To be fair, the single most impressive “totally obvious and totally over the top” doped up performances weren’t done by Armstrong - notwithstanding that at least 3 of his rides in the TdF certainly crack the Top 10 of all time.
There were guys live Frankie Vandenbroucke in the 1999 Vuelta, literally riding the very best in the world off his wheels and pulling out 20 seconds in the final km of an HC climb with blokes like Ullrich, Heras, Mencebo etc doing the chasing.
Or a big fat overweight Indurain up the Hautacam at the end of a 260km stage, catching and passing of all people, Marco Pantani.
Or better yet, 2 years later Mr 60% himself up the very same climb - riding a 8.9% HC alp on the big ring. Come on…
The list is an epic one.
At the end of the day however, all those guys knew to be very discrete and stay under the radar - and in particular, never make any public statements at all which could come back to haunt you.
But Armstrong however? He wanted the rock star lifestyle - which required a rock star narrative. And that meant telling some big lies, time after time after time. And then, after that, it also required Armstrong become the ultra alpha dog who could savage anyone who dared burst the bubble on which that narrative was built.
Apparently the interview has already been recorded. My gut feeling, given his non repentant tone in his Strava comments, is his only sorrow in reality, is getting caught. As a result, if he’s that stupid to go with that… he’s so gonna get savaged I reckon.
David Millar firmly agrees with your contention. Admittedly, in thelengthy list of cyclists caught doping, or suspected of it, there is a dearth of Australian and British riders. Unfortunately, they’re rather the minority, aren’t they? Good for them though on their strident anti-doping stance. After what we’ve gone through with LA, you’ll forgive me for not fully believing them. Which is a shame.
I can’t find the link to the Norwegian newspaper that one of you posted in one of these LA threads that showed just how many people at the top of the GC for the TdF doped, (it was the chart with the red, yellow and green lights) but it was illuminating. This one from the NY Times is about as funny. In an environment where this many people got caught, and no guarantees that negative tests meant you were riding clean, I’m comfortable saying that most of the contenders were doping. Though, funnily enough that you cite his performance as being “totally obvious”, Miguel Indurain never got caught doping for anything besides his salbutamol test, did he? I can see EPO and other PEDs causing some of the crazy power outputs that characterized climbs in the mid-90s, but salbutamol?
To be fair, the first experiments with tracing artificial EPO didn’t occur until 2000, and even then, the test which was rushed into Sydney for the Olympics was a double blind test which was based primarily on opinion.
The French really have a legitimate claim on cracking the EPO monster, which took off circa 2002.
The Spaniards were shockers. Still are. EPO provided, through the jab of a needle once every 10 days, the consistent effects of having to drain (and reinfuse) tens of liters of your own blood per racing season. By orders of magnitude, EPO was by far the more elegant solution. And the dosages were quite well understood by 1996.
But we digress. The issue is NOT whether others did it, nor what percentage of them did it. That’s a fallacious arguement which tens to let Armstrong off the hook - way too easily.
Armstrong deserves eternal condemnation for fraudulently stealing the global adoration of a public who believed, unswervingly, a totally dishonest pheonix narrative created by Armstrong and his PR machine. No other sportsperson in recent history has come even close to the Royal Scam that Armstrong has pulled off, in my view.
And that’s not considering the many riders shut out of the sport because they refused to dope. I know of one rider, a young kid with a ton of talent, who went to Europe to race when he was about 20 years old in the mid 90’s. He was about to sign up with an Italian developmental team but refused to sign the agreement that he would take everything the team doctor gave him with no questions asked. He went back home to sell used cars. Never raced again as far as I know.
Good point, but I can’t get particularly worked up about Lance in particular. It seems like it’s pretty much all of the professional cycling circuit that’s rotten to the core, with perhaps a few exceptions. Lance cheated, he deserves to be put through the public ringer sure. But so do the rest of them. Lance’s special circle of media hell is only because he managed to cheat with better results than the other cheaters. I’m not saying we should cut Lance a break, but that all of the other cheaters be put into this same public shamefest and also completely excised from the record books. Restart professional cycling with middle schoolers or something.
Shooby don’t tell me, let me guess: you are from the US and/or you don’t follow the cycling pro tour. Am I right?
The reason I guess this is that your post, while not an uncommonly expressed view around here, is hilarious. “The rest of them” have been put through the ringer. They have had their wins taken off them. They have been publically shamed.
It’s just that because they aren’t American and/or people famous outside of cycling, you haven’t heard about it.
Guilty as charged, except I did follow a couple Tours de France (about 10-15 years ago). I haven’t been following the current scandals at all - in fact, they make me want to ignore the sport even more, if that’s even possible. I turned off on baseball right around the time the big steroid allegations were coming out.
I’m curious as to why other Americans aren’t being put through the ringer? Wasn’t U.S. Postal (Lance’s old team) mostly American, for example? If Lance was doping, wouldn’t the whole team also be implicated? Tyler Hamilton was a pretty famous rider in his own right, no?
Stop, stop. You’re killing me. You are asking why Tyler Hamilton hasn’t been put through the ringer? Dude. “Tyler Hamilton” and “getting busted for using dope” are synonyms.
Yes! My sports ignorance is paying off by giving entertainment value to others!
I’m not kidding when I say I avoid sports scandal news (and most sports news in general outside of tennis). I guess I managed to avoid the Tyler Hamilton / U.S. Postal kerfuffle, but the Lance Armstrong thing has been so hyped that it has reached even me.
Anyway, good! I’m glad that U.S. Postal wasn’t spared the public lashing. I remember Lance & Tyler not getting along, but I hope they enjoy each other in the Hall of Shame. Next you’ll be telling me that Marco Pantani and Indurain and all the other random people I remember are charter members of that little club. Nope, I’m not googling it, in the hopes that I say something stupid again
I know I am in the minority here but would it not just be easier to just legalize all of it?
Blood doping, Sterioids, HGH… level the playing field once and for all.
TBH even with the aid of chemicals, the feats done (Armstrong, Bonds, McGwire, etc) are still amazing. I mean you, me, most all of us could blood dope and pop sterioids all day at not even sniff that level of competition.
Of course people have entire careers and cottage industries on the testing and catching of its use so it is not likely to ever happen but you have to admit it WOULD level the playing field.
Excessive blood doping is bad for you, it makes your blood turn to sludge and clog arteries causing stroke and heart failure. If you had no restrictions on doping then some athletes would push the boundaries of safety more than others so that is not a level playing field. If you recognise that danger and try to limit the use then you are back where you started, with an arbitrary rule that the unscrupulous will seek to break while the good guys stay “clean.”
Having open slather doping would be like allowing unrestricted mods to Formula 1 cars, the dangers and resulting deaths would be untenable. If you accept that sports regulatory bodies have a duty of care to their athletes then you must accept that doping must be limited. If it must be limited then it may as well be completely banned.
It’s quite interesting as a study in economics and incentives, really. Not that I’m at all familiar with this case, but how much negative reinforcement is necessary to effectively disincentivize athletes from doping to win? If Armstrong’s trials and shaming and rescinding of titles isn’t enough to make current athletes give pause, then what would be?
There have already been 20+ deaths in cycling, in the early adoption days of Epogen. Ignorance is not an option on this matter. It’s not negotiable… unlimited usage would inarguably send the number of deaths through the roof.
Armstrong was, pre caner, a largely overhyped glorified one day specialist who could never win a Grand Tour like the Giro d’Italia. He was NOT one of the world’s great mountain climbers PLUS he was also not one of the world’s great individual time triallists. He was never in with a shot.
Armstrong, post cancer, had a meteoric rise in performance due to his blood boosting. Not one afficionado of the sport that I’ve ever spoken to, and I regularly hang out and chat with multiple Olympic gold medallists in cycling, have ever expressed a view different to that.
Armstrong’s performances weren’t amazing - what was amazing was his stratospheric improvement on the EPO/doping compared to his rivals. Nobody in the history of the sport reacted better to his particular list of cheating tricks. That’s why the arguement of it being a “level playing field” is bullshit. Everybody reacts differently to the cheating. Some people improve out of sight.
Regrettably, some of those people who improve out of sight? They’re also world class assholes.
Just as a random question to those who know about this stuff:
How likely is it that tennis players dope? Are there sizable benefits to be gained in that sport? I know that people sometimes use PEDs as injury-recovery aids, but I haven’t really heard about any serious inquiry into the ATP or WTA tours.
I ask because apparently I am a masochist and want to ruin the one sport I do currently follow.
I think rather unlikely. They really do get tested quite often. There has been a minor blip about Nadal perhaps having a doping charge against him, but it is unfounded. Agassi put in his autobiography about testing positive, but not for a performance enhancer. They did not punish him, which is bad.
I know a scientist who works at Amgen, the creator of Epogen - the synthetic version of the EPO hormone.
That scientist has informed me a very famous ATP player, who ended up winning 8 majors, a player whose career was in the gurgler until he discovered his new “outta sight training regime” in the late 1990’s? Was a known consumer of Epogen. As were a number of other ATP players. Any sport which benefits from an improvement to your “endurance and overnight recovery” is a sport which almost certainly has systematically abused EPO if there was big money in that sport.
Any sport which has big men running around as fast as little guys, without ever getting tired like they used to, is also a sport which has benefitted from EPO abuse if there was big money involved. Using EPO in the 1990’s wasn’t cheap apparently. About $800 a month I’m told.
That’s what he tells me. Cycling was the famous litmus test for drug abuse insofar as the arrival of a “wonder drug” permeated the pro field very quickly without decent oversight by the UCI. However, only 22% of all the blood bags found in Operacion Puerto were actually related to pro riders. Footballers and tennis players were the rest.
All you need to know is this… if there’s big money involved? And there’s a drug which no known test exists for? It’s getting abused in places other than pro cycling. Especially European football.
