It's a Sunday morning in the small mountain town of Leadville, Colorado, and Floyd Landis is holding what could only loosely be described as a business meeting.
Sitting on a couch, with his four-year-old daughter to his right and an employee, introduced to me as Wolfman, to his left, Landis debates the merits of a potential deal. Child now in lap, ideas flowing steadily, this is Floyd Landis the doting father and Floyd Landis the successful businessman rolled into one.
If the image comes as a shock, that's because it should. After all, four years ago Landis was sleeping in a friend's guest house just outside of New York. He was virtually penniless, almost all his friends had drifted away, and his life, by his own admission, lacked purpose. He was lost.
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Leadville lies in the heart of the Rockies, where the Arkansas River runs and the snow-crested peaks stretch far into the horizon. In the 1930s, the town was a hub for mining silver but, since the drop in price the industry dried up, and the population now hangs at just over 2,000 inhabitants. A quaint town, sitting at over 10,000ft, it bursts into life during the summer thanks to a string of sporting events but, with no ski resort, retains a certain beauty and solitude that is missing from the more established communities of Aspen and Boulder.
Landis owns several properties within the town. There is the dispensary where his staff sell CBD-based products and legal marijuana, a showroom in which we're currently sitting, and two other buildings that he, his family, and close associates such as Wolfman occupy when they're splitting time between Colorado and New York. Outside of Leadville, Landis owns three outlets in the Portland area. His business isn't just legit – it's thriving.
After the meeting is adjourned, I ask Landis if he has finally landed on his feet. Our last face-to-face had been at a NYVelocity.com event back in 2011, a year or so after he had hit send on a volley of emails that would obliterate the façade that existed around a generation of riders and expose what USADA would claim at the time was "the most sophisticated doping programme ever seen". To think, marijuana wasn't even legal in Colorado when USADA came up with that line.
Losing time
The unresolved
Armstrong's money, Floyd's fairness fund
The future
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/floyd-landis-redemption-and-the-pursuit-of-closure
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