Lance Armstrong, Doper.

[Skyrad 0]

Is he? Stripped of 7 titles, if he isn't guilty why doesn't he fight it? I'd hate to think that he was a cheat he has accomplished so much but the reports all seem to say yep Lance Armstrong is a doper. Whats your thoughts?

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[TriGirl 268]

To me, that's like saying, "if you have nothing to hide, why can't I search your stuff?" Perhaps he didn't want to put the rest of the USPS team through the arbitration process? Maybe there were guys on that team who have other reasons to stay out of the spotlight (I'm not saying doping, just trying to find some other reasons why he chose not to fight it). Maybe his health is in jeopardy again, and he just doesn't want to give this story legs any longer than it already has. Maybe he'd rather focus on his charity work (plenty of people still supporting him at this point, so his charity is still doing well).

Okay, those are a few reasons why he would not want to go through the process to prove himself innocent (and in the court of public opinion, all it takes is an accusation during the process). Until the ICU recognizes the decision and strips his titles, Lance Armstrong is still the official winner of 7 Tour de France titles.

See the upside, and always wear your parachute! -- Christopher Titus

Shut Up & Jump!

[Southern_Man 0]

He did not fight because he knows there is overwhelming evidence which would prove that he doped and would become public and destroy the myth he has so carefully built up about himself. Things like:

Passed 500 tests: This is just an absurd exaggeration. He has not been tested 500 times. Kristin Armstrong has been tested more (a lot more) than Lance Armstrong.

Never failed a test: He failed a test for corticosteroids at the 1999 TdF. UCI covered it up with a backdated prescription and TUE. He failed one for EPO at the 2001 TdS. UCI covered it up in exchange for monetary donations of $125,000.

I believe a lot of the evidence will come out anyway. A lot of it is out there anyway. USADA has said it was going to release it over the next couple of weeks.

I doubt it will make much difference in many people's minds. I think people really don't care that he doped. I don't even think they care that he trafficked and pushed drugs.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[Southern_Man 0]

Here is a somewhat brief summary of Lance's misdeed. It takes on a lot of the BS rhetoric that Lance and his PR machine spews:

http://cavalierfc.tumblr.com/post/30172302298/its-not-about-the-bike

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[EFS4LIFE 0]

My question is does anyone really care? I don't. Doping, or not, it wold still be a grueling hell completeing a Tour De France, let alone winning it seven times. On top of beating stage four cancer. Sure there are the issues of fair competition and blah blah, but how many others in that same field were doping or having illegal blood transfusions etc? I bet my bottom dollar he wasn't alone. If your not cheating your not trying hard enough. No one likes to admit it but that is reality. Competition means trying to get any edge you can over your competition. That is why steroids are rampant in sports. The sceince of gaining an edge will always keep a slight pace above any detection methods. Even if he is innocent, I can see why he stopped fighting it. He has been fighting these accusations for YEARS. Even if they strip his titles will anyone ever forget he won seven times? (failrly or not) No. He will always be remebered as the guy that beat cancer, and went on to dominate the cycling world. The ICU or no one else can change that. His foundation is awesome and does more for cancer research than any other I can readily think of. Why WOULD he continue this fight? At some point you let go of the past and concentrate on the future. Lance doesn't have anything to prove to anyone. He proved it all to himself while the world watched SEVEN times. You have to be very mentally tough to even complete a Tour. No amount of doping is going to give you that mental toughness. That is all Lance. Anyone that thinks Lance was the only one doping or having blood transfusions etc are delusional. Competetive cycling is and always has been rampant with thses activites.

I am an asshole, but I am honest

[AggieDave 6]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dHlDWz_u4c

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[RonD1120 58]

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Is he? Stripped of 7 titles, if he isn't guilty why doesn't he fight it? I'd hate to think that he was a cheat he has accomplished so much but the reports all seem to say yep Lance Armstrong is a doper. Whats your thoughts?

There is no evidence against him, only accusations. His story is that he is tired of the endless litigation. If they strip him of his titles they will be awarded to someone who has admitted using performance enhancing drugs. It seems that the problem is not with Armstrong but with the sport in general.

My father was a professional baseball player. As a pitcher sometimes he threw "spitters" which is an illegal pitch. Some of the ball players would sharpen their steel spikes to try an injure the baseman on a slide in, also illegal. If you got caught you would be thrown out of the game. If not, it might better your chances of winning.

In my substance abuse treatment programs we had clients that we knew we using. We would try and catch them with surprise UA's and searches. If we never found evidence they graduated just like everyone else.

Armstrong has been tested more times than can be counted and has always been clean. I say leave him alone and drop the investigation.

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

[lawrocket 3]

It's cycling. Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times. I think the whole pdium behind him has been banned or dead for every year.

Everybody is doping in cycling. And he beat all of them without it? Sorry. Guilt by association. I can recall cheering on Lance. All thewhile suspecting/knowing that he was just better at doping, had a better doped team and had a better training regimen.

Cycling is the dirtiest sport in the world for performance enhancers. Yes, including bodybuilding because bodynuilders are honest about turning their livers into styrofoam and Andreas Munzer is still celebrated as the most ripped dude ever and the focus is on using PEDs without killing yourself. Not on avoidance of them.

Banning PEDs has been useless. The sport looks not only illegitimate but dishonest. And in 20 years, Armstrong with write an autobiography, call it "PEDal Power" and do autographs.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[ryoder 1,381]

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It's cycling. Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times. I think the whole podium behind him has been banned or dead for every year.

If you don't want to read the whole article, just scroll down to the big chart:
http://www.cyclingtips.com.au/2012/06/what-a-mess/

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[AggieDave 6]

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Cycling is the dirtiest sport in the world for performance enhancers. Yes, including bodybuilding because bodynuilders are honest about turning their livers into styrofoam and Andreas Munzer is still celebrated as the most ripped dude ever and the focus is on using PEDs without killing yourself. Not on avoidance of them.
.

Watch the Youtube link I provided. The Bell brothers really shed light on a lot of interesting things (they're well known in the powerlifting world). Honestly I have serious doubts that any professional sport is with out rampant drug use, regardless of the "testing" that is conducted.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[lawrocket 3]

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Honestly I have serious doubts that any professional sport is with out rampant drug use, regardless of the "testing" that is conducted.

Absolutely. When testing develops, new substances are developed that are not detectable. But cycling is just the worst of the worst, in my opinion.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[AggieDave 6]

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Honestly I have serious doubts that any professional sport is with out rampant drug use, regardless of the "testing" that is conducted.

Absolutely. When testing develops, new substances are developed that are not detectable. But cycling is just the worst of the worst, in my opinion.

Funny, I would have pegged body building or wrassl'n (professional wrestling).

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[pirana 0]

This is what happens when sport becomes commerce.

When there is money on the line, sportsmanship goes in the shitter and cheating becomes part of the game; unofficaily of course.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[jakee 1,254]

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Is he? Stripped of 7 titles, if he isn't guilty why doesn't he fight it? I'd hate to think that he was a cheat he has accomplished so much but the reports all seem to say yep Lance Armstrong is a doper. Whats your thoughts?

He was absolutely, 100% doping. Like every other contender from that era. He didn't get caught because for the majority of his career there was no test, and then no reliable test, for the drug that revolutionised the pro peleton, EPO. And remember in athletics when THG came out? WADA didn't even know it existed, let alone how to test for it, until a whistle-blower posted a vial of it to a dope testing lab. A history of clean tests from the early 2000's doesn't stand for much, unfortunately.

What ou can do is look at the races. The TdF has a fairly select group of high mountains that it regularly uses in races. If you look at the times, and speeds on particular gradients from races then and races now there is a discernable difference in speeds, with todays riders being slower (and not just slower than Lance), with measurably lower power to weight ratios. Why is that? Bikes are better now, diets are better now, training methods are better now, so what else has changed...

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Remster 24]

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so what else has changed...

Thicker chamois are slowing down climbers?

Remster

[Nightingale 0]

I don't care. There is absolutely no point in this witch hunt for retired athletes. Get over it. I don't give a damn whether he was doping or not. He won 7 tours and used that fame to do a hell of a lot for cancer research. At this point, I think people are sick of hearing about it, sick of the government wasting money hunting former athletes (and dragging some of them to congressional inquiries) who aren't even involved in athletics anymore. Stop it.

As for doping in general: legalize the safer forms of it and educate people on how to do it safely. Otherwise, there will always be a competitive advantage to cheaters, and there will always be an incentive to cheat, because the people who are doping will have the advantage. Level the playing field.

[jakee 1,254]

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so what else has changed...

Thicker chamois are slowing down climbers?

But they're so lovely to ride in!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[AggieDave 6]

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I don't care. There is absolutely no point in this witch hunt for retired athletes. Get over it.

He was actively training to qualify for the Ironman championship and was rumored to be a contender to win in the next two years. By being stripped/banned by another national federation he is barred from the Ironman competition.

Something to remember, like doping or not, Lance won against other people who were also doping. It isn't a magic genie in the bottle, he still put in thousands of training hours and years of hard work to win his titles. I couldn't buy a bike, start taking PEDs and win the Tour de France.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[AggieDave 6]

When most people think about PEDs they think of EPO, HGH or one of the many forms of anabolic steroid, but if those same people were to read the list of banned substances provided by WADA they might be surprised.

Too much caffeine is banned, for instance.

Let me give you my anecdotal account of accidentally using a substance on the list. DMAA has received a bit of press in the health world as of late, it was on the WADA list and there were some accounts suggesting that the FDA was going to ban it. However, it is still a legal substance to purchase and use, unless you are in a sport that condemns it's use. DMAA is the shorthand name of 1,3-dimethylamylamine and is used in many pre-workout supplements that are very popular. Some of those supplements list the ingredient as 1,3-dimethylamylamine, but most list it in one of about a half-dozen other ways. The WADA only lists the banned substance as 1,3-dimethylamylamine and not under the other names. So many athletes accidentally took the banned substance with out meaning to, since it was in a legal, commercially available supplement that was mass produced and sold in many places. My local HEB (grocery store) carries Jack3d in their health section, which contains 1,3-dimethylamylamine. It isn't listed as "1,3-dimethylamylamine" but as DMAA until recently when the labeling was changed.

Not being able to compete in swooping the past year and for the foreseeable future I took up competitive powerlifting. I took care to find a lifting federation that tests athletes and has zero tolerance for steroid and other PED use since I have no desire to take them, nor do I want to be handicapped by competing against those who do.

Jack3d used to be my favorite pre-workout until months after my first competition I was reading about how Jack3d and many other pre-workout supplements were on the list of maybe getting banned by the FDA when I learned about all the different names and that I had been taking a banned substance. It was not consumed with intent to subvert the rules of the organization, it was an innocent accident. This was after I had spent time before my first competition checking the labels on the supplements I use against the list from WADA.

I'm not trying to suggest that Lance and other professional athletes consumed their PEDs by accident, but I'm saying that it is hard to keep up with it all even when you do try.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[kelpdiver 2]

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What ou can do is look at the races. The TdF has a fairly select group of high mountains that it regularly uses in races. If you look at the times, and speeds on particular gradients from races then and races now there is a discernable difference in speeds, with todays riders being slower (and not just slower than Lance), with measurably lower power to weight ratios. Why is that? Bikes are better now, diets are better now, training methods are better now, so what else has changed...

you're implying this is proof that he was cheating, but you still can't prove that. We do know that many of his competitors were - they all got caught. He could still be an exceptional rider.

His success, as well as reliance on team radios, has also altered the strategies in the race. It's no longer possible to take off unseen, so contenders stay near each other until the final climb. (Scatterplotting the time trial speeds of the top 10 finishers per year might be a useful analysis.) Wiggins won this year purely based on the time trials. His teammate may have been the better climber. Crashes and suspensions took care of much of the competition as well.

The allegations over the 1999 and the 2001 TdS are old news - they've been out for scrutiny for a long time and yet never was a finding made. Tygart also made charges of doping in 2009-2010...in an era where biological passports were in place to detect exactly that. And yet nothing was found at the time...and Tygart still hasn't made a case. We know his objectivity is zero...maybe that will work for us as he'll make sure their 'evidence' is leaked out for the world to see.

As for why he isn't contesting, I see two reasons.
1) he's tired of this shit after 12 years of it. It doesn't matter how many times he was tested, it doesn't matter how many times he defends himself against accusations. There will always be someone ignoring the end result. Tygart set it up where he didn't even need an actual finding to get a victory.

2) George Hindcapie did in fact testify, did in fact back the stories of all of the unreliable convicts like Landis and Hamilton, and Lance knows this. Shutting down the trial (may) keeps this from getting out and allows him to maintain plausible claims of innocence.

#2 may well be true, but in America, we do require actual evidence to convict. So Skyrad's title is an unsubstantiated claim.

To me it stretches logic that Armstrong would risk his legacy by doping during his comeback, or during his 7th win after he passed up the 5 time winners. The wise man takes the success and runs. On the comeback, his age was already a built in excuse. But...one characteristic of great winners is great ego, so it could be that he was convinced he would never be caught.

One interesting side note - should the GOP somehow capture the White House and the Senate...watch the USADA funding get slashed next year...

[kelpdiver 2]

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I'm not trying to suggest that Lance and other professional athletes consumed their PEDs by accident, but I'm saying that it is hard to keep up with it all even when you do try.

If you're a competitor in a sport with controls...it's so difficult that you pretty much need to assume a product is to be avoided unless you see it on the blessed list. And that's just when you know the product is exactly what it claims to be. In the wild world of supplements, you can't even trust that to be so.

And let's not talk about the excuse (or truth?) of clembuterol in beef in some developing nations. Contador initially won his case from the 2010 tour based on the tainted beef defense, but later had that overturned. I still have no idea if he was an actual doper or just unlucky.

[AggieDave 6]

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I'm not trying to suggest that Lance and other professional athletes consumed their PEDs by accident, but I'm saying that it is hard to keep up with it all even when you do try.

If you're a competitor in a sport with controls...it's so difficult that you pretty much need to assume a product is to be avoided unless you see it on the blessed list. And that's just when you know the product is exactly what it claims to be. In the wild world of supplements, you can't even trust that to be so.

That's where I am, using WPI (whey protein isolate), creatine and thousands of calories a day. Both WPI and creatine have been extensively tested by universities and independent labs to have positive effects and are safe, they are also allowed by everyone.

My point was that the majority of people would be surprised by what is on the list and I'm willing to bet many people wouldn't pass a WADA banned drug test and they don't even take any health supplements (hence my reference to caffeine being banned, which it is).

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[jakee 1,254]

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you're implying this is proof that he was cheating,

Basically, yeah. It's pretty much impossible to overlook. Also, check out what the clean(er) riders like LeMond, or guys on non-european teams have to say about the beginning of the scientific doping/EPO era in the early '90s. Guys who were major contenders one year were finding themselves being dropped by domestiques like it was nothing the next. It was a sea change in performance.

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He could still be an exceptional rider.

He won his tours by huge margins, five of them by more than 5 minutes, and on the way won 14 mountain stages and 6 TT's. That in itself is exceptional. Unreal. No subsequent Tour has come close to showcasing that level of absolute and total dominance. And to do it clean against an incredibly talented field that we know were almost all doping?

Honestly?

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His success, as well as reliance on team radios, has also altered the strategies in the race. It's no longer possible to take off unseen, so contenders stay near each other until the final climb.

And yet they're still not faster chasing the summit finishes.

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Wiggins won this year purely based on the time trials.

Side issue, but no he didn't. He didn't lose time to anyone in the mountains.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[kelpdiver 2]

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Wiggins won this year purely based on the time trials.

Side issue, but no he didn't. He didn't lose time to anyone in the mountains.

Those statements are not in opposition. He didn't lose time (well, he did marginally on one, I recall). But you don't win the race keeping pace. You win the race by gaining time, and as I said, he did that in the time trials.

[jakee 1,254]

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Wiggins won this year purely based on the time trials.

Side issue, but no he didn't. He didn't lose time to anyone in the mountains.

Those statements are not in opposition. He didn't lose time (well, he did marginally on one, I recall). But you don't win the race keeping pace. You win the race by gaining time, and as I said, he did that in the time trials.

Well, you can discount Froome since he would never have been allowed to chase the overall win over Wiggins. If you then look at Nibali in 3rd, he lost 5'56 to Wiggins in the three TTs and was 6'19 behind overall. Take out the TT's and Wiggins beats him by 25 seconds. And if you don't discount Froome, well, he lost 2 minutes precisely in the TTs and was second by 3'21.

Just for the record.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?