Tour de Fraud: How a Whistleblower Took Down Lance Armstrong

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            Once heralded for the legacy he had amassed throughout his dominant cycling career, Lance Armstrong left a disgraced mark on the sporting world when a 2012 investigation revealed he had used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his legendary career. At the helm of his downfall was Floyd Landis, a former cyclist who implicated both himself and many former teammates, including Armstrong, for their collective wrongdoing against the sport and the U.S. Postal Service, which sponsored Armstrong and Landis’ team. Landis proceeded to file a federal whistleblower lawsuit that argued Armstrong defrauded the federal government by accepting sponsorship revenue from USPS while consciously cheating behind the scenes. The entire saga has since been etched into the annuls of sports history and warrants further analysis to determine how ethical Landis’ campaign against Armstrong was, as well as the key differences that distinguished his situation from that of government whistleblowers.

            Though cases of whistleblowing in sports rarely make front page headlines as Landis’ revelation did, their importance remains paramount in the maintenance of integrity and accountability of public figures. Landis filed suit against his former teammate in 2010, and it was not until June 2012 when the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) confirmed Armstrong’s PED usage upon the conclusion of their investigation that included blood samples and 26 people who provided testimony to back up the claims (USA Today). Though Landis was certainly not the first individual to publicize details of Armstrong’s cheating, his decision to challenge him at a federal level ultimately led to the rescindment of all seven of Armstrong’s Tour de France triumphs. The Department of Justice notes that the lawsuit and its eventual settlement were made possible under the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions, which allowed Landis to bring suit on behalf of the government (which eventually joined the suit in 2013) and receive compensation from it. Though this can be seen as a victory for the cycling world, Landis is not completely absolved of guilt in the proceedings; he had willingly partaken in the PED usage alongside Armstrong and was even stripped of his own 2006 Tour de France title after being convicted for doping. Why wasn’t he equally liable for defrauding the government?

            In short, Landis coming forward brought about greater changes that dwarfed his and even Armstrong’s reputation. He exposed systemic cheating that had been left unchecked in the professional cycling scene for decades, and per The Atlantic, has since severed his ties to the sport and that once brought him great success. Like Deep Throat in Watergate and Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Landis enlightened the masses on a public interest concern that had produced widespread negative consequences. Though Deep Throat and Ellsberg’s whistleblowing efforts outed the federal government’s abuse of power and were indisputably more significant in scope, Landis restored order within an athletic landscape that had unknowingly celebrated and cherished a serial steroid-user. Millions of dollars in sponsorship money, earnings that were deprived from rule-abiding cyclists, and commercial revenue were incorrectly awarded to a cheater—one that could have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for a meddling ex-teammate.

            Landis could not have executed such a plan without the help of journalists who pioneered the whistleblowing standard. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward are integral pieces in the timeline of American journalism, and their work for The Washington Post helped to establish protections for whistleblowers. However, unlike the whistleblowers who were discussed in class, Landis did not work for the government and was not protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act, which strictly applies to federal government employees. As mentioned in the Government Accountability Project’s Working with Whistleblowers: A Guide for Journalists, part of what makes Landis’ status as a whistleblower unique from other high-profile cases was his willingness to publicize his identity from the beginning of the suit. Being that Landis is a public figure from his cycling career, his very involvement and spearheading of the lawsuit is part of what makes his conviction toward Armstrong so clinical and effective. Anonymity would have served to hinder Landis’ whistleblowing efforts because it was his very relationship with Armstrong that substantiated his claims, and the ability of the public to specifically pinpoint someone to corroborate the accusations against Armstrong was critical for Landis’ settlement.

Floyd Landis is a testament to the diverse breadth of whistleblowers that are crucial in sustaining the nation’s democracy. Landis exposed mass corruption that had been plaguing the professional cycling scene, and his courageousness reupped the standard for what fairness means in competitive sports. Whistleblowers often are complicit in the very schemes they eventually seek to dismantle, and Landis’ lawsuit is indicative of his desire, like that of all whistleblowers, to right their wrongs for the betterment of the masses.

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