Right now, there is little doubt in my mind that Lance Armstrong took drugs or did blood doping in order to win the Tour de France 7 years in a row. He must have a very good doctor to not be detected so far or have some police swarm in and find evidence all over the place.
Why am I thinking this? It is all courtesy of the Spanish Puerto investigation that was revealed to the public last year. New developments in it have really made me think. Basically, it makes it look like every famous rider takes drugs.
For example, there is damning evidence that Jan Ullrich (Armstrong’s eternal arch-enemy in the Tour de France) doped because his blood was found as part of a doping busting operation. Ivan Basso, one of the most talented riders in the professional peleton and who competed against Armstrong, gave a laughable confession that he only attempted to dope and he won’t name names. There is new evidence against American Tyler Hamilton. Floyd Landis’ positive tests don’t seem to be an accident any more with all this doping going on. There is evidence against Alejandro Valverde, Joseba Beloki, Oscar Sevilla, Pantani, Scarponi, Mancebo, Heras, etc.
It’s a who’s who of the cycling world. If a riders’ name doesn’t show up in this drug busting operation, it just means he is with another doctor. Everyone is doping.
There is no way that Armstrong could win 7 years in a row against a whole armada of doped up cyclists. He takes drugs, I’m damn sure of it.
Yes, I think that he and every other cyclist in the top 100 or so Do Things which any normal human would consider cheating. Like many sports that are so rule-bound, the mind-set is that if you’re doing something not explicitly banned then that’s not cheating, and that’s what I suspect him (and most of them) of.
IMO they need sports which are drug-rule-free, and those that are completely clean - monitor athletes 24 hours a day if that’s what it takes. Let they and the audience make a choice.
Like Askance says, he and everybody else in the top 100 do. I absolutely hate the idea of performance enhancing drugs. It’s cowardly and not honorable.
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Amateur athletics, specifically the Olympics, are rife with performance enhancing drugs and it is nothing new. I want ONE person to just admit it. It would restore my faith in humanity just a little. I get sick to death of every single person denying it and saying that it must be some conspiracy against them. As I recall, Jason Giambi almost admitted it but noone has simply said, ‘I’m took them to get an edge’ or ‘I couldn’t compete without them.’
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It doesn’t make me love the sport any less, but I am really, really sick of all the scandals. I almost just wish it would go away and I don’t care if people get caught anymore.
EPO will turn a donkey into a racehorse, and no donkey will ever win the Tour. Same as with every other professional sport.
I almost wonder if the sport would be better off looking the other way in the manner that professional football and baseball do, or soccer apparently does given that half of Dr. Fuentes’s clients weren’t even cyclists.
There was an interesting article in the USA Today last week. Doctors are finding that repeated concussions, typical of the kind that football players receive, cause havok in the pituitary gland, and screw up their natural hormone production. There are several NFL players right now, receiving HGH via prescription, and the NFL is responsible for them needing to take it. The article further suggested that not far in the future, the majority of NFL players may be on HGH under the NFLs supervision, as it will be a medically required treatment, since a factor of the job is what triggered the decline.
I’m tired of the bullshit excuses for sure though. Shawn Merriman runs a 4.6 40, the same speed as Jerry Rice(greatest receiver ever), and weighs the same as Anthony Munoz(possibly greatest OL ever)…does anyone really believe that he somehow accidentally was on performance enhancing drugs?
I really have to wonder what the cut-off is here anyway. Should all performance enhancing drugs be banned, whether they are legal or not? Androsteneidone was legal when McGwire used it, but is illegal now. Aside from whether or not he was using other drugs, should he be penalized for using something that was legal? Bonds’ steriods were not specifially illegal at the time he was doing them, since they were new designer drugs and not yet scheduled.
Hormone replacement therapy is becoming more and more mainstream for the general population, and I’m sure the genetic therapy is just around the corner as well. We don’t penalize today’s players because they have better nutritional knowledge, or better physical conditioning knowledge, I’m not sure we can penalize them for having better knowledge of how to manipulate their body’s hormones or in the future, genetics.
Much in the same way that we debate how Babe Ruth would have performed in today’s leageus, given that the fielders are more athletic, pitchers are better, and we wonder how much more he could have performed given appropriate nutrition and physical training knowledge, I think one day we will debate how many more home runs Mike Schmidt might have hit if he was doing deca and winny and had genetic work done to prolong his career.
I am willing to bet that Lance kept himself within the strict letter of the rules. Many other athletes do the same. Some out and out cheat. Very few don’t do anything. The public is as fault for paying these dudes far too much. That is why I do not give a crap about “professional” sports- or many so-called “amateur” sports.
Robbie McEwen told me earlier this year how he almost came to blows with Armstrong a few years back. Basically told him in front of the whole peloton before a stage “Mate, you’re so full of shit. You prance around like you’re a goody two shoes and yet you get shot up 4 times a day. Fuck off you lying cunt!”
To be fair, it was a night at a bar and a whole bunch of Aussie pro’s were getting ready to go back to Europe for the season so Rob was probably embellishing the story a tad, but the incident is in the public domain. They almost did come to blows. To my knowledge, McEwen is one of the few firebrands in the peloton who didn’t think of Armstrong as some untouchable God. He tends to call things as he sees them.
Lance Armstrong had an advantage which came from a very bad thing. Because of the cancer, he was allowed to use stuff that would be forbidden to others.
He could have passed almost anything, so long as he had a prescription for it.
Jason Giambi couldn’t admit it because it would allow the Yankees would be able to void his contract. This lead to the surreal press conference in which he apologized, but could/did not say what he was apologizing for.
Absolutely. It’s clearly in the public domain that EPO was part of Lance’s cancer drug rehabilitation, and the list of anti-remission drugs was/is remains private to this day apparently. Certainly, Lance was getting injected on a daily basis through his winning TdF era - but we know not with what. But if somebody tells you that Armstrong didn’t take drugs during that time, they’re misinformed. He took shitloads. Just none that failed an existing doping control - and take heed of something too - the research indicates that Lance was not tested until just 4 weeks before his first TdF win in 1999. That’s a long time to legally be on EPO due to his cancer recovery AND be training the house down with Ekimov 150km a day.
Without wishing to libel Robbie McEwen or Lance Armstrong, the suggestion was made that Lance was on some cutting edge anti-cancer stuff which doubtless did not HURT his performances, if you know what I mean.
Look… here’s the bottom line - to the best of my knowledge, every single rider who finished in the Top 5 of the Tour de France for EVERY SINGLE YEAR that Lance Armstrong won the race has since been busted for either blood doping or drug doping. Think about. For 7 years, every single magnificent human specimen that Armstrong raced against in the Top 5 has since been busted. Given that LA was also getting injected on a daily basis but we know not with what, I’m happy to flow with the body of evidence.
I am currently working on the fringe of this year’s tour (we are supposed to be doing a web site to promote it.)
Some of the people who I have met who are “in the know” claim that yes, he did indeed dope. I tend to err on the side of caution with these things and like to give the benefit of the doubt. But the people who told me this were close enough to the action for me to believe them.
What boo boo foo says in his last post is pretty compelling. There’s just no one who is naturally that far out in front of all these other incredible, doped up athletes.
What I’m hoping as a cycling fan is that the real drug abuse is confined to the grand tours where the going is toughest (yeah, I know :rolleyes: ). The UK track team (Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Victoria Pendleton etc) are very strong at the moment, it would suck to be cheering them on if the level of performance-enhancing substances is just as high as the TdF / other sprinting sports.
DH mountain biking, probably the only cycling event you can say for sure isn’t tainted by drugs. That is until they invent a drug that makes your balls grow bigger
I think the most compelling argument for “yes he did” is the fact that he won seven in a row, when “everyone else” was doping. How can you be clean and beat a race full of dopers once, let alone seven times?
Well let me at least provide something of a defense for Lance.
Having read all of the above posts, there are certainly valid arguments for saying Armstrong was / is an outrigtht fraud and a cheat -as the French have long proclaimed.
However…
If you look at Lance while he was going through chemo, he like other cancer patients was stripped bare of all of his lean muscle mass.
Using that as a starting point, if one were to begin the exercise regime that Armstrong undertook, it seems reasonable that the concomitant muscle tissue build-up would be well beyond those who have to burn off fat and then work from there. Do I have a scientific cite for this? Nope. Speculation in its purest form. (Please spare me your substitutions for ‘speculation’ in the ensuing rebuttals - I’d prefer to keep this civil.)
That coupled with a completely revamped set of priorities, outlook on life, sense of purpose, yadda x3 and maybe you could create a rider who would defy all of the odds pitted against him.
A convincing argument? Doubt it for most but at least something to consider.
Are the downhill guys all not built like tanks? I’m thinking of pictures I’ve seen of a topless Brian Lopes. I think some guys might benefit from some muscle-enhancind compounds. And that doesn’t necessarily mean Lopes. Lots of lesser guys might dope just to stay in the game, let along get to the podium. That’s what Bicycling magazine and others have reported as excuses among the also-rans.
