Because honestly, all the other nations that participate in the TdF and other cycling events are just paying lip service to drug monitoring, right?
As I understand it, the primary argument against Armstrong is “He must have been cheating; after all, everyone else was”. Yeah, there are a lot of Big Names saying that they know for sure that he doped, but for most of them, the way they know for sure is just the above argument again.
But if that’s the case, then how can you strip him of titles on that basis? If the argument is that everyone else was doping too, then there’s nobody left to give the titles to. Are the sporting authorities trying to claim that all of the events they presided over never really happened?
What I’ve read most recently is the US Department of Justice investigated Armstrong, including having witnesses testify. They dropped the case due to lack of evidence of any crimes. However, according to a “source” at DOJ they have proof he was doping. That’s not a crime to them.
If it’s true though, and the USADA is disappointed because it really, really wanted to present its evidence, his guilt is probably a slam-dunk and it’s based on more than witnesses.
Its not. Did you read the thread?
'cept for this guy maybe. After all, he was only the youngest rider in history to have won all three major GTs and was well on his way to setting records the sport had never imagined possible.
But hey! He played, he paid. And didn’t even need to be American for that.
Thing is, I for one am very happy cycling is doing what it’s doing to clean-up their sport. Would that many others followed suit.
Correct.
The saddest, most poorly informed comments I’ve seen in this thread are how dirty cycling is. Well, here’s the bad news. Cycling is setting the standard for trying to stomp out the cheats. Whether it’s biological passports, power output monitoring, offseason testing, you name it…I cannot think of any sport that is more aggressively trying to clean up.
Now you’d think that a sport that is setting the standard for hunting out cheats would earn respect, right? Nope, because you get wonderful observations such as “I hope cycling knows the damage their doing to the sport”. Excellent stuff! If you attempt to track down cheats, you are damaging your sport.
And then, just to really depress me, you get suggestions along the lines of it’s ok to cheat if you don’t get caught soon enough.
Seriously, what am I missing here? I thought the idea of sport was to set a level playing field, on which people would do their very best. Apparently I’ve completely missed the point, and it’s actually just a case of win by whatever means, as long as you don’t get caught.
Here we go, again:
- Analysis of some of the evidence against him - Michael Ashenden - NYVelocity
- Larger background of his case - The Inner Ring | Lance Armstrong Quits
So, let’s be clear as bloody crystal here. The primary argument is scientific evidence, analysis of earlier samples, statements from 10 of his former team mates and also some very strange spending records. It is as far away from “everyone else was doing it so he must be guilty” as we could get! How the hell did you arrive at that conclusion?
Is there really that much evidence for “everyone cheats”? The article above regarding the '99 urine samples noted that while all of Armstrong’s samples failed, most of the others passed. That at least suggests that in '99, only Armstrong and a few others were using EPO. This despite the fact that there was no test for EPO at the time, so presumably if a rider could afford it, there wasn’t really anything stopping them from using it.
There have been a bunch of high profile dopers in cycling, but they’re high profile because they were winning, and they were winning because they were doping, so its not exactly a non-biased sample. Seems possible, anyways, that the bulk of riders are both not cheating, and getting screwed out of a chance to win by cheaters like LA who dominate the standings.
There’s a long tradition in all sports that the game’s results stands when its over. Maybe there was a bad call. The umpire was blind. People argue about it the next day. But, the results stand. It’s a game. Not life or death.
What cycling is doing just seems wrong. Rewriting the past and nullifying old results doesn’t make sense to me. This whole obsession with testing, testing, testing is getting out of hand. Now they want to retest samples from 8 or more years ago. Where does it end?
Maybe I’m old fashioned. I like to watch sports and and know that the results will be valid a week, a month, or a year or two from now.
That happens when the winners don’t cheat. Simple eh?
Isn’t that a criminal investigation and a separate matter entirely?
Because every person with an axe to grind can keep officially questioning the results of a contest ad nauseam? I could frankly care less if LA did cheat, but I know I’m less likely to watch the sport because of the incessant naval gazing.
I can’t see why it would hurt to make rules that say there is limited time to challenge the results after which the results are final and everyone moves on and the samples are destroyed. New tests can be applied to new contests, but not to previous ones.
Yes, I’d think it could become a criminal investigation unless his forfeiture of arbitration somehow shields him from that. Not a lawyer, and not sure how it could.
Yes, a criminal case and a sports ruling are quite different.
If you go through the Tour results from the Armstrong years you’ll find that a very large portion of the top ten finishers from each year have been implicated in doping in some fashion or other since that time.
A lot of people look at the results of the '99 Tour as suggesting that most of the peleton had actually cut back on the doping in the wake of the Festina affair, and that Lance’s doping was instrumental in the other contenders all returning to it. I’m not sure how accurate that is, as there are ways to use EPO that don’t necessarily get you positive test results, but on the other hand there was in '99 no particular reason to use those methods as there was no test.
That’s my point though. There are something like 200 people in Tour race aren’t there? Presumably all other things being equal, the dopers are the ones you’d expect to come out ahead. As such, I’m not sure a high prevalence of dopers in the top ten really tells you much about the prevalence in the last 190.
Well okay, but you also have to remember the nature of the race. Of the 200 people in the Tour, only 20 or so are trying to win or even place highly. When people say that everyone’s doping, they aren’t necessarily talking about the domestiques. Don’t get me wrong; some domestiques clearly are (or were, anyways) doping. Sometimes it has even been organized by the team. But when surveying those actually contesting the race, the top ten doesn’t seem like a bad sample to me.
Also keep in mind that the samples would have been both overall leaders and stage winners, and a sizable portion of the stage winner group would have been sprinters. If sprinters are doping, I wouldn’t expect it would be with EPO (unless they’d take EPO in the mountains to get themselves through those stages under the time limit, but then they wouldn’t be tested and EPO doesn’t stick around in the body long).
When I think about it, it’s not as though Armstrong would’ve brought cheating to a clean race. The Tour has always been about cheating baldly and usually in much worse ways. There’s not mythic “clean” era of the sport.
The man passed regular tests, if that wasn’t good enough they need to change their procedure until they are satisfied someone is cheating BEFORE the race is run.
That’s impossible. The dopers will always be a step ahead of the testers, always have been. The whole reason they use these drugs is to get through the test, once there’s a test for it they move onto the next method.
I hate to say it but, I’m on the side of the USADA at this point. I’ve done alot of reading and researching of this issue, and it does look like LA really did cheat. On top of the 12 witnesses, there’s also been retrospective testing on his blood from 1999, and they’re positive for EPO.
And added to that, LA has refused to fight it. Just refused. Gave up. Just think for yourself. If you were innocent, wouldn’t you fight these charges? So, let’s just put it on the table. Lance Armstrong did cheat. Period. Full Stop.
Looking forward now. This is a big, big shock for the general public. Alot of people will have problems accepting this fact. This is why so many people are IGNORING the obvious. That Lance is guilty. I think it will just take time, and I hope the USADA holds fast to it’s position, because it will take time for people to realize the truth of the matter.
D.