Is there a Readers' Digest Version on the Lance Armstrong Doping?

What did he do? How did he do it? And what took him so long to get caught

I wouldn’t mind reading such a piece myself. For someone who hasn’t really been following this saga it’s all a little confusing. How, for instance, does someone get stripped of all their titles for doping without failing a single dope test? If it’s on the testimony of others who have failed tests isn’t that a little unsafe? These are the sort of questions I’d like to see covered. Armstrong 101, so to speak.

He decided not to defend himself against the allegations.

seems to be the condensd version of the evidence.

Thanks for the information. While I think he is probably guilty the “overwhelming” evidence is not impressive at all.

There’s also the Wikipedia article:
Lance_Armstrong#History_of_allegations_of_doping

One key thing to realize is that we are not talking law and courts here, at least for the most part. We are talking rules and sports. When a referee calls a ball out in tennis, or an umpire calls a runner safe at home, that’s a matter of the rules of the sport being applied by the people in charge of making those decisions. There’s no appeal to a higher authority. Similarly, there are rules in cycling, and the people responsible for making sure those rules are followed have made a decision.

There are a number of Armstrong apologists that seem to believe that witness testimony is not proof and that the only such proof is that of urine blood samples.

They are quite wrong, some of those apologists say its all circumstantial, but again they are mistaken.

If the witnesses are credible enough, and if the evidence forms a logical pattern and is consistent, then its plenty enough. Such evidence has been enough to send people to the chair, even after multiple appeals.

The evidence is damning, it goes across colleagues who report different aspects but the whole hangs together to form a very comprehensive case. Add to this, Armstrong actually did test positive twice but was able to dodge one with a backdated medical prescription, and then there were six samples that were tested years after the event, when valid tests finally became available, so the fact is, Armstrong has had 8 samples test positive.

Probably really doesn’t come into it, he is a guilty as sin itself.

Other apologists say that all the other riders were doing it, yes, but he was one of the big players, he was the one who played the leading part in imposing it on his team mates and he was the one that was instrumental in ending the cycling career of Christophe Basson, who had spoken out against doping.

Others might say, well its just sport, however it isn’t - we look at the East German ‘sports teams’ and that is the logical outcome of allowing Armstrong and his ilk off the hook.

Armstrong apologists move from one position to another, from denial of positive tests down to ‘everybody was at it’ down to , ‘its not really all that important anyway’. I can understand it, a person who is an icon, someone you believe in, has been shown not only to be a cheat, but also a bully, liar, and pretty much everything against all the positives he used to be portrayed as being - its not an easy message to take.

If you think it doesn’t matter in a wider sense, well think about those who take stimulants to assist them in exams, and other drugs to assist in concentrating when it is not medically necessary. Once you go don that road you allow a tacit approval ans without understanding the longer term effects on a wider population.

Meantime, cycling has taken some damage, but I wonder what would happen in other sports if we had blood testing, and biological passports - I think we would find the picture is as bad elsewhere.

In other words, imagine the very worst scenario in any other sport as regards doping, its almost certainly already happened but has not been uncovered.

Drug testing should not be in the remit if any sporting body, nor should the investigation. The independence is not there and commercial interests will always be a prime concern of the sporting body - it simply would not do to have your icons brought down, better to sweep it away quietly.

Moved to the Game Room.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

Remember some other matters that are a measure of the man,

Floyd Landis was caught out doping and agreed to tell all - Armstrong made damn sure that Landis came under huge pressure accusing him of being alcoholic and exaggerating of his mental issues in order to destroy his credibility - Armstrong is the sort of person that will use any personal flaws as a point to attack.

He tried it with his masseuse Emily O’Reilly by accusing her of being an alcoholic and a prostitute - he slandered her as part of a defamation lawsuit he took out against her, all the while his reputation was untarnished and she was not given the opportunity to reply in kind.

The threats he made to Tyler Hamilton include having him followed and making sure he knew it, in the hope he too would have a mental breakdown , these are quite startling.

Real icon there Armstrong eh?

Read Tyler Hamilton’s book or the USADA report.

Boo Boo Foo’s posts in the Armstrong thread are probably the best explanation I’ve seen anywhere.

First the background whyit’s such a big deal.

Then how Armstrong and the USPS team cheated.

Oh and for completeness here’s Boo Boo Foo’s take on how big a deal EPO was in cycling - huge.

Not to defend Armstrong, although I used to be a supporter but can’t now in light of the evidence. Landis raised a lot of money from friends and supporters to defend himself claiming he was completely innocent, then finally caved and admitted it all. No one got their money back, and I think that was a pretty sleazy. But that has nothing to do with LA’s loathsome behavior.

Only if there is a body. It’s nigh impossible to send someone to the chair if there is no evidence that a crime was committed in the first place. Those other six samples were farcical. The other two were from a salve for saddle sores. BFD.

Here’s my opinion. Lance did nothing illegal. BUT, he had scads of high priced medical and doping experts, who carefully studied the rules and applied ‘legal by the wording if not be the intent” treatments to make lance go faster, further. All 100% legal under the rules as actually written. He took advantage of new tech (no rules on it yet) , loopholes and ambiguities.

This is a misapplication of a misquote, and that goes right back a long time to a particular murder case where the killer had thought that a conviction could not be obtained without a physical body - a corpse. Problem was that he misunderstood what was meant by the ‘body’,. This was not a body in the literal sense of the word, but rather the body was the body - or construction - of a particular case of evidence.

Having seen you post on other matters, I rather expect somewhat better of you than this, another little illusion of mine gone.

In this situation, there is indeed a considerable body of evidence, from witness statements, to actual tests, through motive and mechanism. This has been enough to convict a person of murder at the highest levels of proof that a state can require.

As for doing nothing illegal - if by that you mean statute law well that’s just a way of weaselling around the fact that he didn’t break the law thus he cannot be guilty? - well that depends upon your use of the term law, in the sense of breaking the rules of the governing body of cycling, oh yes he certainly did break them.It was not a question of finessing between implied meanings or escaping through the cracks, this was cold, hard, systematic cheating and he was caught.

The rules of sports governing bodies are not statute law. There might be a legal case for some sort of fraud or deception charge but trying to unwind the jurisdiction would not be easy.

The salve for saddle soreness was used to backdate a prescription for cortisoids, read through Emily O’ Hamilton’s book to get the specifics. Armstrong was tested positive and used an altered prescription to justify the presence of it in his sample.

I can see at least two of the stages of denial that the typical denier exhibits in your post, I assume that you will complete the remainder by positing that, its only cycling, it doesn’t really matter, and anyway look at all the good he has done.

Life is much more complex than someone being 100% good or bad. Being bad in one area does not undo the good that has been done, or vice versa. Armstrong has made a positive contribution, he has also made negatives - and you can’t try to balance them in some form of good behaviour double entry book keeping exercise, it is what it is, he is a bully, and he is charismatic, he has benefited many many people, he has also shamed himself and others and coerced others into behaving in unacceptable manners.

Here are a few excerpts from the report (.pdf):

[/FONT]

[/FONT]

[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][SIZE=1][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][SIZE=2]

[/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][SIZE=1][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][SIZE=2]

[/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/SIZE]

[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT][SIZE=2]

[/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT]

[FONT=TimesNewRomanPSMT]It goes on and on. Armstrong used EPO and steroids, he covered it up, and he forced his teammates to participate.[/FONT]


Something is going goofy with the coding. I keep getting inserted quote tag breaks and weird spacing. I don’t know if it is an artifact from the copy/paste from the pdf, or what, but it’s weird. I’ve deleted the same quote breaks three times now and they still pop up in the edit window while I’m previewing the post. Hopefully this all works right.

All the little numbers in the quotes are footnote numbers in the original document.[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT]

As someone who would probably be classified as a denialist, I have something to say.

My question then becomes why the hell no one brought up the cortisone thing when I talked about how I didn’t think he was cheating before. Yeah, using cortisone is cheating. Having too high hemocrit levels that still pass the test, that’s not cheating. When you put in a hard limit on something, you are flat out saying that anything below that hard limit is acceptable. That’s what I objected to before.

Just because I think that he may still be the best, as I think all of the top cyclists probably cheat, doesn’t mean I don’t think that actual cheating should be punished. Just not this hemocrit nonsense.

How many times does this need repeating, its not ust that he cheated when everyone else was doing it, the fact is, he was one of the main engines of the doping machine.

He is not some little character in the end credits, he is the headline act.

As for hemocrit nonsense - please explain how it is nonsense, please inform us all of your specific knowledge and qualifications that lead to to a conclusion that is not held by USADA, UCI and all the doping agencies concerned, how is it that you seem to have an opinion that is better informed than all those agencies and people>

I don’t know, I wasn’t participating before, and I learned everything from this thread and the link to the report.

The rules state you cannot artificially inflate hematocrit by taking blood transfusions, nor can you take products that make your body produce more red blood cells. The actual numerical limit is also a rule, but it is not the only rule.