Armstrong was in a race this weekend. One not controlled by the USADA. 
I admire his strategy. I think Lance is betting that the international cycling groups won’t bow to the USADA’s proclamation. This turf war may get real interesting. Lance hasn’t officially lost those victories yet.
Nike is still supporting Lance too.
Also people continue to support Lance’s Live Strong Foundation. That’s what really matters. Battling cancer is a lot more important then this cycling stuff.
That’s the thing. He’s guilty. But he’s an incredible man and athlete. Drugs didn’t push him and drive him through all the training and pain over his life. I’ll continue to think well of him. He was doping though.
That’s a good point. How much would have the steroids boosted performance? 5%, 10%? The athletes couldn’t take very much or it would have been caught. It’s not like the unregulated 1980’s when guys were juicing non-stop.
Lance still put in thousands of hours roadwork and training. He still went through the agony of those mountains in the Tour de France.races. He was competing against guys that were doping. Those wins were legit wins. The USADA can never take that away from Lance. Record books don’t matter. The world knows he won those races.
I don’t care if Lance is guilty or not. He won those Tours; no witch-hunters are going to take away the memory and excitement of Armstrong winning those Tours.
Here’s why the USADA is a kangeroo court: they accept evidence that would be woefully inadequate for any criminal trial, they have no statute of limitations or the equivalent, and there’s no double jeopardy rules. They can hound and hound Armstrong until he’s a decaying corpse, until science or enough self-serving wanna-be book authors can “implicate” Armstrong, as long as it takes. This is not justice.
And, yes, it is ruining the sport. Who can be a fan of a sport where results can be overturned by some obsessed tribunal* thirteen fucking years* after they happened? It’s nonsense. And there is the very serious problem of who is now the “winner” of those Tours? Alex Zülle? Doper. Jan Ullrich? Doper. Joseba Beloki? Doper. Ivan Basso? Doper. Alexandre Vinokourov? Doper. Etc. And what about the previous Tours? Bjarne Riis confessed to doping. Jan Ullrich? Oh, right. Doper. Pantani? Doper. Armstrong is being singled out. Do you just keep DQing people until you find the guy who finished 87th who you can’t find anyone to confess “I doped and so did he!”
Probably, they all doped.
And I say, let them.
I’d rather let them dope than see results be overturned more than decade after they happened.
I’ve been a fan of this sport for almost three decades (since the LeMond era). I’m not watching another Tour, Giro, Vuelta, or Classic until these anti-doping tribunals learn about how the rules of justice are supposed to actually function.
I have more respect for the people who confessed than those that just deny, deny, deny. Especially those who deny, deny, deny until every last chance to suppress the evidence has been denied, and the truth is about to come out, and then they quit.
I have no respect for those kind of people at all.
How can you possibly claim Lance is being singled out while in the same breath list a who’s who of his competitors who have served doping suspensions and had results stripped from them?
I love the idea that eye witness testimony is not enough to catch dopers when it’s good enough to charge people in criminal courts for the worst of crimes.
The hold his myth has over people is quite worrying.
So, you have no sympathy at all for the guys who put in thousands of hours of training, but who couldn’t compete because they weren’t cheating?
The world now knows the results of those races were utterly meaningless, and should be treated as such. It’s pointless to promote second place. Of the 70 riders who finished in the top ten at Tours Armstrong won, about 40 have tested positive for banned substances. Armstrong shouldn’t be singled out here, there was a culture of cheating. He did, however, reap the greatest benefits from it. The challenge now is to change that culture, and stripping Armstrong of his results is an important part of that. Anecdotally, it appears that cycling has had some success. Time trial performance is not what it was in the Armstrong days.
I find it strange so many people are defending a fraud, and find it hard to imagine a politician or businessman being treated the same way.
Because those others had very clear evidence against them: evidence that would stand up in a criminal court proceeding. And, no, not all of them had results stripped. What Jan Ullrich results were stripped from his TdF victory and podium finishes? Uh, none. Zülle? None. Riis? None. Pantani? None. Have any of Zabel’s Green Jerseys been stripped? No. You see my point? Their results haven’t been stripped. Landis, yes, Contador, yes. But they weren’t podium finishers in the Armstrong era of Tour dominance.
Note also that Contador’s and Landis’s Tour wins were stripped with a year or two of the finish. Not thirteen fucking years later.
Charge, yes. Convict? Not necessarily.
Not also that the U.S. has double jeopardy laws and statutes of limitations: most offenses have a 7 year statute of limitations (many, in fact, are only two).
:rolleyes:
Overturning results from a previous decade is bad for the sport. Period.
I too have been a Lance fan but come on! His defense has always been that he has never failed a drug list…which may or may not be true (USADA says now they have evidence beyond the testimony of fellow riders…we will see). The vehemence with which he has used that defense made it worth (for me) listening too. However it is now being discussed how difficult is was to find Lance at times he was required to produce a urine specimen…time enough to use some one else’s urine by “strapping up” perhaps??..(obviously he would not have been to avoid post- race dope control but during the off season and weeks prior to big races this theory would apply) which brings up the question…were the urine collections observed…meaning was what was in the urine bottle from Lance’s body? This is important because there are a vast number a ways to fake a drug test…and when the stakes are high the creativity would astound you…I have some experience with this creativity in my work as a psychologist with substance abusing teenagers in the outpatient treatment program I run.
The only heartburn about Lance going down is it’s reflection on the good things he’s done off the bike. Mark
Well, we not only forgave Arnold Schwarzenegger for his gratuitous use of steroids during his competitive days, but Californians elected him Gov. President Obama was a bit of a pothead in his younger days. Bush was a drunk driver and cocaine user before that. Most Westerners regularly live better through pharmaceuticals. Maybe we don’t care quite as much as we say we do?
Most of the doping tests are drawn from blood. Armstrong’s blood was drawn more often and in greater quantities than any other athlete in any sport ever.
So, you overturn Armstrong’s 1999 TdF win. What, are you now giving it to Alex Zülle, a confessed doper, and a rider who was implicated in the 1998 “Festina affair”? Give it to Fernando Escartín, another doper?
It doesn’t make any sense.
Saying ’ but what about the tests’ enough times isn’t going to make the charges go away.
Those don’t need to be given to anybody else. They obviously shouldn’t be.
Actually, let’s consider Contador. His 2010 TdF was stripped. What about his 2007 and 2009 wins? They still stand. WTF? Does anyone seriously believe he was doping only in 2010 but not in 2007 and 2009? Why haven’t those results been stripped?
So, you’ll say that the Tours from 1999-2005 were won by … nobody?
Not the same thing at all, with the exception of Schwarzenegger and bodybuilding, which hardly anyone gives a damn about. The issue isn’t use of drugs, it’s systemic cheating. How exactly did Obama taking a toke help him become president?
Yes, that would be the best thing to do.
Yes. I have no issue if they were left empty. It would be a fitting ‘tribute’ to that era.
Well, in the case of bodybuilding, “everybody does it” is a valid excuse. Everyone does. You aren’t cheating anyone. You’re keeping up with your peers.
What was Armstrong doing really? It’s just my supposition I guess but if he were cheating he’d have kept his sleazy doping activities to himself. It sounds like he spent a lot of time trading info and tips and generally oversharing with the other top competitors. Was he really cheating, or making sure everyone in that top group had a chance to keep “fair.”
I tend to think the bottom 150 racers would be the bottom 150 racers doping or not. Armstrong and the other top racers doping seems like it was something between them.
Of course we can say “why dope at all then?” I don’t have an answer to that.
Personally, that’s one of the reasons I don’t consider professional body-building to be a valid sport. Sporting bodies have a duty of care towards competitors, and steroid abuse can have some very nasty side effects. Encouraging competitive self abuse should be condemned. I’ve bolded a few highlights below.
I don’t know what the next performance-enhancing drug will be, and what side effects it will have. But putting young sports-people in a position where they must choose between their health and competitiveness is not something that should be tolerated.
Cycling is a team sport, it’s impossible for a individual to win the tour without support. Unless I’ve missed something, Armstrong certainly wasn’t sharing anything to give his competitors an advantage.
It’s simply impossible to answer, which renders the results meaningless. Was Armstrong the best athlete, or simply the one with the best doping regime?
Sport is only meaningful because we make it so, it doesn’t actually matter who can cycle up a hill the quickest. Doping robs sport of authenticity, fairness and inclusiveness.