Armstrong: too good to be true?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Winston
Jean-Marie Leblanc, chief organizer of the Tour, is now backing the tests carried out and the evidence against Armstrong. Leblanc is reported as saying that Armstrong is bound to be suspected of having been doped in the other races after 1999 as well.

This is little suprise since the Tour organizers are organizationally linked with the paper that broke the story.

Lance has been suspected from the time he won his first tour. The theory was that no one can be better than others by that much so he had to be doping.

I don't buy that argument. First of all, Lance Armstrong was not much better than everyone else over a cycling season. he trained specifically for this event in a scientific way in ways no one else did. Other cyclists were busting their guts in the weeks leading up to the tour in a way Lance Armstrong never did. He had a focus on the Tour that really NONE of the other contenders matched.

heck Ullrich was overweight at the start of a couple of seasons so for him to be competitive he muct be juiced -- x and y rode the tour de italia and then competed well-- juiced I say

Guess what-- maybe they are still all juiced-- I don't know. But the mere fact that someone wins something can't be your evidence . . . . Particularly when most of the competition don't even train in the same way

[Zopperoni]

Interesting news related to this: Belgian scientist Bart Landuyt has found that the modern EPO tests are sensitive to error. Natural proteine can be seen as EPO with the modern tests.

Of course, World Anti-Doping Agency has no intentions to change its testing policy

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Flubber
This is little suprise since the Tour organizers are organizationally linked with the paper that broke the story.

Sometimes, parts of an organization disagree with each other.

Generally speaking, Leblanc has always avoided to pour oil on the fire in the situations where guilt wasn't absolutely proven. As the director of the tour, his wants his event not to be tarnished. If too many regular joes begin to think that the Tour is a competiotn between the best druggies, instead of the best athletes, it'll lose quite a bit of audience. As such, Leblanc fights against the image that "they're all drugged anyway".

Should it be proven that Armstrong has been drugged, it would seriously hurt the Tour's image, especially in countries where people are naive


As to l'Equipe: Its article was all the rage in the French press for days. I bet the article provided for some very big sales, and for a significant boost of image among the French audience. No surprise that they'd publish their scoop so aggressively.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Zopperoni
Interesting news related to this: Belgian scientist Bart Landuyt has found that the modern EPO tests are sensitive to error. Natural proteine can be seen as EPO with the modern tests.

Of course, World Anti-Doping Agency has no intentions to change its testing policy

hmm source?? I'm curious if the "false positives" would be more or less likely if the test was carried out in 6 year old urine.

[Zopperoni]

The TdF is already in some organizing trouble, because of their dispute with the ProTour. The French farkers at ASO think they are a whole lot as organizers of some prestigious races, as demonstrated by comments by that chief arsehole LeBlanc: "[..]without ASO, the Pro Tour will mean nothing".

But they tend to forget that it's the riders that make the races, not the organizing committees.

[Zopperoni]

Originally posted by Flubber
hmm source?? I'm curious if the "false positives" would be more or less likely if the test was carried out in 6 year old urine.

I can't find an English version of the story. I read it in two articles of the leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad:

http://www.nrc.nl/sport/artikel/1125985133328.html

http://www.nrc.nl/sport/artikel/1125985132775.html

[Flubber]

Spiffor

Lance is big news in France. I don't blame any journalist for running a sensational story. I do query how they could ever have gotten access to the results and documentation.

I also agree that organizations can disagree within themselves. I just find that more frequently, they try to be consistent.

I'm still waiting to see how this all comes out. I'm not naive but in the absence of FIRM evidence, I choose to believe that athletes are "clean".

[Flubber]

Oh and I was hearing more about Armstrong feeling motivated to come back for a new Tour. While I think he should retire and get on with his life, there is part of me that wishes that he would invite a team of L'Equipe journalists to live with him for a year so that they can monitor every substance that enters his body and take urine every day. Then he would go out and ride faster/harder than ever before and win by his widest margin ever. THAT would be lovely to see. A champion coming back out of pure spite for his detractors

People seem to believe that the dopers are always way ahead of the testers. That may be true. Something like the above may be the only way you could ever PROVE you were clean.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Flubber
Oh and I was hearing more about Armstrong feeling motivated to come back for a new Tour. While I think he should retire and get on with his life, there is part of me that wishes that he would invite a team of L'Equipe journalists to live with him for a year so that they can monitor every substance that enters his body and take urine every day. Then he would go out and ride faster/harder than ever before and win by his widest margin ever. THAT would be lovely to see. A champion coming back out of pure spite for his detractors

People seem to believe that the dopers are always way ahead of the testers. That may be true. Something like the above may be the only way you could ever PROVE you were clean.

Even if he does and he's clean... I'm reminded of the famous phrase. Even if you win the Special Olympics, you're still a ******.

(referring to Lance, not you Flubs )

[SpencerH]

I looked at the technical aspects of the EPO test and IMO (as a scientist who uses similar tests) the results are rubbish since the test is extremely subjective.

Compounding the technical limitations of the test itself, one can ask how the a decision of a positive doping result could be announced (even unofficially) when 6 of his 12 samples were negative for EPO and 6 were positive?

The whole thing stinks of French bull****!

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Sava
Even if he does and he's clean... I'm reminded of the famous phrase. Even if you win the Special Olympics, you're still a ******.

Is that supposed to mean that even if Lance Armstrong rode faster than ever in a situation where it was IMPOSSIBLE for him to be doping, you would still believe he was doping before. That makes no sense. The whole argument about Lance came about because people think no one can win without doping. Isn't the idea that it is undisputed that doping helps performance?

Put more simply Sava, is there anything that could ever make you believe an athlete is clean?

You talked about blinders and heads in sand . . . I don't reject the idea that the whole lot are doping . . . I simply give the benefit of the doubt until there is proof. Is your attitude as open or is your head in the sand wrt the POSSIBILITY that Armstrong could be clean?

[Sava]

I didnt' say I would 100% believe he would always be guilty.
I said I would have suspicions.

To be honest, the whole steroid thing in baseball soured me on professional athletes. I can't trust them anymore.

I'd like to have an open mind. But the nature of the "sport" (and I use that term loosely with cycling) is what gets my critical side going.

Cycling isn't an an activity where "skill" is involved. It's about physical endurance. Plain and simple. And when one athlete simply dominates the way Lance has, I have to wonder sometimes. Is Lance the only guy in the world capable of training hard enough to last in a tough endurance competition? Somehow I don't believe this.

It's not like this is baseball and he's Babe Ruth. He's not like Wayne Gretzky where he's blessed with all this skill. Cycling is about endurance.

Sure, it's possible that Lance trains harder than everyone else and has done all this legitimately. But it's just hard to believe that nobody else in the cycling world can come close to competing with him.

Look at the Olympics. Every once in a while, an athlete comes around and dominates in an event. But VERY VERY rarely does one athlete completely dominate in an endurance event for such a long time... and by such a large margin.

And my gut tells me, when something very improbable happens, there's probably something fishy going on.

[DanS]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I looked at the technical aspects of the EPO test and IMO (as a scientist who uses similar tests) the results are rubbish since the test is extremely subjective.

Compounding the technical limitations of the test itself, one can ask how the a decision of a positive doping result could be announced (even unofficially) when 6 of his 12 samples were negative for EPO and 6 were positive?

The whole thing stinks of French bull****!

Thank you!

[Spiffor]

[SIZE=1]Compounding the technical limitations of the test itself, one can ask how the a decision of a positive doping result could be announced (even unofficially) when 6 of his 12 samples were negative for EPO and 6 were positive?

AFAIK, these were different samples. The lab didn't just take one sample of Lance's urine, and then divided it in 12, in order to see the repeatability of the method.

IIRC, the lab took 12 different urine samples from various 1999 runners, and according to L'Equipe, 3 of them were Lance's. On the 12 tested samples, 6 of them were positive, including the 3 from Lance.
Edit: made a mistake on the numbers, but it doesn't go against the spirit of what I wrote. On the samples the lab analysed (from various runners), 12 were positive, including 6 from Armstrong.

Now, I'm not a biologist and I cannot comment on the test's subjectivity. But the sampling seems to be a wrong angle of attack.

[Straybow]

They don't do just one test, IIRC. They test on entry and multiple times during the TdF.