Well, it looks like there is a mountain of evidence thatArmstrong and most of the peloton doped for most of the past decade. Armstrong still denying, but Landis, Hamilton, and now Hincapie and Leipheimer among others all confessing to systemic doping among the pro riders. The last two disappoint me greatly. Cynically, I guess Armstrong really did beat everyone fairly - they were all on an even playing field, a secret one. Jerks.
So, what’s next for pro cycling? Is it just a joke now? I guess when the stakes are so high people will look for any edge. Maybe they should make it like horse racing, where drugged-up racing horses are identified ahead of time.
Pro cycling is the beat-down for all of pro sports on this issue. Because it is not huge in the USA and the prosecutors have done such a miserable job of making their charges in other sports stick then why not send cycling up the flagpole where the wins happened in foreign countries.
Do you really think that anybody is going to try to negate a Super Bowl, a World Series or and NBA championship because participants were doping? Let’s get real here.
Yes, there was doping going on. It was prevalent. But it was happening in all sports. Clean it up, don’t try to rewrite history. Does anybody want to see 7 Super Bowls, 7 World Series or 7 NBA championship vacated? Let’s just wipe out a decade of sports and pretend that it never happened. That solves nothing.
Many other cyclists from the era had already been caught or had admitted to using. The only thing ‘new’ is that the fairy tale of US postal/discovery being the only ‘fair’ team is being disproven. Now it seems they probably has the best doping regime and apparently Armstrong ‘ordered’ all his teammates to use… I guess that could be considered new. In the end it just confirms what everyone knew: Armstrong is nothing better than the others (although… the others at least have the balls - no pun intended - to come clean).
This is not really true. First, the playing field is tilted to those with better information and better doctors. And second, those with the most natural cycling talent have the least to gain from blood doping, since cycling has long enforced a 50% hemocrit rule and someone who’s naturally 40 and dopes up to 50 will gain a lot more than someone who’s naturally 47 and dopes up to 50.
Yeah, that’s how I read these stories. “American sports are being ruined by drug use. Round up the usual suspects from the Tour de France, that should fix the problem.”
Is anyone really surprised to learn that endurance cyclist dope? Nobody wanted to be the first to admit it because they couldn’t be sure everyone else would get outed. Now it’s all coming out but Armstrong is the one with the most to lose. “George Hincapie dopes” isn’t a headline in the USA.
First, I don’t care if athletes dope. Second, I’ve never doubted Lance was doping, or that he was a major league jerk. Third, well there is no third so I’ll repeat part two of the second, Lance Armstrong is a jerk.
I agree with the above that cycling in the US is an easy target. There have been some high-profile cases in other sports (McGuire, Bonds, etc) that will not necessarily change history, but will add askterisks *. They did not bring down the whole team, or the whole sport.
I am interested in how this may affect pro cycling here in the US. In recent years the popularity of pro cycling events in the US has grown - Tour of California, Tour of Georgia, etc. There are now several pro cycling teams based in the US and sponsored by US companies, where there was only one a decade ago.
Will people, and sponsors, start to tune out pro cycling and discount it as all phony now? I am thinking there will be a backlash for a couple of years, but the big US tours will continue to be popular. I suspect we will not have many cycling “stars” anytime soon, however, because anyone who wins a lot will be suspected of doping.
Precisely. And the USADA dossier makes no bones about it’s findings, with money transactions being tabled all the way back to 1995. In short, before Armstrong/Bruyneel/Ferrari got “with the programme” in the fall of 1998, there was no way Armstrong could finish a Grand Tour higher than 50th place. After that time, he finished on top of GC 7 times in a row in the hardest Grand Tour of all.
There is no excuse now for any sane person on the planet to overlook those fundamental facts. In a non doping Grand Tour, the winners would be very VERY different to the winners in a fully doped up Grand Tour - every time. Hence the concept of a level playing field is a total myth.
This has been the case for at least a decade or more to those who follow the pro tour. The revelations regarding LA and the rest are only revelations to those who don’t follow the sport much.
Very few, if any, will ever be so openly and vociferously suspected as Armstrong was however - and here’s why… no rider in history changed in appearance as much as Armstrong did when he transitioned his PED regime from a steroids based regime to an EPO blood doping regime. In the former he clocked in at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics at 86kg built like a Rugby player. 2 years later under the new “Armstrong/Bruyneel/Ferrari” USPS program he was built like a scrawny chook with a Vo2max of 86. For years now, 14 long years we’ve heard apologist after apologist say “Oh it was the cancer! Poor guy! Don’t you dare take such a cheap shot!”
No… he went from being a Ben Johnson steroids freak to being an EPO freak and he lost 14kg off his body frame as a result. And the USADA dossier proves it.
That’s why no one will ever again set off alarm bells like Armstrong did. Sure, some will, but never again (i predict) will we hear so many long LOUD alarm bells.
Actually, the evidence indicates that very few of the peloton doped on a systemic level like USPS did… and here’s why… there were very few genuine world class haematologists who were available (and were prepared) to do the ongoing research and development to make use of EPO and filtered blood transfusions but still stay ahead of the testing controls. This is the myth which so many Armstrong apologists are sprouting now… everybody did it, so it was OK, Armstrong still beat everyone else. Well it’s bullshit. There were tops, five, world class haematologists who were prepared to put their careers on the line for the big buks on offer. And the best of them, Dr Michele Ferrari, was essentially on top at the sole exclusive use of Armstrong et al… and THAT is how the consipracy was maintained.
If you left USPS, by extension you also “left the program” and in doing so, you were no longer able to cheat at the very highest levels without dramatically raising your detection potential. So what did ex USPS riders do? They would start seeking out new haematologists who were perhaps almost as good as Dr Ferrari but they were thin on the ground, until eventually along came Dr Fuentes and the infamous Operation Peurto in 2006. And THAT’s when it all started to begin to unravel.
EPO isn’t something you can just buy off a supermarket shelf. You need medical assistance - which means dodgy doctors who are also world class haematologists. And the evidence is clear. There were only 5 of them from Year 2000 onwards.
Most of the field didn’t dope. That’s the myth. After EPO testing became more common from 2003 onwards, using EPO became harder and harder without detection. But it was still possible with the very best haematologists working exclusively on your payroll, and his name was Michele Ferrari.