Hi
After reading several websites that argue for and against the issue of Floyd Landis’s tipping the scales on whether Lance Armstrong would ever have been caught, I’m not so sure. David Walsh of the Sunday Times was investigating him. How much would David Walsh’s investigations alone have proved Armstrong’s undoing?
I look forward to your feedback.
Either answer is simplistic well beyond the point of being factually wrong.
David Walsh: Armstrong’s cheating was massive in scope and was suspected from the moment he crossed the finish line at the 1999 Tour. The snowball of allegations and suspicious was rolling downhill with increasing speed long before David Walsh wrote anything about it. IT’s important to note that in the case of Walsh, it is Walsh himself who takes credit for bringing down Armstrong - he openly says “I’m the man who took down Lance Armstrong.” That is factually absurd; Walsh was one of the better known sportswriters who was openly accusing Armstrong, but he was far from the only one and is probably unknown to most casual observers. Walsh dedicated much of his career to chasing Armstrong and I can see why he’d want to portray himself as The Man Who Caught Him for PR and professional reasons, but you would be hard pressed to convince me Armstrong would not have been revealed anyway. There was simply too much suspicion and too much evidence. It’s also worth noting Walsh did not work alone and some of “LA Confidentiel” relied on other investigators and journalists.
Perhaps the most obvious argument against Walsh being the Man Who Took Down Armstrong is that his seminal works on the subject… uh, did not take down Lance Armstrong. “LA Confidentiel” was written in 2003, and Armstrong cycled merrily along. The first real bullet into the heart of Armstrong’s career was the L’Equipe article of 2005 that revealed Armstrong had tested positive for EPO. ** That was clearly the tipping point.** It was at that point that the IOC and WADA started yelling. No sanctions arose from that but the stench around Armstrong rose tenfold and the reports tarting flowing; Le Monde then reported firsthand allegations of doping, and the LA Times started running stories on it. Armstrong was at that point pretty much toast; it was only a matter of time before he had to admit the truth.
Floyd Landis: Hell no.
Thank you RickJay for that persuasive piece on David Walsh. Why was Floyd Landis’s accusation and lawsuit not a major factor for Armstrong’s downfall?
You need first to define “undoing”. Many sceptical people following professional cycling suspected LA from very early on. His performances were difficult to explain without assuming he was doping and his denials were vehement but otherwise unconvincing. Over the years the evidence gradually built up, not least of all due to the efforts of Walsh, in a way that gradually caused more and more to suspect, till by probably the time of the Equipe article and certainly after there were few people with a clue who believed LA’s denials (nationalistically blinded Americans excepted).
So if that’s what you mean by “undoing” then Walsh contributed. But so did Landis in that he gave pretty detailed descriptions of LA’s methods and involvement, albeit that his image as a bit of a wild card didn’t help with credibility.
The real takedown I think was the USADA investigation. Unlike Walsh, USADA had the clout to be able to assemble test results and witnesses into a brief that LA could not fight. He tried to knock the proceedings out using technical arguments, but when that failed he gave up, didn’t fight the substance of the allegations, and confessed.
So you could say it was USADA. But I guess you could also surmise that if Landis and Walsh hadn’t kept the pressure on, USADA mightn’t have done what it did.
Thank you Princhester. That gives a more balanced view on the matter.
As the others have said it was a house of cards that was shaken down from a few different directions. Floyd Landis doesn’t come to mind as one of the prime movers as he was seen as a very unreliable person - he’d won the Tour in extraordinary circumstances, failed a drugs test, denied it point blank for years then in an abrupt volte-face started singing like a canary. It was contributory to the subsidence momentum of the whole Lance edifice, but I don’t recall anyone taking his claims at face value at the time. Probably Tyler Hamilton’s confessions carried more weight.
Other key names involved were Paul Kimmage, a Sunday Times journalist and ex-cycling pro who worked with Walsh and was a vocal critic of Armstrong’s performances (to his face, when no journalist had the bollox for that - note that that the ST serialised Walsh’s book, Armstrong sued for libel, and won, to give an idea of how difficult it was to take this guy down at the time). Michael Ashenden is an Australian sports scientist who reviewed LA’s EPO re-testing results and made it absolutely clear that he was guilty - no grey areas. Ashenden was an expert witness for a Texas company who had insured LA’s Tour victories and had to pay out on his final victory to the tune of $6 million. Their CEO Bob Hamman is one of the pivotal people in the downfall - unhappy at having to pay out to someone who was, on the balance of evidence, cheating, he took LA to court knowing he couldn’t win. But he was banking on the exchange of testimony blowing LA’s cover, and the USADA got involved on this basis.
[As an aside, Bob Hamman is one of the greatest bridge players of all time. As a player myself, I like to think that the old master took a deep line with the cards here. Like here’s that $6 million we talked about Lance, I’ll be back in a few years to reclaim it with interest].
Overall, though, it was that era of cycling falling apart that really did for him. Every cyclist that Lance beat, subsequently failed a drugs test. So either Lance is an alien (something that myself and many other cycling fans convinced oursleves of for far too long), or he’s a cheat. After a while, the circumstantial evidence became so overwhelming that serious investigators get involved, and he cracked.
It was Armstrong himself who brought down Armstrong.
Thank you Busy Scissors. Thank you all.