It is not so much those types of stages that are the true sign of a cleaner peleton for me, more the high mountains, the way Contador (and my namesake for that matter) would repeatedly attack, let people get to their wheel, attack again and again and again all the way up 20/25km climbs. Those repeated efforts without proper recovery time only seem possible with raised red blood cell counts as far as I can tell.
Lance Armstrong ends fight against doping charges
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It is not so much those types of stages that are the true sign of a cleaner peleton for me, more the high mountains, the way Contador (and my namesake for that matter) would repeatedly attack, let people get to their wheel, attack again and again and again all the way up 20/25km climbs. Those repeated efforts without proper recovery time only seem possible with raised red blood cell counts as far as I can tell.
D
Deleted member 18477
Guest
Exactly! Lance who? Oh yea, the CHEAT!
Wilka
Well-known member
How come all those others were caught out and not Armstrong at the time? Was he that far ahead of the testers? He was the most tested of the lot.
Seagull over Canaryland
Well-known member
With the simmering resentment towards Team Sky continuing in the Vuelta and the French still having some difficulty with Wiggo etc dominating the TdF and Olympics it is a shame there is miscievous speculation whether they are 'clean'. Quite apart from doping to gain performance it does concern me how vulnerable the riders are to having their food or drink spiked if someone wanted to discredit them. Plus there is always the risk that an innocent piece of food has got contaminated somewhere in the production process such as steroids in meat a la Contadour (that defence didn't save his bacon though). I think I'd be almost paranoid about it. No wonder Wiggo is so blunt with any questions that hint about doping. Team Sky must be a tempting target. I guess the team's food and drink is all screened and prepared in-house and security around the them must be pretty hot, but what happens when they get some down time?
D
Deleted member 18477
Guest
There's a programme on sky Atlantic about how team GB and team sky dominated the sport over the past few years.
It's called Road to Glory on at 8pm next thursday 30th. Should be a great watch. 5 part series!
Surely nutrition will feature.
Seagull over Canaryland
Well-known member
Thanks for the heads up, I'll set the Sky+, should be interesting viewing although I don't suppose they'll reveal all of their secrets!
Gritt23
New member
Does it really though? He WON 7 Tours, he did, whatever "record books" may say, they are not going to be blank for those years, and nor will teh Tour be awarded to the runners-up. Didn't Schumacher have a load of race wins "stripped" from his record after a crash with Villeneuve in teh 90's. There was even talk of him being stripped of titles from his record, but honestly, when we look back on his career, does anyone really discount any wins from Schueys record? No. Likewise, Armstrong will ALWAYS have won Le Tour seven times.
You reckon?
I think he'll always be seen as a 7-time Tour de France champion, just like Jacques Anqeti will always be seen as a 5-time champion. He'll also be remembered for being a drug cheat, like Anquetil.
Question: who won the 100m at the Seoul Olympics in 1988?
Gritt23
New member
Yes, that's why I typed it.
Gritt23
New member
Carl Lewis (I think) because Ben Johnson failed a drug test in Seoul.
It's NOT exactly the same now is it?
What about Lewis's failed tests at the USA trials?
Gritt23
New member
What about it?
What's your answer to your question then, Lynford Christie, or are you stripping him of medals because of subsequent failures?
This is my point really, an athlete fails a test during or immediately after a competition, and they get stripped of it. 2010, Andy Schleck is the winner of Le Tour because of Contadors failed test, but that didn't mean they also stripped Contador of 2007 and 2009. In the case of Lance, this will always remain a stain on his reputation, but that's been around for a while now with this whole case anyway, and the insistence of some that he had been "cheating." But it's too late and too inclusive to have Greg LeMond suddenly re-instated at the last American winner of Le Tour.
That's just not going to be how people consider it, IMHO.
lost in london
Well-known member
The easiest thing in the world would have been for Armstrong to say in that statement "I never doped", but he didn't. He has never said it. All he has said is that he was never caught.
He is adopting the war criminal 'defence' of refusing to accept the jurisdiction of a body that has everybody else recognises.
This article by Matt Seaton in the Guardian sums it all up pretty well for me:
So no judge in a court of arbitration will ever be called to read sentence in the case of Lance Armstrong. But for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, the jury was never out.
By refusing to mount a defence in the US Anti-Doping Agency's case against him, Lance Armstrong has – whatever equivocation and claims of persecution he persists in – all but conceded that he won his seven Tour de France titles by doping. And by walking away from a defence he has ceded those yellow jerseys and lost his status as the most remarkable serial winner in the history of the sport.
There may be some small fraternity of true believers who still need the master-narrative of the heroic cancer survivor-turned-sports superstar and still cling to a conviction that he could have beaten the rap if the world had not conspired against him.
Armstrong's statement repeats a familiar litany of disingenuous indignation – his record of wins, a lack of physical evidence, the "nonsense" of this "witch-hunt" and so on – but by this decision, Armstrong has excommunicated himself from the Church of Lance: he no longer believes in the plausibility of his own denials. The aggression that kept accusers in check and witnesses silent for so long has been replaced by weariness and resignation.
"There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' For me, that time is now," his statement reads.
Yet even a dope cheat still needs to be a master tactician to win the Tour de France: if Armstrong decided to quit the fight it was because this was the least worst option remaining to him. This pre-emptive retreat allows him to avoid the formal process of prosecution and conviction, and the humiliation that would have gone along with that. Perhaps his Livestrong foundation, and what remains of his tarnished brand, can thus survive in some netherworld of unreason.
Where does that leave cycling? With many unresolved questions. We may never know who were all the former team-mates of Armstrong that USADA had ready to testify against him about the years of EPO use, steroids, blood-doping techniques and whatever else that delivered that unbroken string of Tour victories, though we can guess at their identities. And we will have to wait and see whether Armstrong's longtime team manager, Johan Bruyneel, will attempt a defence, though the percentage must be in his folding quietly and taking a ban.
We may never finally know what deals were done to hush up the alleged positive tests Armstrong gave, though we have our suspicions. And we can only wonder who might now be deemed to have won the Tour de France from 1999 to 2005, though we must assume that the Tour authorities would rather award no result than attempt the fool's errand of seeking retrospectively a clean cyclist in the top 10 of any of those years.
Better to look forward and learn. There is no doubt that the anti-doping agencies have won the upper hand since Lance Armstrong's heyday in the fight to rid the sport of performance-enhancing drugs. Many do still cheat, though they are fewer and more are caught. Teams keep sponsors by staying clean; they lose them when riders are discovered doping. The governing body, the UCI, has abandoned its shameful connivance of the EPO era.
But there's no reason for complacency. It will only take a tangential advance in medical science for some new substance to become available for which there is no test; then the cheats will be ahead in the pharmacological arms race once more.
The most important lesson of the Lance Armstrong story, though, is the hardest to prepare for and guard against: our own gullibility and willing complicity. What is astounding and disturbing is that one man – a dominant personality as well as a dominant athlete – was able to enforce his will, isolate, bully and silence his doubters and critics, and win the world's top cycling event year after year and make people believe in him, despite there being, apparently, dozens of witnesses to its utter phoniness. Too many people had too much invested in the Lance Armstrong story, and the power of persuasion followed the money.
The moral of the story is that if a cyclist looks too good to be true, then he probably is. But if a cyclist looks too good to be true and has an entourage of lawyers, press flaks, doctors and bodyguards, then he definitely is.
He is adopting the war criminal 'defence' of refusing to accept the jurisdiction of a body that has everybody else recognises.
This article by Matt Seaton in the Guardian sums it all up pretty well for me:
So no judge in a court of arbitration will ever be called to read sentence in the case of Lance Armstrong. But for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, the jury was never out.
By refusing to mount a defence in the US Anti-Doping Agency's case against him, Lance Armstrong has – whatever equivocation and claims of persecution he persists in – all but conceded that he won his seven Tour de France titles by doping. And by walking away from a defence he has ceded those yellow jerseys and lost his status as the most remarkable serial winner in the history of the sport.
There may be some small fraternity of true believers who still need the master-narrative of the heroic cancer survivor-turned-sports superstar and still cling to a conviction that he could have beaten the rap if the world had not conspired against him.
Armstrong's statement repeats a familiar litany of disingenuous indignation – his record of wins, a lack of physical evidence, the "nonsense" of this "witch-hunt" and so on – but by this decision, Armstrong has excommunicated himself from the Church of Lance: he no longer believes in the plausibility of his own denials. The aggression that kept accusers in check and witnesses silent for so long has been replaced by weariness and resignation.
"There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' For me, that time is now," his statement reads.
Yet even a dope cheat still needs to be a master tactician to win the Tour de France: if Armstrong decided to quit the fight it was because this was the least worst option remaining to him. This pre-emptive retreat allows him to avoid the formal process of prosecution and conviction, and the humiliation that would have gone along with that. Perhaps his Livestrong foundation, and what remains of his tarnished brand, can thus survive in some netherworld of unreason.
Where does that leave cycling? With many unresolved questions. We may never know who were all the former team-mates of Armstrong that USADA had ready to testify against him about the years of EPO use, steroids, blood-doping techniques and whatever else that delivered that unbroken string of Tour victories, though we can guess at their identities. And we will have to wait and see whether Armstrong's longtime team manager, Johan Bruyneel, will attempt a defence, though the percentage must be in his folding quietly and taking a ban.
We may never finally know what deals were done to hush up the alleged positive tests Armstrong gave, though we have our suspicions. And we can only wonder who might now be deemed to have won the Tour de France from 1999 to 2005, though we must assume that the Tour authorities would rather award no result than attempt the fool's errand of seeking retrospectively a clean cyclist in the top 10 of any of those years.
Better to look forward and learn. There is no doubt that the anti-doping agencies have won the upper hand since Lance Armstrong's heyday in the fight to rid the sport of performance-enhancing drugs. Many do still cheat, though they are fewer and more are caught. Teams keep sponsors by staying clean; they lose them when riders are discovered doping. The governing body, the UCI, has abandoned its shameful connivance of the EPO era.
But there's no reason for complacency. It will only take a tangential advance in medical science for some new substance to become available for which there is no test; then the cheats will be ahead in the pharmacological arms race once more.
The most important lesson of the Lance Armstrong story, though, is the hardest to prepare for and guard against: our own gullibility and willing complicity. What is astounding and disturbing is that one man – a dominant personality as well as a dominant athlete – was able to enforce his will, isolate, bully and silence his doubters and critics, and win the world's top cycling event year after year and make people believe in him, despite there being, apparently, dozens of witnesses to its utter phoniness. Too many people had too much invested in the Lance Armstrong story, and the power of persuasion followed the money.
The moral of the story is that if a cyclist looks too good to be true, then he probably is. But if a cyclist looks too good to be true and has an entourage of lawyers, press flaks, doctors and bodyguards, then he definitely is.
So as long as your drug technicians are slightly more advanced than the governing body's drug technicians at the time of the competiton, you're the champion and always will be, regardless of what subsequent tests and technology uncovers?
Hmmmmmm....!
Woodchip
It's all about the bikes
In sports what is legal today could be illegal tomorrow. Should someone be stripped as they were taking something legal, but later it was made illegal?
We are looking at a sport where you have to be careful what cough medicine you use and how many cups of tea you drink!!
Obviously not.
Woodchip
It's all about the bikes
But you've said that if Lance is found guilty then he should be stripped of all records. Nothing is that black and white when WADA, USADA and UCI are involved.
lost in london
Well-known member
But what he was alleged to have taken (and what other retrospectively banned athletes took) was illegal then, is now, and forever shall be.
Woodchip
It's all about the bikes
And for those interested in how the UCI are trying to clean up cycling here is an interesting read.
Union Cycliste Internationale
Union Cycliste Internationale