spent nearly four years and over $2 million to clear his name after being stripped of his 2006 Tour de France win. Those nasty French accused him of using synthetic testosterone—he actually still maintains that they were wrong.

In what might be his last ditch effort to prove them wrong, he admitted to taking red blood cell booster erythropoietin (commonly known as EPO), testosterone, human growth hormone and frequent blood transfusions, along with female hormones and a one-time experiment with insulin—but no synthetic testosterone.

I guess he showed them.

The biggest aspect of this story is naturally not the admission, but the accusations.

Landis, in his effort to come clean and stop being "part of the problem," accuses other top American cyclists, including Lance Armstrong, of using PEDs. He has apparently been busy emailing U.S. and international cycling officials, as well as anti-doping agencies, telling everything he knows about the problem. He names names, he explains the methods used to get around the testing, and alleged complicity by team management.

Armstrong has been the target of PED allegations for years. The French have seemingly made it their mission in life to catch him dirty, but have been completely unsuccessful. Does this mean he is innocent, or that he has the best chemists?

Landis even describes how he and other riders, including Armstrong, would have "clean" samples of their blood extracted in performance clinics and stored for later use during the Tour de France. He states that the blood bags were stored in a refrigerator in Armstrong's apartment.

He was predictably called an axe-grinder with no proof by U.S. cycling officials and the accused cyclists.

A man with zero credibility and obviously with questionable motivations.

Two words here: Jose Canseco.

Jose, you remember, admitted to having been a 'roid-freak in his days as a MLB slugger. All those gargantuan home runs were fueled by chemistry. He went on to say in his "tell-all" book that he believed at least 85 percent of major league baseball players were doping.

He even named names. He claimed to have personally injected 'roids into the fannies of some of his teammates.

Almost every player outed by Canseco initially denied drug use in the strongest possible language. All pointed to Jose's profit-based motivation—the cat was broke, and was pushing his book. He was near-universally denounced as a fraud.

Of course we all know what actually happened.

Nearly every prominent name mentioned by Canseco has turned out to be dirty. Mark McGuire, Rafael Palmiero, Jason Giambi, and Alex Rodriguez, among others, all named by Canseco, have admitted their transgressions. Roger Clemens continues to maintain his innocence, but everyone in baseball knows he's only kidding himself.

Jose Canseco, despite his shady motives and complete lack of character, blew the lid off a PED epidemic in Major League Baseball.

Now here we have Floyd Landis—completely disgraced and broke, his wife dumped him, his career is over, and he's got no proof—saying that his sport is filthy dirty with drugs. He is accusing the top names in his sport. He is saying the management was aware of it.

Sound familiar yet?

I'm sure professional cycling is a fine sport with a large fan base. I don't know if the fans have their heads in the sand, or if they're deliberately turning a blind eye to the doping (like the baseball fans were for 15 years). Either way, they need to get ready—this is going to go boom.

It might take another couple years, but I'm willing to bet that Landis' accusations are going to end up being true. It wouldn't surprise me if cycling is rocked by an epic scandal, all due to Landis' admissions and accusations.

 I hope the French are happy.