A big victory for… well, I don’t know:
Famed cyclist Lance Armstrong faces the prospect of losing seven Tour de France titles and his fabled championship legacy after he ended his fight against charges of illegal doping.
Armstrong, who has consistently denied allegations of illegal doping, made his announcement to stop battling the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s “one-sided and unfair process” move against him after losing a legal bid Monday to stop the probe.
The cyclist’s decision prompted the anti-doping agency to say it will slap a lifetime ban on Armstrong and strip him of his wins since 1998 after deciding not to contest the charges.
I’m sure others of you have followed this more closely than I have, which hasn’t been very closely at all. Basically, every time I’ve heard a story my gut reaction has been “They’re still screwing with him this many years later?” Again, I may be completely and totally in the wrong here, but my gut instinct is that most people are goingto see this as little more than a personal vendetta and witch hunt, and any penalties they impose will likely hurt the USADA’s credibility more than Armstrong’s.
El Tiburon
I live in Austin and so have a bit more interest in this saga than many I guess. A few years ago I also met Lance in a legal setting where a sponsor was attempting to deny him his payday because of doping allegations.
But I have to say there a lot of moving parts here and I don’t fully grasp all of them. But it does seem the most prudent path would be to just drop it.
Lance seemed like a good spokesman for the entire Tour de France and he did have that surviving the cancer thing.
Lots of people here give him grief for his marriage woes, but, you know, what are you going to do.
All in all it seems he is using his celebrity for a good cause: Livestrong. And he hasn’t turned into a total douchebag on the national stage.
DFS
I reckon Armstrong will shrug, sigh, and go off to recover from whatever punishment they settle on with a relaxing swim in his towering Scrooge McDuck money bin.
Patricia Kayden
Sad way to end your career. He should have kept fighting.
sal
Guilty till proven innocent, basically. I’d be tired of fighting a never ending legal battle too.
blingee
lol…keep following those gut instincts of yours Cole. They never seem to fail you except well just about every time you state some opinion which almost always ends up being wrong.
The USADA had people lined up around the block ready to testify. All first hand accounts of seeing him doping, participating in it, hearing him talk about it etc. etc. If he hasn’t already lost in the court of public opinion he most certainly would have if he let these people testify and the outcome would have been the same regardless.
Michael G
I don’t know, man. As a fat due who still hasn’t gotten out of bed today, it’s pretty easy for me to believe Armstrong doped. That’s why I’m out-of-shape–’cause I’m committed to a healthy non-doping lifestyle. Now to get up and eat a healthy multi-donut breakfast.
Spaghetti Lee
IIRC, Armstrong has still never tested positive in any drug test, right?
Cassidy
His “fuck it, I quit” speech just shot his stock way up.
SenyorDave
IMO they had so much evidence (testimony of former teammates, etc.) that he knew he would lose if he went to arbitration, which is my understanding of the next step. I think he would have fought but knew he would lose.
He is a multimillionare who stands to lose a LOT (virtually all of his endorsements), wo when he gives up to me it says he did it. This is not some lowlife criminal copping a plea to avoid a larger sentence. Armstrong has the resources to fight as long as it took.
Mart
Do the authorities really think they are doing anything other than requiring better means to avoid detection? Each bike race should have a second award ceremony for the best chemist.
Fwiffo
I guess I haven’t really been following the story. But my initial thought was “I saw Goody Bibber with the devil!” Which is about the only thing I remember from The Crucible. The reason I remember it is because I thought at the time, and still believe, it’s the silliest sounding thing anyone has written in something which is supposed to be serious.
The USADA is so far removed from any concepts of due process, double jeopardy, etc. that I have a hard time thinking of it as even a real thing. Admit your guilt and be found guilty, deny your guilt and be found guilty. Fight it off once, twice, a hundred times, and we’ll just come at you again. They apparently don’t really have much in the way physical evidence, but do have a bunch of people willing to testify. But that was true of actual witch hunts, so…
rlrr
@Michael G:
healthy multi-donut breakfast
Here you go…
Ed Drone
My son, who follows sports news better than I follow politics, says the witnesses they have are all admitted dopers, with who knows what kinds of deals to get them to testify.
Personally, I think it’s a vendetta.
Ed
Rommie
I kinda feel the opposite – Armstrong suddenly accepting the decision he was AH HELL NAW about for so many years makes me think he’s just tired of lying more than anything.
Are witch-hunts really that awful if they are chasing and finding actual witches? Then it’s the question of if witches are so horrible they need burning and stuff. That I can buy when folks say going after athletes for the scary scary drugs is baloney in the larger picture. I’m still in the middle on that one personally.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
I guess I always assumed that he probably was doping. Why did I make that assumption? Because virtually all the top riders at that time were doping. And he was beating them.
Which raises an issue – if he didn’t win, who did, and were they doping? Most probably they were. So big win for the anti doping forces.
4tehlulz
@Spaghetti Lee: Neither did Mark McGwire.
Mike Lamb
I’ve been an LA fan when he was riding. He’s got a good story and I enjoyed his first book. With that said, he’s always been pretty much an a-hole with anyone that “crossed” him.
Additionally, what LA is trying to say is that he’s the only one telling the truth and that he, as a clean cyclist, was able to thoroughly dominate a rather large contingent of very naturally talented cyclists who, by-the-by, were doped to the gills on top of that. And I don’t mean that his opponents “allegedly” doped–I mean they got busted for doping–Ullrich, Basso, Vinokourov just off the top of my head. LA also consulted with a doctor in Italy that had scads of dopers on his roster; former USPS riders got busted numerous times after they left USPS and they were never able to replicate their USPS performances.
In short, the probability that he didn’t dope is very low. Now, even with that, it does seem stupid for doping control agencies to be chasing it this hard so many years later (but that’s where the whole LA is an a-hole thing comes into play).
The Moar You Know
I rode competitively – mountain, not road – for a while. I can say this with no hesitation: the sport is stacked bottom to top with juicers. I doubt there’s a cycling victory since the 1930s that wasn’t won by someone who was on something they shouldn’t have been on. And that surely includes Lance.
That being said, oh boy does this smack of a witchhunt. Or payback. He is known for being a world-class asshole. But the reality of the situation is this: he passed his tests the first time, all of them. Worst case scenario, he outsmarted all of the tests, tough fucking luck for the testers.
Retesting samples from 1999? Give me a fucking break. This is somebody hunting for scalps, not looking to enforce rules.
jp7505a
Given his history he doesn’t seem like a quitter. I would think he would want to protect his reputation and prove USADA wrong.
Assumming USADA had the evidence, I guess, to twist an old cliche – better to be thought a dopper then go to arbitation and remove all doubt.
PurpleGirl
If the next legal process was arbitration I can understand why he might not want to keep fighting. An arbitration decision cannot be appealed except under very stringent claims for process error. (Burnsie, amirite?) That’s the point of arbitration — a decision and an end to the process. (I was involved, as a paralegal, with a breach of contract arbitration.)
eric
My understanding is that the very same team mates that stood by him and whose good names he relied on when defending himself are the folks lined up to testify. Yes, they had deals, but they are his buddies. He knew he would lose so he decided not to play. smartest play. Plus, he avoids perjury trap because that was where this was going, or else he would have to libel his former teammates. Not good either way. He did as did all of them, so i care little because one doper beat another doper. (The same feelings I have about MLB because pitchers were doping just as much as the hitters back in the day so everything evened out.)
Lavocat
Pure witch hunt.
Just listening to these USADA assholes made my want to kick them in the face.
Last I checked, no one had proved a damned thing against Lance Armstrong. Yet, USADA refuses to stop attacking him.
Put up or shut the fuck up, USADA. And, no, you fucking morons, refusal to keep tilting at every windmill you erect does NOT mean guilty until proven innocent.
Brachiator
I get the impression that even fans of the sport presume that everyone cheats. It’s like baseball fans who don’t care that a player might have juiced because they just want to see home runs.
The assistant news director of the top talk radio station here in Southern California was interviewed and noted that professional cycling is like a very mean soap opera. Everyone knows and works with everyone, everyone has an agenda, and everyone is apt to want to get even over slights and grudges. He also noted that it would be difficult to re-allocate Armstrong’s victories to other cyclists, since many of those below him have also been caught doping.
Shorter: not really a witch hunt here, but a fruitless attempt to punish the dopers.
BTW: the juicing in the Paraolympics is outrageous. Even here, the desire to win far exceeds the “joy” of just taking part.
Someguy
Anybody who says they “know” what was going to happen is probably full of shit. There are a lot of people who claim second hand knowledge of his doping. That doesn’t hold up in a court. Rather than run up a million or two in legal fees, in a rigged game, Lance bailed. Did he dope? Almost certainly. Was there enough evidence to make a legal quality case? Probably not. The FBI and US Attorney dropped the case, deciding there wasn’t a way to convict him. Would USADA have stripped him of his titles based on the relatively flimsy evidence available? Very likely. Will the TdF titles devolve to the second place finishers? Maybe, but all of them (and most of the top 10 finishers from ’99 – 2006) are convicted dopers, or those who retired when implicated in Spanish or German or Italian government criminal doping investigations rather than stick around to fight the charges that were coming down the pipeline.
blingee
@Cassidy: Urrum yea ok if you say so.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
Armstrong did not “quit” defending himself. That is P.R. spin. It is far more likely that he knew he was nailed and was advised he’d likely go down in flames, but only after weeks or months of public reporting on all the sordid details.
Armstrong “not fighting the charges because he’s exhausted” is basically the same as when someone “resigns” just before getting fired. It’s a face-saving move almost assuredly designed and advocated by his attorneys.
I had always thought that they would never nail Armstrong because he had become too big to fail–he was to important as a fundraiser for cancer research. But obviously, that’s not the case.
It’s probably natural for us to feel conflicted about this. Just about everyone likes (or liked) Armstrong, and certainly everyone would agree he’s been an immeasurable help to the cause of cancer research. And, of course, the outrage is tempered because he accomplished his 7 (possibly) tainted titles at the expense of foreigners, not your favorite local sports team.
But in the end, cheaters shouldn’t get away with it. It may be painful, embarrassing or disappointing, but even heroes have to play by the rules, whether it’s the NFL, USADA, the IRS or SEC.
salacious crumb
One cant say whether Armstrong doped or not, but I always found this whole Livestrong band concept to be a bit crass. Idiot college fratboys (on their way to becoming future Republicans) would wear it without any understanding of what it meant to wear. Wearing those bracelets was like saying, “yeah we are asshole frat kids, but hey we are nice and chicks should date us becuase we are against cancer”
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I have absolutely no idea at this point whether he doped or not. I do know two things, one small and one big:
First, from direct personal experience dealing with them, I know that the Chatenay-Malabry lab that originally claimed they had retested his old samples, thus kicking off this whole chase, is both incompetent and corrupt. I wouldn’t believe a thing they say, either officially or through leaks, unless it was independently verified six ways from Sunday, and that hasn’t happened.
Second, UCI, USADA, the Tour itself, and various French law enforcement, sports, and health agencies have set up a complex and constantly evolving series of systems to test cyclists for banned substances and practices, and Armstrong has complied with the requirements of every one of these bodies and never been found in violation. Eventually they have to stand by their own standards or admit that the standards are inadequate. Every regulating body involved except USADA has done that: “we made a rule, he complied, we’re done.” It’s perfectly clear now that USADA will not stand by its own system, will not comply with its own rules, and is indeed engaged in a personal vendetta. Whether they have evidence to support that vendetta or not, that’s what it is.
Lavocat
Seriously, where is there a shred of honest to goodness evidence?
Remember evidence?
Sorry, but innuendo, speculation, and rank gossip simply do not come close to reaching the bar.
Tim
They are still pursuing it because sometimes you have to look back to try to clean things up. See also: Plame outing, torture.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@SenyorDave: @4tehlulz:
I’m agnostic on this, don’t care really but in the end, there are no good guys or bad guys in this, all of em are shady in one way or another.
All the people lined up to testify are admitted/discovered dopers. It’s hard to fathom what their motivations are in all of this–that’s only the kind of thing a court trial or hearing *might* discern. And yes, the USADA has their own motivations in all of this and laugh their asses off at “due process”. As mentioned above, it’s clear they’re so far into this, they couldn’t pull out for fear of losing clout in future cases.
The fact that LA didn’t test positive isn’t to say he wasn’t doping. Given all the info that’s come out from the BALCO cases, it’s clear that during the time frame in question, the testers weren’t “caught up” with the dopers in terms of finding positive results. The cheating, lying sack of shit that is Mark McGuire never tested positive because baseball wasn’t testing in that time frame.
DougJ
People I know involved with biking say he’s guilty as sin and they’re glad he finally went down.
VincentN
If LA was a doper along with all the other top cyclists of the time then who won all the competitions post-1998? The guys who came in 25th?
Napoleon
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ):
And here is an added data point, on NPR this morning someone mentioned that since the crackdown on doping in the sport the speeds have decreased from the period that widespread doping was thought to have taken place.
Shalimar
Just about every team from that period was caught using some type of performance-enhancing drugs. I’m not an Armstrong fan by any means, but I don’t see how he gained a competitive advantage if everyone else was doing the same thing. And if there was no competitive advantage, I don’t see the point in going into the past and changing the results so someone else who was probably doping too is the new winner(s) those 7 years.
salacious crumb
to add to my point, it would be like wearing the American flag pin and saluting the troops loudly to makeone self immune to any criticism.
Yurpean
Lance Armstrong, asshole: http://www.bicycling.com/news/pro-cycling/armstrong-hunts-down-rider
MoeLarryAndJesus
Fuck cycling as a sport. The pricks running it seem like the world’s biggest pack of righteous assholes. I hope they all die in a fire.
Robert Sneddon
Pro cycling and especially the very lucrative Tours is rife with doping and cheating. The authorities try to keep it down to a dull roar rather than just giving in and issuing the team doctors with yellow jerseys to celebrate the stage victories. They tried to bring the hammer down a few years back on the Tour de F., banning an entire team after their doc was arrested importing steroids illegally and the riders went on strike for a day because of the threat to their paychecks. The organisers folded under pressure from the money men and the team financiers and the race continued.
As for detecting drugs, the top race docs are long past anything as simple as that. Blood doping has been carried out for years and only the idiots who use donated blood get caught these days — the top cheaters store their own blood months in advance and then get transfused before the big events to give them a boost of oxygen-carrying red cells. It doesn’t help them win since pretty much all the podium-placers are doing it, it’s just necessary in their view to level the playing field. Everybody cheats so to win they’ve got to cheat too.
There are tests being developed for self-doping with blood but they’re probably not definitive and almost certainly can’t be used on old samples as newer drugs tests can, something that’s been catching out cheaters in athletics and other sports where amazing sporting performances have been anulled as the old samples have been retested.
gene108
@4tehlulz:
Baseball wasn’t testing for doping, when MacGuire played.
eric
They are going after him because his success mocks them for their inability to catch him at the time. Ego, ego and ego. I have less than no doubt he was doping. many of his former teammates say it. I generally do not care. The evidence is not so much the positive tests of old samples but the live testimony of other dopers on his team. They will pull up old quotes from him lauding each of these guys. That is why he “quit”.
ShadeTail
I haven’t been following this either, Mr. Cole. In fact, this is the first I’ve ever even heard of it. And maybe you’re right that it won’t be Armstrong whose credibility gets hurt in the long run.
But if the allegations are true, then it’s still right for the USADA to take this action against him. Just as it was right for Penn State football to lose out big because of the Sandusky scandal, and for baseball players to get raked over the coals for steroid use, and on and on and on.
FormerSwingVoter
This gives me a good excuse to link one of my all-time favorite Onion articles:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nondoping-cyclists-finish-tour-de-france,2268/
rb
All of the above. It’s a personal and excessive vendetta against an almost certain cheater. He beat the weak testing protocols of the late 90s, but he’s apparently such a righteous prick that USADA would rather trash its own rep on a crusade to finally nail him than let him walk. And they were about to nail him, so he quit.
Pretty gross top to bottom.
Amir Khalid
I have been following this even less assiduously than John Cole. But the thing that stands out for me, as for many others, is that Lance Armstrong never failed a drug test. So maybe he never doped; or maybe he just never got caught, because he managed to beat the test. It’s down to his word against the word of others. Unless the latter includes corroborated testimony that the witness saw him taking the drugs, I’d feel uncomfortable with finding him guilty. I wonder what the evidence will say once it is published.
Wag
As a big cycling fan, I find it implausible that Armstrong was not doping. OF the other riders who shared the podium with him during his seven TdF victories, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM has been caught doping. To then imply that St Lance the Pure was clean stretches the imagination to the breaking point. The reason he has fought so hard to maintain his illusion is because of the money he brings in.
And all that money that goes to cancer research through the Livestrong charity? Dig a little bit like Outside magazine did earlier this year, and you’ll find that Armstrong is nothing more than another Texas grifter.
Good riddance, if you ask me.
Argive
I wonder if we’ll get another cyclist like Landis going public with some kind of evidence that Armstrong doped. I doubt it, because as I understand it cyclists hate snitches more than they hate cheaters.
Butch
I guess there’s some question about USADA authority in foreign races?
evinfuilt
@Robert Sneddon:
That’s the rub, I think Lance was just first at perfecting the technique. The way it’s been done the past 20 years it’s getting harder and harder to detect, nearly impossible. This was my sport, I loved it, the cheating has ruined it… Maybe if they allow the doping to occur, and see everyone has an equal share (lol) then the game can come back.
*Goes back to finding a good spot to watch this weekends finale in Denver*
Someguy
I’m all in favor of summary justice like this. Can we send the SEC to confiscate everything earned by anybody who worked at that notorious tax cheating firm Bain?
gorram
I don’t have an opinion on this, but I really think for the people that do this is a major PR loss for USADA. My mom’s an avid cyclist fan, and she’s insisted, for years now, that Armstrong isn’t doping – that the extreme weight loss he went through while doing chemo allowed him to only build back muscles that he wanted for cycling and to leave everything else atrophied. That’s how he was able to beat dopers, because he somewhat intentionally made the best of a terrible health situation.
I’m neither a chemist nor a biologist (and same for my mother), so I can’t say that the above explanation is true. But the thing is, that’s convincing and has at least some believers. So as you said, Cole, this legal exchange isn’t exactly a win for USADA.
djork
A big victory for…
McCain?
kindness
On the plus side, now both Lance and Michael Phelps can do sweet sweet kind bud bong rips and no one can do anything about it.
Cassidy
@blingee: YOu mean a bunch of people who were confirmed cheaters, baneed for life, and had nothing left to lose were going to testify against him? Have you said that phrase out loud?
@blingee: Americans love a rebel and sponsors love a face that sells shit. LA’s face still sells shit.
Chyron HR
Sounds like they had Armstrong by the balls.
Wag
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
Right you are, and again, I point you towards the Outside article,
The Other Chuck
@Chyron HR: Ball.
Emma
@Spaghetti Lee: Nope. It killed them. Their “witnesses” were all people who were caught doping and who were offered leniency if they said Amstrong used drugs. They have an 8 year statute of limitations but they have been chasing his scalp for fiteen. The European cycling people are pissed beyond belief.
Revanch
Personally, I think it is almost impossible that Lance Armstrong didn’t use performance enhancing drugs. Nearly every one of his less-successful peers and competitors did and many have faced the music as a result. Armstrong would have been well-aware of the doped-up competition he was facing when he was losing TDF’s to other riders. He upped his chemical game, and his true crowning achievement in sport was his ability to repeatedly beat the drug testers. Stories of post-stage blood transfusions and other extreme measures abound.
Mark McGuire was also never caught, but his doping was as professionally successful and subsequently as tarnishing to his reputation as this will be for Armstrong.
In your sympathy for Lance, you’re in league with redstate’s Erick Erickson who also thinks it’s no fair that Lance is being given the third degree, and that some magic statute of doping investigation limitations should apply to him.
The guy’s a multimillionaire who has become the face of healthy living and fitness, but if he did this by utilizing banned substances — substances that can cause the kind of cancer that he became a hero for overcoming — then I have zero sympathy for him, because he is a cheat and a fraud.
Chyron HR
@The Other Chuck:
That’s the joke.
rb
@Wag: Yeah, there’s a lot of Komen in Livestrong.
grass
Kinda appalled, but not surprised, by all the people saying “yeah, he probably doped, but everyone did and it was 7 years ago we should drop it. Stop the witch hunt.”
If you don’t go after the top dopers then you’ll never dissuade people from trying the same. 7 tour wins means fuck all if you pumped yourself full of fresh blood to do it.
http://i.imgur.com/i7bjg.png – notice anything?
Mart
If I was a cyclist I would want to find the Jamaican’s sprint track team doctor.
skjellyfetti
Quite simply, he rolled over solely to save The Brand. If he’s that quick to roll over now, then Lance knows that a) they got the goods on him this time; and b) there’s no way The Brand will emerge from these arbitration hearings unscathed yet alone intact.
He’s 40-years-old and can’t compete at that level anymore so all he has left is The Brand. He and his many attorneys have fought long and very, very hard to protect The Brand. Just ask Greg Lemond..
In addition, he’s got every lawyer in Texas on his payroll so this isn’t about a lack of resources on his part or an unwillingness to utilize them–in fact, I anticipate a lawsuit from Lance over just this comment alone.
If he were truly innocent, as he claims, and that the USADA has a vendetta, then I would think he would welcome the opportunity to confront their evidence and publicly defend himself from all charges; sadly, he’s made the choice to protect the brand and play the victim, which he has mastered. Finally, if he’s innocent and the fighter he says he is, then he should be willing to fight these charges to his dying breath.
7 Tour de France titles vs. livestrong.com ($$$), you make the choice.
Athena2
From what I hear, Armstrong had a raft of lawyers chasing anyone who looked at him cockeyed. He’s a bully.
Cassidy
@grass: Honestly, I think the big issue is the lack of due process with the USADA. They’ve never had anything but testimony from people who’s integrity has already been tarnished. This was harassment by an orgnization that kept throwing money to go after someone until he finally said fuck it.
I don’t know if he’s doped or not and I honestly don’t care. It matters to me that a private organization was allowed to harass someone like that.
Wag
@Yurpean:
Great article. thanks for the link
danimal
@rb: Yep. Seems kind of strange to have to pick sides on this one.
Yes, it’s a vendetta, the cycling authorities have looked bad and wanted revenge. Yes, Armstrong doped like every other cyclist in his cohort.
Is it that hard to believe both are true?
Someguy
@grass:
Yeah, that’s great. Except in the last one, Nibali and one of the Schleck brothers have been implicated in doping, and Kreuziger rides for Astana. I strongly suspect that most of the allegedly clean guys in 2009 – this leaves 5 in your top 10 – will be darkened in a few years.
Ruckus
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
Your second graph is the key here.
There were rules, there were enforcement procedures. He got tested every which way and didn’t get caught. So he didn’t dope or the procedures were ineffective. Either way the end and official result is, he didn’t dope. Like it or not, believe it or not, those are the rules he and everyone else (many of whom did got caught) participated under.
cursorial
@Argive: I think Tyler Hamilton and a sports reporter have a book coming out soon – The Secret Race? – that’s going to throw enough details on how it’s done to make it impossible for Armstrong to maintain the story that he was clean and dominated a field of enhanced riders for years. Hamilton doped and was caught, so his credibility isn’t 100%, but it’ll start seeming like Lance vs. everyone else on this.
grass
@Cassidy: It’s taxpayer funded and it’s the organisation that liaises with the UCI and WADA, it’s not as if it’s a self appointed witch hunter general. Now, I don’t know the ins and outs of the case, but my understanding is that Armstrong has been fighting their legitimacy, not the actual charges. Their case sounds pretty strong and damning.
If you don’t care if he doped or not then it doesn’t really matter to you, but it’s important to professional cycling. Cycling has had a shit past couple decades due to EPO, hopefully it’s getting better now.
Wag
@grass:
Interesting graphic. can you point me to the rest of the picture? Thanks
Mnemosyne
@Robert Sneddon:
This is really the basis of the problem, and the basis of a lot of our problems in Western culture, frankly. If you can cheat without penalty and you know your opponents are cheating, it basically forces everyone to cheat because playing honest only means that you’ll lose.
And it extends well beyond sports. Look at the financial sector, or any business, really. Since there are no penalties for cheating and winning/making a profit is the only important thing, all of the incentives are set up to force everyone to cheat.
Mnemosyne
@Robert Sneddon:
This is really the basis of the problem, and the basis of a lot of our problems in Western culture, frankly. If you can cheat without penalty and you know your opponents are cheating, it basically forces everyone to cheat because playing honest only means that you’ll lose.
And it extends well beyond sports. Look at the financial sector, or any business, really. Since there are no penalties for cheating and winning/making a profit is the only important thing, all of the incentives are set up to force everyone to cheat.
Pontiac
The winner of the Tour de France is the fastest doper who doesn’t get caught.
Vishnu Schist
@DougJ: Number one if your friends call it “biking” they are not involved in cycling. “Bikers” either ride harleys, consider 20 miles a long ride or pedal street cruisers to farmers markets. Secondly, LA probably did dope and I frankly don’t give a shit. He dominated the sport and passed every fucking test for years. The people lined up to testify Landis, etc. are a pack of either very bitter rivals who weren’t as smart as LA, or we’re given the old bargain of testify or we’ll fry your ass. This is a vendetta period, USADA wanted to bring LA down to show how big their dick is. They can go fuck themselves. They have no credibility.
Wag
@Mnemosyne:
And THAt is why this matters. We cannot look at this in isolation, but need to look at it in the broader context of our society.
Armstrong is romney.
Livestrong is Bain Capital
Ruckus
The whole LA thing is like mittens. Do we know either one cheated (drugs, taxes)? No, we don’t know. We think we know, but we don’t. We may never actually know. The question is do we trust either one? In my book the answer is no. LA because the surrounding situation makes it highly unlikely, mittens because we hear him lying on a regular basis. LA we suspect (and maybe rightly so), in the case of mittens we don’t really need to know the answer, so many other things we see first hand are wrong that he fails on every other level.
matt
@salacious crumb:
A friend of mine who follows cycling carefully and has always been convinced Armstrong was a cheat made all of us custom yellow bracelets embossed with ‘Cheat to Win’. If Lance goes down, I guess I can’t wear it anymore?
Percysowner
Doping for a bicycle race is as bad as TORTURE? I mean REALLY? I’m not a sports fan so I just can’t put it on the level of outing a spy or torturing people. Plus, it sounds like he passed all the screenings, so my real reaction is oh well.
grass
@Wag: http://www.cyclingtipsblog.com/2011/06/the-armstrong-era/ here you go.
Mike Lamb
@Vishnu Schist: Except a lot of the guys were ex-teammates, not rivals. Landis, Hamilton, Hincapie, Vaughters, etc. I don’t believe that Hincapie or Vaughters (until he recently confessed) had ever been under serious scrutiny re: doping.
HW3
Reposting this link… The pdf of the USADA letter is pretty damning. The cynic in me says Armstrong is moving to a nolo contendere defense in a move to keep his sponsorships and foundation going.
grass
I read this earlier as well, not sure of it’s veracity but it’s certainly an eye opener;
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/landis/instantmessage.html
Petorado
Armstrong was very much a product of his racing era. If you look between 1996 and 2010, there are only two riders who stood at the top of the podium in Paris that have not admitted PED use or been busted, and one of those — Andy Schleck — just had his brother and teammate get busted this year for PED use. I don’t know if anyone can say with any certainty that the next runner-up would be free of any and all taint.
Is it cheating or keeping up with the jonses if it’s common knowledge throughout the field that PEDs are what’s required to stay competitive? If the top guns in the sport were all using, then they were competing on par after all. I’m glad the sport is getting cleaned up and think it’s improving the racing, but it’s a brutally hard sport and athletes and handlers have always looked for a way to make the body endure since before Tom Simpson blew up his heart with amphetamines in the ’67 Tour. Lance didn’t start anything or push things further than any of his chief competitors so I’m not sure what the USADA wound up accomplishing with its move against Lance.
Cassidy
@grass: Witch Hunter General. Nice. lol
I’m not a LA fan, by any means. He’s always struck me as an asshole. As someone pointed out though, he won. He either is an extraordinary athlete or he beat the system. Secondly, the conduct of the USADA was hhorrendously unprofessional. This became a vendetta and had nothing to do with the truth or fairness or anything like that. I won’t be surprised to found out that some of the people they got to testify ended up with some extra cash.
The reality is that all sports are dirty. Period.I’m a huge MMA fan. There are only a couple of top level fighters who, in my opinion, are not juicing. Most of them are doing it legally through TUE’s for TRT. It’s the nature of the business. Sports is branding and those brands are the difference between a long and comfortable career or being broke at the age of 50 with a destroyed body.
And let’s be real here. How many people here who want to be stronger and more cut and more fit wouldn’t do a couple cycles of Wynstrol if you knew it wouldn’t harm you?
Mnemosyne
@Wag:
Except that when everyone is cheating, you don’t get very far simply by punishing the cheaters as they come to your attention. You need to take some regulatory steps that level the playing field before the competition begins.
Otherwise, all you’re doing is barring the doors of an empty barn.
geg6
A fucking cheater deserves everything he gets. And just because just about everyone in his sport cheats, a lot of people here think that is okay. WTF is wrong with you people?
Perhaps people who would be interested in competing decided not to because they knew they would lose to the cheaters. Perhaps they respect themselves, their bodies, and the sport enough to prefer not compete at the TdF level if doping is the only way you can.
I can’t understand the mindset of the people here defending this shit and actually believing that this asshole is the only guy in the entire sport who didn’t dope.
Fuck Lance Armstrong. He deserves to lose everything he’s ever gained through his cheating. He won’t and I know there is no justice in this world. But the idea that I would defend a habitual cheater is just sickening to me, no matter what the circumstances.
RSA
Me either. But I read today in Cycle Sport Magazine:
To be fair, my cave is pretty large and well-appointed.
LanceThruster
Why don’t all sports have a separate league/sanctioning body that allows for doping? That would make things interesting, nu?
Cassidy
@geg6: I don’t think anyone here has said he didn’t cheat. I think the prevailing opinion is that he didn’t get caught and to have pursued him for 15 years is a vendetta, not a call to justice and fairness and Little League.
Someguy
@geg6:
Geg, I hope you get a chance to experience perfect justice – retribution for each and every wrong you have committed. I’m sure you would settle for nothing less.
grass
@LanceThruster: Certainly would be fascinating, but I imagine the death rate would eventually become unsightly.
Ruckus
@Cassidy:
I’ll go on record as saying he didn’t cheat. How do I know? Because he was tested using the same procedures as everyone else and they got caught and he didn’t. That means he didn’t cheat by the rules/procedures he played under.
Now the question should be, did he use PEDs? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else here. I suspect he did, given the circumstances, but I don’t know. And yes, I think this is a vendetta and I don’t think in the long run it will be good for the sport.
catclub
@4tehlulz: It took me ten seconds to figure out that today’s blood test might not find drug XYZ, but a test ten years from now probably would. So save a few samples in liquid N2 just for curiosity’s sake.
Why oh why did the drug testers not think of this 15 years ago? I have to wonder why they were stupid on purpose. Or who made sure they were stupid on purpose.
kc
@Wag:
Oh, bullshit. He’s a competitive cycler. He’s not in a position to start wars or make policy.
mathguy
As far as Armstrong is concerned, it’s just a witch hunt. He doped and got away with it, so this is just revenge on the part of USADA for him thumbing his nose at them. The whole thing should be forgotten. I race and enjoy watching racing, and it’s not going to change anything one iota.
For a couple of ignorant commentators that like to paint every pro cyclist with the same “they all dope” brush, here’s an analysis explaining why THEY ARE MOST LIKELY NOT DOPING NOW (and why Lance almost certainly was):
http://www.sportsscientists.com/2012/07/tour-in-mountains-analysis-discussion.html
John N
I have a problem with the logic that if someone wins the race, they must be cheating, because they beat other people known to be cheating. Really, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t in that situation. Why even bother running the race?
LanceThruster
@grass:
You say that like it would be a bad thing (for ratings I mean).
Cassidy
@mathguy: Ummm, dude, almost everyone from that era who won anything was caught doping. So while I’m sure the guys who finished last weren’t cheating, in context, we’re discussing the big names.
hitchhiker
@Ruckus:
Thank you.
Robert Sneddon
@Ruckus: If Armstrong had been caught doping after his first or second Tour win you would never have heard of him because he’d be like the other 90% of top Tour cyclists who have been caught cheating or admitted it even if they hadn’t been caught, a has-been and yesterday’s news.
He was using the top-ranked drug-cheat medics in the sport, the ones that developed the shadowing techniques to obscure the use of blood-boosters and later pioneered blood-banking which has only recently been detectible in definitive tests despite its common use in performance sports for a decade or more. The testing regime is years behind the bleeding edge of cheating in cycling and other sports too, not suprisingly. The cheaters using second-rate medics to give them the boost they need to stay competitive are the ones that get caught easily and in the process give cover to the successful cheats since it makes them look clean, but only by comparison.
As for going after Armstrong the USADA is saying “we will not give you a break because you cheated five or ten years ago. We won’t sweep it under the carpet because you’ve retired.” It’s a warning to the current and next generation of up-and-coming cyclists that if they cheat (and the temptations are high because they saw Armstrong on the podium so many times, saw the adulation and the money he garnered from his performances) then all their work and effort will be for nothing in the end. Armstrong made tens of millions of dollars by getting on the winner’s podium so often and the USADA can’t take that back but they can sure as hell point out the trail of slime he has left behind him.
Wag
@kc:
Um, bullshit.
I was speaking about the broad context of society that tolerates, lionizes, and rewards cheats. Please refute the broader context and lose the narrow focus on Presidential powers.
Haydnseek
@Mart: Exactly. At the highest levels, this is the dirtiest sport on earth. Know how to tell when someone’s doping? Easy. They’re competitive.
Josh G.
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether anyone uses performance-enhancing drugs or not.
I do not follow cycling, but from what I can tell, it sounds like the case of Lance Armstrong is similar to the Barry Bonds situation in baseball. The best evidence is that Bonds didn’t use PEDs until after the 1998 season. When he saw Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa get all the publicity for hitting an outrageous number of home runs, he decided he was being played for a sucker, and started juicing with steroid compounds and probably HGH as well. Then he proved that, with the playing field level again, he really was better than everyone else. Sounds like Armstrong faced the same dilemma: either juice up, or lose out to inferior players who did.
The fact is that neither Armstrong or Bonds were ever caught doing anything wrong during the time they played professionally. And in sports, you generally can’t go back and retroactively void an achievement. Should we take away the pennant the Giants won in 1951 because we now know they were stealing signs? Should pitchers later discovered to have thrown spitballs be kicked out of the Hall of Fame and their wins voided?
ploeg
@Haydnseek:
So how did we come to that conclusion? Dirtier than football? In cycling, they sometimes kick a whole team out of competition because a team member is caught doping. When does that happen in any other sport?
JadedOptimist
@Chyron HR: ball.
Vishnu Schist
@Mike Lamb: My point exactly, they were told to testify or they would be banned themselves. A lot of that broke during the Tour this year. My point is this, if LA doped I wouldn’t be surprised at all, I’d be more surprised if he didn’t. And yes most if not all of his podium rivals have been busted, but they were BUSTED by positive tests, LA was not. Those were the rules established and he was tested extensively and passed them all. If Hincapie, etc have a gun to their heads to say he doped, well they probably are going to say it. What is the point here except to get the biggest scalp possible? What does it prove? That LA is an asshole, sure he’s a raging asshole. Have any of you been around big time cyclists? Have you been around the best Cat Ones in your town? These are uber competitive people, and non- assholes are often the exception. Did you see any of Bradley Wiggins behavior during the tour? Are they just going to take everyone down? And those saying ooohh the sport has been ruined, give me a break. All of this shit goes back to day one. Why the hell do you think those misguided souls were breaking out the cigs before the big climbs circa 1914 or something? They thought it opened the lungs and gave them an advantage. Couldn’t have anything to do with nicotine now could it? News flash!! Pro athletes cheat! Pro athletes will try to find an advantage, pro athletes have rules they must live under and LA met those rules via inspection, he passed the most intensive testing program of any professional sport. Now some swinging dick from the USADA decides they need to assert their authority and settle a score, fine settle that score, just don’t fucking pretend its anything else.
Cassidy
@Josh G.: 1) Bonds already had HOF numbers before he started juicing. 2) Bonds had obvious physiological changes consistent with the use of anabolic steroids. 3) Bonds was not tested anywhere near as extensively as Armstrong.
What Bonds saw was a juiced up Sosa suddenly being a contender. Sosa was a small guy before that as well. For some reason or other Bonds decided that the HR’s needed to be his thing instead of the Golden Gloves and 30/30 seasons. My guess is an inferiority complex from years of being in Pittsburgh and not recognizing that he already had the makings of a great career.
Ruckus
@Robert Sneddon:
Let’s break this down a little.
He was not caught. He was tested. Like everyone else that was caught. You want to make this discussion about how crappy the drug testing procedure is, that’s OK, I think you would be correct. You want to make it about the state of PEDs that’s OK as well. But that’s not what USADA is doing. He was not caught by the same rules and procedures as everyone else. And those that were caught used the drugs he is accused of.
I don’t know if this is true but USADA apparently has an 8 year statute of limitations that they have completely thrown away here. That makes this a vendetta.
Screwing LA into the ground years later won’t make people not dope. It will make them not play. You want to catch people breaking rules in a sporting activity, you have to catch people while they are doing wrong. Their actions affect others participating in a sport and most people don’t last in pro sports more than about 8-10 years. After that you are talking to a mostly new crowd.
Remember one thing here, this is not a court of law, is is a sport sanctioning body. And the courts mostly remain hands off of sanctioning bodies enforcing their own rules as long as the do so in the context of their own rules. And a federal court appears to have said just that.
It is the rules of the sanctioning body that count. And from what I gather (please correct me if I’m wrong) USADA had no authority in LA’s tour participation.
Cassidy
@Ruckus: I don’t see whay they just don’t apply for TUE’s like professional fighters. It’s the easiest way to legally juice.
Mike Lamb
@John N: It’s not that someone who beats a known doper must be doping, it’s just that the odds of someone being THAT naturally talented and hard working are exceedingly slim.
Grumpy Code Monkey
The USADA offered all sorts of deals to dopers who were willing to testify against Armstrong, so there was a lot of incentive to tell the USADA exactly what they wanted to hear. Like any good Mob trial, this decision hangs on the testimony of people whose credibility is already suspect.
That doesn’t mean that they’re lying, just that their testimony had better track damned closely to each other if the USADA wants this to be a credible decision.
IINM, Armstrong’s B samples have since been retested with newer techniques, and they came up dirty (or at least questionable).
It would be a lot easier to swallow with one unambiguously positive test, though. Given how many people at the top of the sport have been caught doping, it is hard to believe that he managed to dominate for so long without doping as well. Lance may be a freak of nature, but such a freak that everybody else had to dope just to come in second?
At the same time, though, given how many of the top competitors were caught over the years, could Armstrong and his doctors really have been that much better at hiding it? It’s not like Landis didn’t have access to the same resources Armstrong did.
And the philosophical thought for the day; if everybody is doping, is anyone really cheating? Did anyone gain that much of an unfair advantage, or did they just raise the baseline?
srv
All I can say is that I saw Lance as a teen in Houston and he could smoke any CAT 2. I don’t know how many CAT 1’s were in TX as the time, never knew any, but the community was in awe of him.
So unless he was juicing as a teen, he was a real phenom way out of the norm.
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
If you believe Game of Shadows, Bonds was clean through 1998, by which point he had an obviously HOF worth career. Then he saw drug users Sosa and McGwire getting all the glory for the HR record chase and decided to start juicing so he could get in on the glory. He admitted the part about going in heavily for weight training at that point, and pretty obviously started using steroids some time in there, too.
In some ways, the odd thing about Bonds is that he had to potential to be a sympathetic character. One of the arguments against PEDs is that users are effectively forcing everyone in their sport into an unfair choice between risking their health by doping or their careers by not doping. And while hardly anyone seems to mention it, that’s exactly what happened to Bonds. Other players who have either been caught or admitted to doping got the glory and pushed him into his decision to dope. If Bonds had been a popular guy before then, I think the whole narrative would be about how even a good guy was forced to cheat to keep up, rather than how an asshole tarnished hallowed records with his drug use.
pseudonymous in nc
@Ruckus:
The two big cases of systematic doping — Festina and Operation Puerto — weren’t exposed by testing. They were exposed by finding large quantities of PEDs.
I think this is a case of closing the stable door long after the horse has bolted; Armstrong’s response has been no different from that of Anquetil or Hinault. I also think that professional cycling is cleaner now than it has been at any point in its history, and Paul Kimmage, who remains a deep sceptic, agrees.
different-church-lady
As always, when this topic comes up, I kinda scratch my head and wonder why this stuff is “cheating” in the first place. Where do you draw the line between, say, nutritional supplements you’d never get from a non-manufactured product and other “chemicals.”
It’s also kind of bizarre we live in a world where organizations can retroactively strip people of championships won years and even decades ago, but Armando Galarraga can’t get official credit for his perfect game.
pseudonymous in nc
@Roger Moore:
Exactly. Some of the shit in Willy Voet’s bag was deadly. There’s not some nice, neat little box marked “PEDs” that somehow could be opened up: athletes are lab rats, testing out dosages and PED combinations and masking agents under conditions that are already enough to fuck up your body.
Cassidy
@Roger Moore: That’s where I think the inferirority complex came in. I grew up in the pre-steroid Bonds era and it was very common for his name to come up amongst my friends I when discussing great players or our personal all star rosters. It’s anecdote, but he was a fan faavorite. He wasn’t Darryl Strawberry, but he wasn’t an unknown. It kills me because his stats prior to the juice were amazing. Off the top of my head a couple of 30/30 seasons, 9 Golden Gloves…the guy was a natural well-rounded ballplayer. Yet he traded that for a large melon and the scorn of fans. I don’t get it.
trollhattan
@catclub:
IIUC they did and do collect and store sample duplicates, so many, many should still exist. As comment #28 notes, there’s a whole other equation factor: the lab and the system for collecting and transporting samples, including the whole chain-of-custody issue.
Interesting to me after these many years is, why did the TDF system never catch Armstrong, since the French were never enamored of him personally, nor with having an American win perennially? Especially coming on the heels of Miguel Indurein’s unprecedented five-year reign.
PeakVT
@srv: There’s nothing to say it isn’t both. Armstrong is clearly an elite athlete. The question (or not, depending on one’s opinion) is whether he’s an elite athlete who doped to become a champion.
dmbeaster
The allegations by the USADA are very serious – it is not just about LA, but the entire US Postal team and Discovery Channel team during all the years that LA competed. The case is that Lance’s entire team was cheating, and it was systematically organized by the team directors and doctors. Named with LA are the doctors, team director and trainers. And it was ongoing before LA became famous, and he was just another participant allegedly.
The only apparent evidence for it is the word of team members caught and who have turned (there is an alleged retest of a 2001 sample that has tested clean before – it sounds bogus to me that it now is allegedly dirty). There are several witnesses (we dont know specifically who). Nothing wrong with such testimony per se, but it is not the most solid evidence. Especially since they are all admitted cheaters themselves, and receive leniecy for turning on LA and others. I wonder if the USADA will actually proceed to hearing on all of the doctors and team directors also named in the LA case. If that case goes forward, it will serve as a form of proxy hearing on LA.
You always have to be concerned about the fairness of an arbitration process. This one is conducted according to American Arbitration Association rules, which has a long history of conducting proper hearings, and reasonably fair rules. The potential arbitrator pool are those who are members of the North American Court of Arbitration for Sport. It is either a one or three judge panel – not sure how they decide on the number. Getting an experienced (i.e, trial savvy) and un-biased arbitrator is tough, though. I would be fearful that anyone serving as a USADA arbitrator is going to have an institutional bias in favor of USADA.
It is interesting that the international body overseeing doping issues in cycling disputes USADA’s right to take this action against LA. But Lance already lost his court challenge to USADA’s jurisdiction.
His refusal to participate looks like a tactical decision on how to manage the fallout from this controversy, and probably reflects a serious concern of losing. The USADA has been conducting these types of hearings for a long time, so it is hard to claim a vendetta. Its persistence here reflects its belief that the evidence supports a finding of systematic and massive cheating by US Postal and later teams of which LA was a part.
Robert Sneddon
@different-church-lady: Cost is part of it. A multimillionaire sportsman with a multimillion dollar team behind him can employ a multimillion-dollar-a-year medical team that secretly dopes him up and pretests him to make sure he can pass the official tests, or provides him with the complex support structure needed for blood doping — the original secret donations, testing for optimum blood cell counts, storage and transport and secret retransfusions at just the optimum time to, say, ace a hill climb where blood oxygen transportation is critical to put in a podium pace.
The nubs back in the peleton don’t get this rockstar treatment, or not as much of it. The second-stringers use less able, less skilled medics with behind-the-edge techniques like using other people’s blood for blood-doping. This used to work until DNA testing came in and a bunch of previously “clean” athletes in other sports got booted from competition when other people’s blood cells were detected in their bloodstream. Now the cheaters have to pay for the extra work to donate their own blood and work their race schedules around the donations. Armstrong famously didn’t race much other than in the Tour de France, a schedule which would make blood doping for him easier than the gear-grinders in the European Tour circus.
ploeg
@pseudonymous in nc:
True that. Drug testing has to be one of your tools but it can’t be the only tool. And if you have to turn the small fish to get to the big fish, so be it.
That being said, the main goal is to deter drug use now, regardless of what happened in the past. It would be nice to undo the past wrongs, but in the Lance Armstrong case, it’s not even remotely in USADA’s power to do that. Armstrong will still have his wealth and celebrity and the trappings that go with it. The people who will inherit Armstrong’s jerseys will not be seen as legitimate winners either. And if the reports are true that the USADA not only let current riders off the hook but let them ride in the TdF just so that they could get somebody who has already retired, that seems more than a little ass-backwards.
And if USADA is truly interested in “truth and reconciliation,” it seems like they chose the most counterproductive course possible to that goal. You typically need to offer broad amnesty for past offenses so that you can put those things behind you and move forward. I doubt that Armstrong would have participated in a “truth and reconciliation” movement, but screwing Armstrong to the wall doesn’t help either.
rikyrah
I dunno….they were on a witch hunt, IMO
geg6
@Someguy:
I was an athlete in my youth. I never cheated at anything. Hell, I don’t cheat at anything now. Lance Armstrong, and all athletes who dope, are cheaters. I feel the same way about cheaters as I do thieves. And I feel that way because they are the same thing.
Cheaters are thieves. I have never stolen or cheated. Maybe you have and that’s why you’re so hot to defend this lying cheating piece of shit.
Ruckus
@geg6:
I don’t see many or any here trying to defend cheaters, myself included. It was my job to find cheaters in the professional sport I worked in. I was pretty good at it but I know cheating went on that we didn’t catch. How do I know that? Because we couldn’t look at everything, it’s just not possible. But LA was looked at extensively. And passed. My point is that while LA’s results are suspect, he was never caught but using the same standards and tests, others were. Did he cheat? Did he effectively purchase his wins? There are very, very few people on earth who know that answer. There are many, many who think they do. I don’t know and I’m going to give LA or any competitor in any sport the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise under the rules he/she competes and I’m going to ignore any witch hunt based on possibly coerced testimony.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus:
Armstrong aside, this statement could be applied to the vast majority of what passes as “public discourse” in 21st century America
Beauzeaux
@Spaghetti Lee: Correct. And he was tested more than anyone else. They even went to his house in Texas in ther middle of the night and tested him.
I guess we shoudl be grateful. If the USADA weren’t pursuing Lance, they be burning witches. I find them disgusting.
Elie
I guess the question for the sport of bicycle racing is “so what now?”
The “sport” is completely filled with juicers. Why? The money when you win of course! The sponsors could stop this cold by dropping ever cyclist even remotely tainted. They won’t of course so the incentive to continue persists.
Do you all think that they juice just to win the races? Its all about the money.
Elie
@Robert Sneddon:
Is anyone even remotely curious to know what a clean race would be like? Would it be more boring? I doubt it.
Don’t the racers themselves ever long for being “clean”. How repulsive to think of having to give yourself a boost of blood, even if its your own, to succeed at something. It just makes a complete joke of the contest, turning it into a completely false masquerade…
I can’t watch the Tour without knowing its all rigged. What a waste!
jusfedup
@blingee:
Blingee….you are a fucking dumbass!!
Argive
@Elie:
The sport is much cleaner now because the testing procedures are better. If Armstrong were racing today, he probably wouldn’t be able to get away with doping. For one thing, cycling has instituted tests designed to look for exactly what Armstrong is accused of having done.
jusfedup
geg6….Boy you sound like a real fun kind of guy…a little bingo with the old folks…you give a charity blowjob or two (at your discretion of course)…just doing your part Eh..wild man..wink
Robert Sneddon
@Elie: What you see in a “clean” race is slower times for the same stages run a few years back. There was an analysis of the hill-climbs in the TdF this year with the podium crew recording times for the same climbs that would have left them three or four minutes off the leaders like Armstrong a few years ago. Rigorous analysis of energy levels used to propel human beings on bicycles show today’s theoretically clean cyclists are expending about 6.1-6.2W/kg peak on climbs whereas blood-boosted cheaters five years ago were reaching 6.5-6.6W/kg which is really not possible in biological terms of oxygen flows around a normal unboosted human body, lungs to bloodstream to muscles.
Cycling may be getting cleaner now but I suspect it’s still not totally kosher, it’s just the big boosts like steroids, growth hormones, EPO and blood doping are no longer used since they are easily detectable by the testers. The real damper on cheating is that organisations like the USADA and the various Olympic committees are coming down hard on cheaters, discounting their recorded wins even after they’ve finished their competitive careers, and with stored urine and blood samples on record waiting for future improvements testing will only get tougher. That reduces the temptation to cheat for current and future athletes. It also inspires the medical business to find yet another loophole. Genetic engineering, maybe? There are already tailored hormonal supplements which boost the production of blood cells in the body, resistant to testing for transfusion-based boosting since the cells aren’t of different ages. This has resulted in athletes competing at the highest levels having to have a “hormonal passport”, a baseline sample of hormone levels in their blood which can be compared with later samples during competition to detect medical manipulation of their normal hormonal levels.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: Self-righteous, judgmental and angry is no way to go through life.
Mike Lamb
@Robert Sneddon: The biggest thing you would see is that guys would crack from day-to-day. Forget times on a given stage–there are too many variables (rainy? windy? hot?)–to make meaningful comparisons with time. What doping really helps is to allow a guy to put out consistently high effort every day for 3 weeks. Lance had a couple of bad days in his 7 straight tours, but for the most part, he was an absolute machine, day after day. That’s where doping really comes into play.
Mike Lamb
@geg6: So let’s suppose Substance A assists in performance, but it is totally legal on Monday. On Tuesday, cycling’s governing body decides Substance A is now illegal. Was the guy a cheater before that?
LanceThruster
Vince Lombardi woud be rolling in his grave to hear that winning wasn’t everything.
Elie
@Robert Sneddon:
Its just too damned bad that there is always going to be the cheat. Maybe they could design a race just for those who care only about racing… no money for the winners and much less frequent racing.
I know I know… stupid — won’t happen. I love watching bike racing… I wish that I didn’t have to pretend about it…
LanceThruster
@Elie:
It’s getting to the point that almost everything could be treated like “pro” wrestling.
Elie
@LanceThruster:
And you are spot on about “everything”.
Remember the word “authentic”?
The word “honor”?
LanceThruster
@Elie:
I’m not even that into sports but can appreciate those who excel in competition, and I would hope they would want to win based on ability and not on chemistry.
ploeg
@Robert Sneddon:
The main damper on cheating over the past five years is that riders are being suspended on A sample positives or other improprieties. Forget waiting for a B sample for confirmation, let alone an appeals process that can last for years. You can’t win races if you’re on suspension. Certainly not everybody’s bought into the program (Contador and the Spanish cycling federation being a notable example), but the prospect of being punished right now holds more weight than the prospect of being punished maybe years from now.
A secondary damper on cheating has been the passport system, as you mention. With the passport system, you know for certain that officials are monitoring your data right now for anything hinky. The prospect of future punishment isn’t so much of a deterrent because the “future improvements in testing” might not actually happen.
Wag
@ploeg:
the passport system is the best thing to happen to professional cycling in decades.
GeneJockey
I dunno, it all smacks of Walter Peck vs Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters. Was Venkman an asshole who cheated? Sure. Was Peck an even more colossal asshole? Oh, yeah.
That Cycling Tips graphic someone upthread linked to is just staggering. What I can’t get over is the fact that if you take out anyone who’s ever doped or been accused of doping, there’s only ONE OTHER GUY on the podium, in SEVEN FRAKKIN’ YEARS! What are they gonna do, give a zillion Maillots Jaune, that cup thing and the little stuffed lion to the 4th, 5th, and 6th place finishers? What happens when somebody writes a book about THEM?
Now maybe it’s just me, but I figure if you are tested a zillion times over a career, and you come up negative EVERY FRAKKIN’ TIME, and you retire, that’s it. You’re clear. At that point, they should toss the samples. Indeed, they should probably be tossed on a rolling basis once they hit 8 years, which is nominally their own statute of limitations.
Maybe we can find some old hair clippings from Hinault or Merckx, or maybe we could exhume Anquetil’s corpse and see what he might have used, so we can eliminate all the guys who ever dominated cycling.
I hope the UCI tells the USADA to go pound sand.
Haydnseek
@ploeg: You might want to consider waking up and smelling the blood-doped, undetectable coffee. If it was possible to enforce these rules, there would be no top level cycling teams left. Just because it’s a nothing sport in the USA doesn’t mean it’s not a big money sport in other parts of the world. Something about geese and golden eggs…let me think…
Karla
Way to go Lance, you have them the finger!! Fuck the USADA
Kent
The USADA is a worthless government bureaucracy out to screw Lance Armstrong to get its name in headlines. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars and does not provide any real value to sports or the American public. Agencies like this exist mearly to prove they should exist. The USADA surely misses 1,000 violations for exery one they find and for every 1 they punish 1,000 they let off with a slap on the wrist. Agencies like this are more of a joke and just evidence of why a bureaucracies are bad for America and this one should certainly be disbanded.
different-church-lady
(SELF-REDACTED due to my own reading comprehension failures.)
MosesZD
@Patricia Kayden:
The problem is that he’s fighting against a witch hunt in a system where the mere fact that he’s NEVER TESTED POSITIVE is not relevant information. Only that some disgruntled people , without a shred of evidence say he did…
And, as the Judge said:
“The deficiency of USADA’s charging document is of serious constitutional concern,” he wrote. “Indeed, but for two facts, the court might be inclined to find USADA’s charging letter was a violation of due process and to enjoin USADA from proceeding thereunder.” Among other things, he was disturbed by USADA’s “apparent single-minded determination” to go after Armstrong and force him before CAS.
And, yes, he could continue to fight it. But it’s just throwing good money after bad. The CAS virtually always sides with the agency against the athlete. In fact, they’ll even admit the test results in underlying actions are dodgey and still suspend an athlete.
Like they did with Contador.
MosesZD
@blingee:
Here’s how it works:
Somewhere around 500 drug tests, plus re-tests, by virtually every athletic body that has passed successfully. A two year criminal investigation dropped for no evidence.
So, the truth is I don’t know if Armstrong did the things he’s accused of doing, and neither do you. We only have the corrupt USADA’s word for it.
I don’t know if these witnesses are telling the truth, and neither do you. People LIE all the time. Witnesses are coached, bullied and pressured into false testimony all the time.
We do know two things: First, he passed all his tests. That’s where it should end. An objective standard.
And second, if he had failed a drug test, and brought in 10 people to testify that they were with him every minute of every day leading up to the test and he never ingested anything, never injected anything, never doped his blood, would you believe them? Would the agency? No, you would not and you would call them liars because he would have failed a drug test, and all the testimony in the world wouldn’t matter.
In short, this witch hunt has had one purpose — to get Lance Armstrong. And it has been perverted beyond belief. And hypocrites everywhere are supporting these double-standards for whatever reason they choose.