Le Tour thread!

[Operation_Ripper]

@Princhester

When considering evidence and what it means to one’s opinion, one needs to decide first what standard one is going to take to be convinced. In your posts above you have quoted extensively from arbitrations, and mentioned “beyond reasonable doubt” as a standard to be applied. I want to know what standard you are applying before you would be convinced, and whether I am wasting my time.

Twice now I’ve specifically asked you whether you think it more probable than not that LA and Landis do not dope, and twice now you’ve posted something that may or may not be an answer to that specific question. In your post #123 you rephrased my question to leave the standard of proof out before answering it, and the same again the second. I appreciate that as a trial lawyer I might just be being pedantic and you may have intended to answer my specific question, but I want to be crystal about what you are saying before I start.

Good grief. One totally kicked one to the curb, and one still can’t admit it.

[Lamar_Mundane]

Contador
Evans
Leipheimer

One wonders, which one won?

[Princhester]

@Operation Ripper

Good grief. One totally kicked one to the curb, and one still can’t admit it.

There is absolutely nothing in Rick’s major post on the subject of doping that kicks one to the curb. I just want to be sure what he’s saying before I do my own kicking. I bought a house last week and had to organise for tenants to move in today, over the weekend I had two kids birthday parties and a housewarming. Given a straight answer to my question to Rick, and a couple of days to get around to it, and let’s see who’s being kicked where.

[Lamar_Mundane]

@Princhester

There is absolutely nothing in Rick’s major post on the subject of doping that kicks one to the curb. I just want to be sure what he’s saying before I do my own kicking. I bought a house last week and had to organise for tenants to move in today, over the weekend I had two kids birthday parties and a housewarming. Given a straight answer to my question to Rick, and a couple of days to get around to it, and let’s see who’s being kicked where.

Unless I’m sorely mistaken, the one who’s curd-dwelling is Rick.

[Operation_Ripper]

@Lamar Mundane

Unless I’m sorely mistaken, the one who’s curd-dwelling is Rick.

You are sorely mistaken.

[Princhester]

So are you prepared to step up to the plate, OR? Are you prepared to say, straight out, it is more probable than not that LA and Landis did not dope?

[Operation_Ripper]

@Princhester

So are you prepared to step up to the plate, OR? Are you prepared to say, straight out, it is more probable than not that LA and Landis did not dope?

How many times has LA tested positive?

[Princhester]

Sheesh. You guys really, really don’t want to answer my question straight out, do you?

[Chasing_Dreams]

Well, the Mayonnaise is bad. Another Tour rider bites the dust, this time due to EPO.

For those of you saying Armstrong is clean, you are in denial. We have covered this topic before here.

Although he was portrayed as a holy saint during his time, it still doesn’t mean he has supernatural powers. He is a close “acquaintance” of Dr. Ferrari. Recognize these names?: Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Marco Pantani, Roberto Heras, Francisco Mancebo, Eddy Mazzoleni, Tyler Hamilton, Jorg Jaksche, Richard Virenque, Alex Zulle, Santiago Botero and Jose Enrique Gutierrez.

They all tried to beat Armstrong in the Tour but failed. And if you can’t make the connection, they all placed highly in the general classification (Top 20 or better) and have either confessed to doping or have tested positive for doping. And I’m not even listing Rasmussen, Vino, Mayo, or Landis because I consider their cases to still be pending.

Do I need to remind you of the systematic doping in Team Telekom / T-Mobile and how Armstrong was so “heroically” able to defeat their entire entourage time and time again? :dubious:

Please. Saying Armstrong is clean is like saying that an obese American is thin. You may be able to deny it, but you can’t escape the truth.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

@Operation Ripper

How many times has LA tested positive?

How many times has LA tested positive? The same number of times that oh, gee, Marco Pantani, Ivan Basso, Jan Ulrich, David Millar and Michael Rasumussen have tested positive - that would be zero.

You see, when it comes to using “positive tests” as an empirical form of evidence that someone is ethically innocent, that’s where your pissweak arguement falls down in a shitheap. All 5 of those guys I just mentioned never once tested positive in their careers. All 5 of them will go down in history as infamous doping cheats regardless. And Lance Armstrong beat all 5 of them (plus a shit load of other guys who DID go positive) for 7 years straight, doing only 1/10th of the annual race miles that all his competitors did.

When I hear someone blindly defending Lance Armstrong by asking “how many times did he test positive” I simply laugh at the innate ignorance of the person asking the question - in the context of everything that’s happened in the last 13 years. To ask such a question as a form of defence merely betrays how little the person knows about how many people have recently been banned and busted even without positive tests.

And I would add, even Marco Pantani, a man beset with terrible demons and who died of a cocaine overdose, never actually tested positive for EPO - notwithstanding that his hematocrit level in 1995 was officially registered at 60%. He was merely dropped from the Giro in 1999 for having a hematocrit ratio of over 50% - which was a medical reason to stop him racing - but he never tested positive, ever. See my point? Pantani was one of the biggest druggies of all time. As were all the other guys I mentioned. Maybe not druggies, but dopers at any rate.

[Princhester]

@Boo Boo Foo

How many times has LA tested positive? The same number of times that oh, gee, Marco Pantani, Ivan Basso, Jan Ulrich, David Millar and Michael Rasumussen have tested positive - that would be zero.

Or indeed six, depending on whether or not you are prepared to wave away the results of certain tests on the basis they didn’t conform to certain standards, rather than on the basis that it is actually at all likely they were false positives.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

I would add however, notwithstanding my innate cynicism regarding Lance Armstrong’s ethical innocence, by and large I rather enjoyed watching his 7 Tour de France wins. In particular, I will always recall the 2001 edition up the Alpe d’Huez, when at the first quarter mark he looked back at Jan Ulrich and really put in a monster arrogant attack - and also, in the 2004 edition where he won 5 stages. There was the last mountain stage where he finished in a group of 5 and he put in a brilliant final sprint to win the stage. We didn’t often see Armstrong put in a monster burst specifically for a stage win - he usually was more concerned with riding primarily for time, and it was a memorable moment.

Still, I won’t rate him all that highly in the pantheon of greats - because his palmares is so bare in the context of all the other annual great races he chose not to ever enter. Jan Ulrich, conversely, will be rated more highly because he won a Tour de France, but he also won a Giro d’Italia, and a Vuelta a España, and he won an Olympic Gold Medal Road Race, and he won a U23 World Championship Road Race, he won the World Championship Individual Time Trial twice, as well as a Tour de Suisse and a truckload of other stuff. To have won all three Grand Tours, and to have finished 2nd so many times in the Tour de France is actually more impressive if you actually follow the sport quite intensely.

That’s why I rate Andre Agassi more highly than Pete Sampras. And don’t even get me started on Rod Laver. Andre won all 4 Grand Slams and played the whole season, every season. Sampras tended to cherry pick his calendar, only Armstrong did it even more so - which is why most cycling afficionados tend to suggest that Lance Armstrong owes the sport much more than the sport owes him.

[Operation_Ripper]

So LA is clean. Don’t be a hater.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

@Operation Ripper

So LA is clean. Don’t be a hater.

Gee, you sure soaked up everything I wrote last night. Talk about selective comprehension. Ripper, as I said, if we apply your logic, then Marco Pantani was clean too, as was Jan Ulrich, Ivan Basso, Michael Rasumussen and David Millar. They too never failed a test.

If you’re going to partake in this debate, offer more than one line posts which say something more than “USA! USA! USA!”

[St.Urho]

BBF- what do you make of Astana withdrawing from this year’s tour? It seemed pretty susupicious to me, especially with Kloden in 5th (I think). Am I reading too much into this, or do you think there’s something there?

[drm]

@St. Urho

BBF- what do you make of Astana withdrawing from this year’s tour? It seemed pretty susupicious to me, especially with Kloden in 5th (I think). Am I reading too much into this, or do you think there’s something there?

As I understand things, that is simply the code. Cofidis did the same thing when there man went +ve. The tour asks them politely to remove their team and this year both did. Mayo’s team would have left as well had he been caught in time.

Rasmussen’s own team pulled him so it wasn’t the same situation.

[drm]

Expert: Docs show Tour winner Contador doped

[German Doc can prove Alpuerto Contador doped]

Can anybody tell me if this is old news that ESPN recently picked up on and are now running with it b/c it’s tour time - or whether this is a new development.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

Well that’s where the sport has arrived nowadays. I recall back in 1984 when Reynolds still sponsored the Panasonic team. Time Magazine was incredulous that the operating budget for the entire year was over ONE MILLION DOLLARS! (Insert Dr Evil voice there by the way :D)

Well, within 3 years, Phil Anderson was on a $700,000USD per annum contract with the same team and their operating budget was over 5 million dollars.

Nowadays, the general consensus is that 15 million dollars is your operating budget to get your foot in the door. But the thing is, you can’t sell tickets to the side of the road in cycling. Indeed, the Road Race remains the only Olympic event that’s free and open to the public. It’s just the nature of the sport.

If you’re walking up to potential sponsors and asking them to fork out a share of that sponsorship budget nowadays, the culture has changed sufficiently that any hint of a team which indulges in shifty stuff is going to get their budget pulled. My understanding is that Astana had just such a poison pill clause in their contract with the Astana team.

Apparently, Borat the film was one of the single greatest reasons that the Kazakhstan Minister of Sport sponsored the Astana team - such was the ridicule and embarassment that the film sent that poor country’s way. That doesn’t help Vinokourov of course. He’s busted good and proper.

[Princhester]

@Boo Boo Foo

If you’re walking up to potential sponsors and asking them to fork out a share of that sponsorship budget nowadays, the culture has changed sufficiently that any hint of a team which indulges in shifty stuff is going to get their budget pulled.

I’m thinking there’s an opportunity here for the right sort of company. Pfizer, Bayer, AstraZeneca?

@Operation Ripper

So LA is clean. Don’t be a hater.

You’re funny. You’re in denial so far that you will say this, but you’re not comfortable with confirming quite simply (and despite me asking you to several times) that it is more probable than not that LA and Landis didn’t dope. Because you know that probably, they did. But you won’t admit it, presumably even to yourself.

[Rick]

@Princhester

Or indeed six, depending on whether or not you are prepared to wave away the results of certain tests on the basis they didn’t conform to certain standards, rather than on the basis that it is actually at all likely they were false positives.

Oh give it a rest will you? Either you are ignorant of the facts or you are just foaming at the mouth. That link will take you to a 120 page PDF report by Emile N. Vrijman who was commissioned by the UCI to investigate the matter.
Here let me save you some reading

@Emile N. Vrijman

Both Dick Pound and Professor De Ceaurriz have made statements to the media which have falsely supported the idea that the results reported by the LNDD are reliable indicators that Lance Armstrong used Prohibited Substances when Professor Ceaurriz knew and Dick Pound should have known their statements
were not true.

The statements by Pound and De Ceaurriz to the media were improper and violated various regulations and laws concerning athlete confidentiality, as well as the promises of confidentiality exchanged between WADA and the LNDD.

Did you under stand that, the lab lied. So did the head of the WADA. If you don’t find this disturbing, you should. Furthermore:

5.28 The conclusion of the investigator is that the results reported by the LNDD in its
research reports on the 1998 and 1999 Tours de France cannot be qualified as
constituting Presumptive Analytical Findings, much less Adverse Analytical Findings
and consequently do not provide proof of an Anti-Doping Rule Violation…
5.30 The LNDD failed to include in its reports information on the lack of chain of custody, on the analysis method that was used and on the deviations of the mandatory procedures for analysing urine samples for r-EPO. Had the LNDD, as it should have, included such information in its reports, it would have been clear immediately to anyone that a debate regarding the question whether any of the findings might qualify as evidence of doping, would have lacked any ground.

note the words "Do not provide proof, lacked any ground are these clear enough for you?
:rolleyes:

@Princhester

@Rick

What part of No I do not is not clear? Is there a gray area in that sentence somewhere? If so please point it out to me.

Here I will try again.
No I don’t think that either Lance Armstrong or Floyd Landis took drugs during their TDF wins.
Is that clear enough?

When considering evidence and what it means to one’s opinion, one needs to decide first what standard one is going to take to be convinced. In your posts above you have quoted extensively from arbitrations, and mentioned “beyond reasonable doubt” as a standard to be applied. I want to know what standard you are applying before you would be convinced, and whether I am wasting my time.

Twice now I’ve specifically asked you whether you think it more probable than not that LA and Landis do not dope, and twice now you’ve posted something that may or may not be an answer to that specific question. In your post #123 you rephrased my question to leave the standard of proof out before answering it, and the same again the second. I appreciate that as a trial lawyer I might just be being pedantic and you may have intended to answer my specific question, but I want to be crystal about what you are saying before I start.

Ever since you have posted that, I keep scratching my head and going WTF? I have gone back and read it maybe a dozen times. It makes no more sense to me now than it did when I read it the first time. I would think my position is crystal clear to anyone that has at least an elementary school reading education. I mean come on, they are all one or two syllable words . All I can come up with is you have some kind of gotcha planned if I agree to your language, either that or you have a real liking for the word probable. I don’t know which.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity I will go back and answer your questions exactly as stated

@post121

Do you think that it is more probable than not that Landis and LA doped? Or do you just think that it is not proved beyond reasonable doubt that they did?

No I do not think it more probable than not that they doped. Furthermore, it is obvious that LNDD has not met any reasonable standard that they did.

@post #125

So just to be quite clear about this, you think it is less probable that they doped than that they did not?

::: sigh:::
Yes I agree that it is less probable.
There are you happy now?

@drm

Expert claims Tour winner Contador doped - ESPN

[German Doc can prove Alpuerto Contador doped]

Can anybody tell me if this is old news that ESPN recently picked up on and are now running with it b/c it’s tour time - or whether this is a new development.

No so much old news as non news.

Contador has been cleared by the Spanish judiciary, who could find no evidence to link him to doping.

Enrico Carpani, the spokesman for the governing body of cycling, the UCI, has also confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that Contador had been cleared to ride by them after they had examined the documents provided by the Guardia Civil.

The Spaniard has never failed a drugs test and has repeatedly declared himself to be a clean rider. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” he said after taking over the race lead from Rasmussen.

Questioned about his links to Fuentes, he said: “My implication in Operation Puerto has been explained by the UCI. I was simply in the wrong team at the wrong time but I have already made it clear that I had no connection to the doping plot that is being investigated.’ But Contador will be missing at least one fan as he launches the victory sprint down the most famous street in France.

“I certainly wouldn’t go to watch the final stage of the Tour and I won’t be watching it on TV,” says Pound. “It may be called the Tour de France, but until the credibility of the race can be restored, it’s not the Tour de France.”[Dick Pound]

Sometimes all it takes to see your reputation ruined is to be in the wrong place (or on the wrong team) at the wrong time. Contador probably isn’t the first cyclist to fall victim to such a turn of events, and he’s not likely to be the last.

From here

Oh and from a former professional cyclist

As a former professional cyclist that has raced with LeMond, Armstrong, Landis, Hamilton and many, many others, I honestly think that not one more athlete should submit to a control until Pound steps down and a sane and impartial man that is interested in the health of the athletes and the well being of the sport is found to replace this biased, angry, predator who is bent on damning athletes before they’ve even had the benefit of the process that Pound himself helped design to insure that testing was fair, accurate and very difficult to beat.

Hearing this buffoon makes me sick to my stomach. The man is the worst combination of moron and hypocrite. It makes me glad that I retired from cycling though sometimes I wish I wasn’t a biochemist since I know so much about this it makes it even harder to take.

And by the way, no one would use testosterone for an acute benefit. Either Landis was sabotaged by a competitor, fan or the f’d up lab (which is the same lab the UCI investigation last year for Lance found utterly inept- so why are THEY DOING BOTH SAMPLES??? THIS SMELLS FUNNY!!!)

Armstrong has been tested more than any athlete in history. IF he was doping he deserves another medal for being the most innovative and successful doper sport has ever seen.

Ya know, Pound is due to retire one of these days. I hear Mike Nifong is looking for a job. If you guys like the way Pound runs the WADA, you will love Nifong. :rolleyes: