Lance Armstrong to be charged with doping?

[valo403]

Originally Posted by Azure

Outside of the 'testimonies' from the other riders, the other 'evidence' the USADA is pretty weak.

They say he avoided the tests, which sounds completely absurd. Wasn't the most tested athlete ever? I mean either the testing protocal was properly adhered too, or it wasn't. How can he avoid tests?



Really? That is the best they can come up with? He didn't answer the door when the testers came? Why wasn't here reported?



Again, this screams of incompetence by whoever was in charge of the testing. Did Lance retire there? Pretty sure he lived and trained in Texas during the off season. Sounds like a lame excuse.

Then they claim he took undetectable drugs. Well, maybe he did, and maybe he didn't, but there is nothing but hearsay to say that he did. Last time I checked that didn't count as evidence in any first world country. Oh right, this is the USADA we are talking about.

All the 'evidence' they have is hearsay and allegations. Nothing concrete. People can believe what they want, but they can't 'prove' anything because he never actually tested positive for whatever reason.

Why should anyone believe any cyclist who has had their charges or allegations dropped in exchange for their 'eye-witness' account? I sure don't. Lance was a giant ######bag during his career, so I'm sure there are a lot of people who never liked him.

Still doesn't count as evidence though. The entire thing is 'weak.' And rather hilarious given how the USADA was trying to play it up.

The direct testimony of a witness is not hearsay

[oilyfan]

Originally Posted by Azure

Outside of the 'testimonies' from the other riders, the other 'evidence' the USADA is pretty weak.

Azure you should read the 200 page report. I did last night. Even if you want to put aside everything else, which by it itself is overwhelming evidence and first hand accounts from everyone around him, there is the issue of Michele Ferrari.

Armstrong has had a relationship with Ferrari since 1996 (supported by email documentation) all the way till last year. In all he paid Ferrari, either directly or through his son, $1,000,000 over the course of this time. Ferrari is a notorious doctor that was stripped of his accreditation in 2010 and has been under investigation since before 2004. Ferrari compared the use of EPO to Orange Juice and was an active promoted of using performance enhancing drugs in cycling.

Armstrong came out publicly in 2004 and said:

I was disappointed to learn of the Italian court's judgment against Dr. Michele Ferrari. Dr. Ferrari has been a longtime friend and trusted adviser to me and the USPS team, during which time he never suggested, prescribed or provided me with any performance-enhancing drugs... However, I have always said that I have zero tolerance for anyone convicted of using or facilitating the use of performance-enhancing drugs. As a result of today's developments, the USPS team and I have suspended our professional affiliation with Dr. Ferrari as we await the release of the full verdict...

Yet till 2011 was in contact and continued to pay Ferrari large sums of money.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

Or maybe he just cheated.

Like 11 team mates have testified to?

Or people working in the team staffs?

How about the tests, retroactively done, that show he was using drugs during the first tour win?

Or money trails to a doctor already with a record of prescribing these enhancements?

No, the only reasonable conclusion is that these guys want to gain rep points and props from the world media...?

ummmm oooookaay?

I have never thought or said Armstrong was clean, in fact I have consistantly taken the position that there has never been a clean tour winner in the races 100 odd year history, this is not new, nor has it ever been considered cheating until the last few decades when cycling has been forced to change its stance unwillingly.

I have no problem declaring all previous tour winners dirty and taking all their wins away, Mercx, Indurain, Le Mond, Antuil etcm I just have a problem with screwing with Armstrong when we all know that he was no different from any other rider of both his and all previous eras, and to me it makes not one jot of difference that his team was better at doping than some others, during his era that was just part of compatition, in the same way his team trained better.

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I have never thought or said Armstrong was clean, in fact I have consistantly taken the position that there has never been a clean tour winner in the races 100 odd year history, this is not new, nor has it ever been considered cheating until the last few decades when cycling has been forced to change its stance unwillingly.

I have no problem declaring all previous tour winners dirty and taking all their wins away, Mercx, Indurain, Le Mond, Antuil etcm I just have a problem with screwing with Armstrong when we all know that he was no different from any other rider of both his and all previous eras, and to me it makes not one jot of difference that his team was better at doping than some others, during his era that was just part of compatition, in the same way his team trained better.

well Landis was stripped of his title and Barnje Riis has admitted to using drugs (though the tour hasn't officially stripped him of the title, he has the dreaded * beside his name).

i guess my position is that the cheat are virtually always ahead of the testing. With exception of the secret EPO test that caught dozens of athletes, the testers are always trying to catch.

Retroactive testing is the other way to prevent rampant cheating in sports. 10 years later, cheaters will still feel the pressure of the agencies scrutinizing them and that their secret will eventually be found out.

that's what they deserve.

What's your position on Marion Jones?

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Azure

Then they claim he took undetectable drugs. Well, maybe he did, and maybe he didn't, but there is nothing but hearsay to say that he did. Last time I checked that didn't count as evidence in any first world country.

Originally Posted by troutman

+1 - "hearsay" is often misunderstood.

Originally Posted by valo403

The direct testimony of a witness is not hearsay

Isn't this what happens in court literally all the time in Canada and the United States? You get the small fish to roll on the bigger fish - be it drugs, money laundering, robbery, etc.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

well Landis was stripped of his title and Barnje Riis has admitted to using drugs (though the tour hasn't officially stripped him of the title, he has the dreaded * beside his name).

i guess my position is that the cheat are virtually always ahead of the testing. With exception of the secret EPO test that caught dozens of athletes, the testers are always trying to catch.

Retroactive testing is the other way to prevent rampant cheating in sports. 10 years later, cheaters will still feel the pressure of the agencies scrutinizing them and that their secret will eventually be found out.

that's what they deserve.

What's your position on Marion Jones?

I tend to not care so much about individuals as sports, track and field has always tried to catch athletes using PEDS, unlike cycling, and so the athletes were always aware that what they were doing was wrong, the same cannot be said for cycling, the use of PEDs has been endemic, accepted and mostly embraced by the sport, at individual, team and governing body level throughout the sports history.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I tend to not care so much about individuals as sports, track and field has always tried to catch athletes using PEDS, unlike cycling, and so the athletes were always aware that what they were doing was wrong, the same cannot be said for cycling, the use of PEDs has been endemic, accepted and mostly embraced by the sport, at individual, team and governing body level throughout the sports history.

Not going to lie, I had to read that "sentence" a few times to figure out what you were trying to say . . . I think.

[oilyfan]

I tend to not care so much about individuals as sports, track and field has always tried to catch athletes using PEDS, unlike cycling, and so the athletes were always aware that what they were doing was wrong, the same cannot be said for cycling, the use of PEDs has been endemic, accepted and mostly embraced by the sport, at individual, team and governing body level throughout the sports history.

There has been a concerted effort on the part of the organizers of cycling events to clean them up, drug testing has become more demanding progressively over the last twenty years. Armstrong had to go to extraordinary lengths to hide his doping, what makes you think that this was accepted practice? If it was why wasn't it publicly declared by the UCI that doping was acceptable?

[Cowboy89]

Okay can we finally put to rest all those people who try to formulate conspiracy theories that everyone's out to get Lance Armstrong?

Armstrong repeatedly doped alongside pretty much everyone in cycling and no nothing he did with regards to 'Livestrong' makes up in anyway for this cheating (I think he's an even bigger d-bag for continuing to elevate his profile by participating with this movement in light of his drug use). As for the 'why is Armstrong getting singled out harsher than the rest of the riders' BS copout arguement: He disproportionately gained from the cheating more than any of the other riders. Hence there should be larger punishments.

The only reason this has been drawn out over this many years is that so many people have been brainwashed by how much they were in love with the Armstrong myth that despite reason they still wanted to pretend that he was clean or that somehow the net result of it all was positive. Can those people please just get a grip on reality and move on?

At the end of the day I want my future children to live in a world where on the whole we at least give our best efforts at enforcing integrity and punish cheats when we find them as opposed to obfusify the truth or argue along alternate moral planes of existance because 'the story sounds better' or because 'everyone cheats anyway.'

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I tend to not care so much about individuals as sports, track and field has always tried to catch athletes using PEDS, unlike cycling, and so the athletes were always aware that what they were doing was wrong, the same cannot be said for cycling, the use of PEDs has been endemic, accepted and mostly embraced by the sport, at individual, team and governing body level throughout the sports history.

what you are suggesting, however, is moral relativism.

If something is wrong, and people know its wrong, then I am not sure if the excuse of legitimacy rings true.

Especially in light of the Festina fiasco. What you say might have been true prior to that, but certainly not after...

sadly, i used to follow cycling a lot. Now, virtually never, with the exception of one or two of the grand mountain stages.

Cheating, institutionalized or not, is killing the sport amongst its fans who no longer believe the results on the road nor the cries of innocence during the press conferences.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

There has been a concerted effort on the part of the organizers of cycling events to clean them up, drug testing has become more demanding progressively over the last twenty years. Armstrong had to go to extraordinary lengths to hide his doping, what makes you think that this was accepted practice? If it was why wasn't it publicly declared by the UCI that doping was acceptable?

Cycling has only really tried to clean up in the last 5 or 6 years, prior to the Festina scandel no one gave a crap at all on any level, the riders used freely, occasionally died due to drug use, it was all part of the sport.
The festina scandel essentailly put cycling at odds with the rest of sports, particularly at an olympic level, risked all kinds of goverment grants and support etc not to mention the possibility of the UCI being dropped as a governing body by the olympics, the UCI's initial responce was to put into place a testing system that was easily beaten and on top of that there is a vast amount of evidance that they warned teams of impending tests as well.

[Nandric]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I think that statement is misleading.

I am guessing it is primarily banned because it is a method of improving your performance, not because you can kill yourself by using it.

Im sure its a banned substance because it is a performance enhancing drug, but there is for sure a high risk associated with it. There are stories from the 90's and the heyday of EPO pre-test era where they were abusing it so much people would die in their sleep. They would take so much EPO that the body would respond by creating to much red blood cells. This lead to multiple riders dying in their sleep as their heart would give out from having to pump this sludge at night when they were being inactive. In response to this, team directors and coaches would wake the athletes up in the middle of the night and get them to ride their bikes for a bit to speed up blood flow essentially.

So while I agree its primarily banned for its benefits performance wise, there is definitely health risks. Granted, there was also no "Sport/Team doctors" guiding these pros so im sure a lot of that was due to uneducated abuse of EPO.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

what you are suggesting, however, is moral relativism.

If something is wrong, and people know its wrong, then I am not sure if the excuse of legitimacy rings true.

Especially in light of the Festina fiasco. What you say might have been true prior to that, but certainly not after...

sadly, i used to follow cycling a lot. Now, virtually never, with the exception of one or two of the grand mountain stages.

Cheating, institutionalized or not, is killing the sport amongst its fans who no longer believe the results on the road nor the cries of innocence during the press conferences.

well duh!!

of course it is moral relativism, my point is it is equally relative to go after Armstrong, we know full well the whole sport was lousy so why screw one guy because he happens to be famous? at this point the whole sport needs to be given an asterisk

And incidently even after Festina the sports administrators didn't really try to clean things up, to be frank if there was no Lance Armstrong and the US had continued to ignore cycling I doubt the sport would have changed at all.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Nandric

Im sure its a banned substance because it is a performance enhancing drug, but there is for sure a high risk associated with it. There are stories from the 90's and the heyday of EPO pre-test era where they were abusing it so much people would die in their sleep. They would take so much EPO that the body would respond by creating to much red blood cells. This lead to multiple riders dying in their sleep as their heart would give out from having to pump this sludge at night when they were being inactive. In response to this, team directors and coaches would wake the athletes up in the middle of the night and get them to ride their bikes for a bit to speed up blood flow essentially.

So while I agree its primarily banned for its benefits performance wise, there is definitely health risks. Granted, there was also no "Sport/Team doctors" guiding these pros so im sure a lot of that was due to uneducated abuse of EPO.

all of the major teams had doctors who were monitering drug use, granted I doubt any were albert schwitzers, but there were plenty of doctors involved.

[Nandric]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

all of the major teams had doctors who were monitering drug use, granted I doubt any were albert schwitzers, but there were plenty of doctors involved.

Ill give you that there was doctors involved on the those teams, but nowhere to the extent of the role team doctors and "doping doctors" like Ferrari and Fuentes play on team in the recent past and present. Back then it was more the doctors gave the drugs to the riders and that was that, as EPO could not be detected it did not have to strictly kept track of or regulated.

Presently, I feel the role of the team doctors is larger these days as they have to manage and keep track of more restrictions (ie tests) as well as physiological data (biological passport). Plus, when you hear quotes from doctors like Ferrari that say EPO is as safe orange juice and they are more versed in doping than past doctors, thats pretty scary.

[afc wimbledon]

The Team doctor for Festina had complete records of all of the teams doping, he monitered all of it, if you were a team doctor on a cycling team you were hired because you knew how to dope the riders, that was their role

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

well duh!!

of course it is moral relativism, my point is it is equally relative to go after Armstrong, we know full well the whole sport was lousy so why screw one guy because he happens to be famous? at this point the whole sport needs to be given an asterisk

And incidently even after Festina the sports administrators didn't really try to clean things up, to be frank if there was no Lance Armstrong and the US had continued to ignore cycling I doubt the sport would have changed at all.

oh, so civil discussion is out the window is it?!

Your arguments are patently ridiculous, the notion that there is a conspiracy against Lance is laughable at best and truly pathetic at worst.

Any other cyclist would have been pursued just as vigorously if they happened to be successful at the same time as Lance.

People like you are the ones that legitimize athletes taking drugs and cheating, explaining it away and poo pooing those that actually, you know don't have a sliding scale about right and wrong.

Sorry, your "hero" was a cheat and a fraud - glad that he's getting called out.

now go cry, wearing your Liestrong wrist band, at your altar of Lance Armstrong, a proven cheater on the scale of Marion Jones and the Balco/Festina fiascos....

you lose

[Rudee]

Originally Posted by valo403

The direct testimony of a witness is not hearsay

A person could offer direct testimony and still give hearsay. It depends on what prospective the person giving the testimony speaks from.

[Rerun]

Is golf the only professional sport left where cheating is actually despised? ... and being honorable is the norm?

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Rerun

Is golf the only professional sport left where cheating is actually despised? ... and being honorable is the norm?

How do we know golfers don't use PED's?

Rory in 09


Rory in 12