Somewhere, LeMond is laughing his ass off.
The reasoned decision is utterly damning. Armstrong is exposed as a cheat, a liar and a bully. Surely the UCI will have to accept the USADA’s findings and strip Armstrong of his titles. If I were a former sponsor I’d be looking at getting my money back off him as well.
I’ve just read Taylor Hamiltons The Secret Race…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=taylor+hamilton
… about his time working with Lance Armstong and cycling at the time.
Either he’s the worlds most convincing liar or everyone was drugged to the eyeballs. It’s not an anecdote here and there, it’s 300 pages of smoking gun. How they beat the testers, got the drugs, even a discussion of the tactics of when to use your stored blood transfusions. It’s an amazing read.
Well at least we know he wasn’t lying about having cancer? Right?
Who knows? Doctors won’t talk, claiming HIPPA rules.
Hey GO, the Thursday poker games are still on. Stop by some night.
No… and this particular statement/question is the single greatest myth which needs debunking of them all.
Please allow me to explain. Pro Cycling is a form of motor racing - except YOU are the engine. And just like in motor racing, getting fuel to the cylinders is not the challenge, it’s getting oxygen to the cylinders that counts. In the human body, this is achieved by haemoglobin, the pigment in our blood which turns from blue to red as determined by whether it’s carrying carbon-dioxide or pure oxygen at the time.
Some of us (the really special ones) who are blessed by the Almighty himself (and this is one of the rare times in my life that I will openly defer to a deity) are given a natural ability to carry more oxygen than the rest of us. And interestingly, from the 1940’s onwards it was able to scientifically measure this “specialness” across two variables - Vo2Max plus haematocrit levels. Without going into details (I could, trust me I could) those are the two measurable parameters that the dirty sports scientists of this world have pursued for decades now as the means to artificially increase the horsepower of athletes across the globe, across a wide swathe of sports. And no sport has benefitted more than Pro Cycling because, as I mentioned, it’s a form of motor racing with BIG MONEY behind it.
OK, so that’s the science lesson over. Now for the myth debunking bit. The governing body of Pro Cycling in 1998 passed a rule banning athletes from competing (for health reasons) if their red blood cell percentage was equal to or greater than 50% of volume per unit of blood. Fine, in theory. This rule is still on the books. It was implemented because in the mid 1990’s athletes were taking such massive unregulated doses of EPO (which by the way has a legitimate use in chemotherapy) that their blood was getting thicker than porridge. It made 'em ride like jet fighters, but their blood would clot in their sleep and they’d die.
As a result, athletes who had god given natural hematocrit levels of say 42% were passed and overtaken by lesser riders taking oxygen absorption drugs like EPO who would naturally have been at say 36% but were now right on the 50% hematocrit level. Hence, the bottom rung riders had far more to gain by cheating than the natural talents who decided to stay clean, and they even had far more to gain by cheating than natural talents who ALSO decided to cheat as well. And that’s why it was never a level playing field. The general consensus is, based on Armstrong’s many blood tests over the years, that he was mostly a natural 38% hematocrit guy. But mysteriously, he always nudged 50% every Tour de France - hence, he gained an awful lot by doing what he did - far more than a natural talent who was maybe 68kg with a natural hematocrit level in the high 40’s.
Right. But there are suspicions that the cancer was linked to his steroid use.
Thanks.
Very informative, yet succinct, post. I’ve never done much reading on this subject, and that answered lot of questions I didn’t even know enough to ask.
You still haven’t explained why there would be any difference between someone with a natural 38 doping up to 50 and someone with a 48 doping up to a 50. In fact, to me it would sound like it would make things more fair, as a mere quirk of biology would no longer be a factor. If anything, I’d think the person with a higher natural would, by practicing more in that state, have an advantage.
It seems you are positing that there is some advantage to training at a low hematocrit level, then doping up for a performance. If so, can you tell me more about that?
And, to relate back to my first sentence: if the rules say you can get up to 50, and higher numbers have an advantage, then I expect everyone who is seriously competing to go up to 50. It’s not cheating if you’ve got a rule specifying a number that you don’t exceed.
I said to you before that I could go into greater detail and I still can, but before I do, I’ve got a question.
You do realise, do you not, that every rider has a natural God given horsepower limit which is defined by their VO2Max and which is also offset by their base line body weight? And by extension, if you can raise artificially your horsepower by 12% without changing your body weight, you get a FUCKING MASSIVE advantage over a guy who doesn’t cheat?
If no one cheats, clearly the person with the God given natural ability wins - or comes very close. Another way of putting it - if the guy who can naturally sustain 46kph with a hematocrit of 38% juices up to a 50% hematocrit compared to the guy who can naturally sustain 48kph with a hematocrit of 44%, what do you think the results are going to be? Clearly the guy with the 12% hematocrit increase gets the bigger free kick. That equals speed.
Conversely, if every one cheats, and nobody doesn’t cheat, the guy who gains the most through cheating still wins if the artificial hematocrit ceiling is still imposed upon all the riders. Ignorance is not an excuse here. This is a very specific science of wattage versus weight versus V02max versus oxygen delivery. The goal is not to make it like NASCAR where every car qualifies within 1.5% of each other with the guy with the biggest budget still always winning, the goal is to let guys with genuine God given talent rise to the very top of the talent pool.
Armstrong, and his entire team, artificially lifted themselves to the very top of the 50% hematocrit playing field. But they also had varying power to weight ratios. In every Professional Team you have at least 25 riders who are capable of riding a Grand Tour. Every year, the USPS Team specifically chose the 9 riders who were so totally aligned with “the programme” that their power to weight ratios were collectively higher than every other team in the peloton. That was the where the cheat happened. It wasn’t just Armstrong in isolation, and these proceedings never have been. It was an entire team cheating to maximise their success.
In doing so, they also artificially gained an advantage, some of them a huge artificial advantage, over riders who were naturally near the 50% hematocrit ceiling. (Which, by the way, is statistically very rare). Collectively, they created a super team which dragged Armstrong to the front of every days racing for 21 days, every July, for 7 years in a row. Without a crash. Without a bad day. Without a single event where Armstrong lost time to a rival.
In closing, please, for the love of God, just say thank you for having read what you just read. Honestly, what you just read is as good as it gets when it comes to explaining this shit. If you still don’t get it, just please, don’t respond.
You have the wrong end of the stick. It’s not that you are allowed to get up to 50% and that doing so by any means available is not cheating. You aren’t allowed to dope to increase your haematocrit at all. It’s just that being over 50% results in an automatic suspension.
You need to understand a bit of history. There used not to be any way of detecting that a rider was blood doping or using EPO to increase haematocrit level. So riders were cheating wildly and doping up to the point they were endangering their lives. The sport imposed a rule that if you were over 50% it was unsafe and you would be suspended from competition until your level was back below 50%. The suspension was not on the basis of a doping violation as such, because it couldn’t be proved that you had used illegal methods. It was just a rough rule implemented, at least nominally, as a safety measure.
Of course, in reality, the authorities know that anyone over 50% is almost certainly cheating, but they just may not be able to prove it, so you are suspended. It is in no way the case that as long as you don’t go over 50% you aren’t cheating. Heck, if you get caught with EPO in your system you will be charged and suffer sanction no matter what your haematocrit level; it could be at 38%* and it won’t mean you weren’t caught cheating.
*Though if you are using EPO and your haematocrit level is 38% yer doin’ it wrong
From a quick google search, it seems that the hematocrit level itself is not the only relevant physical characteristic.
For example, one individual may be naturally more efficient at transporting oxygen than another, but have a naturally lower hematocrit level. Perhaps the differences are such that the two advantages cancel out and the riders are equally capable.
However, if both cheat, the one who was more efficient gets a huge advantage: he makes up for the hematocrit level gap, but keeps the efficiency advantage.
Princhester, thanks for your contribution. I understand far more now about the situation.
It looks like he is way more of an asshole than the public ever knew.
The bullying and threatening of teammates is probably the most damning thing. There’s almost nothing left of this guy that’s admirable.
Quoted for truth, and also so I can congratulate BBF on two particularly well written and accurate posts on this subject.
This is a good article from The Guardian explaining why letting everyone take drugs doesn’t create a level playing field.
So, does money matter or not? The article says it does, but only when it is used ‘legally’.
Really, it’s obvious that the best equipment, the best trainers, the best doctors, and hiring the best athletes, all of which cost money, will give a team the edge over the competition.
Does money matter? Yes, very much so.
Like I said the other day, pro cycling (at the World Tour level) is a form of motor racing except that YOU are the engine. But apart from the human engine bit, it’s definitely a form of motor racing and an awful lot of people don’t appreciate that. And since time immemorial, the teams with the biggest budgets win.
The Armstrong/Bruyneel combination brought a serious bit of ruthlessness to the United States Postal team, and the USPS organisation ponied up some serious funds from 1999 onwards - rivalled realistically only by Team CSC and Telekom at the time.
Forget the best trainers however. At that level they all get their training just by racing, heaps and heaps and heaps. But yes, focus on the doctors - in particular, the doping arms race doctors.
The biggest breakthrough in recent years has been the near universal acceptance of the “no needles policy”. Robbie McEwen had it written into his contract from 1998 onwards. Don’t jab me mate, or I’m gonna knock your block off.
There is a bigger fundamental question which is what you are trying to measure by the sport.
You could “level the playing field” by allowing everyone to dope till their haematocrit level (we’ll call that performance factor A or pfA) was (say) 50%. Presumably everyone would then be at that level and there would be a level playing field regarding pfA. So then the races would be decided by other things which might include another factor we’ll call pfB which might be say VO2max. What if doctors then come up with a technique (a drug, surgery, whatever) that allows pfB to be improved and measured, and the sport allows that technique and decides on a particular level for pfB and then the playing field would be level as to pfB. And then on to pfC which might be, let’s say, motivation and training dedication. And medical technology comes up with some brain altering drug that allows pfC to be measured and improved so that everyone has exactly the same level of motivation and dedication to training. And so on, and on…
Do you end up with a sport that is akin to building androids, all of which are perfect clones of one another (insofar as medical technology can achieve it) on the basis that any difference in natural abilities is inherently unfair and not a “level playing field”?
I have quite a few questions but not too many answers, I have to admit.
Nike has dropped Armstrong.