Armstrong: too good to be true?

[Sava]

yall are kidding yourselves

[Datajack Franit]

So everybody is lying. Including people saying that he was actually injecting stuff in his arms and legs

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Winston
Every top level cyclist these days is juicing. I've seldom been more certain of anything in my life. And I'm baffled that other people continue to pretend those aren't the realities.

Yup, that's pretty amazing.

Even if Lance's dope becomes absolutely proven, I guess there will be staunch resistance by people who wanted to believe in him as well as in other athletes. It looks like a pretty ordinary occurence: there have been numerous examples of mass-scale foolings that could occur only because the people wanted to believe in the lie.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
So everybody is lying. Including people saying that he was actually injecting stuff in his arms and legs

I believe that there are any number of types of injections that are legal and which can be beneficial. So I see nothing suprising in athletes having syringes

Who is "everybody" anyway? With Armstrong the only injecting story I heard was some trainers assistant or similar. Is there more evidence than that

[Winston]

I think Datajack was being sarcastic towards Sava, not making allegations as such.

[Flubber]

The thing for me is that I don't buy the argument that for Lance to be "so good" he had to be doping. That just doesn't hold water because

1. he trained for the Tour de France solely when almost no one else had a similar focus-- other riders were riding their guts out mere weeks before the Tour

2. Armstrong often had a superior team making his effort less

3. Armstrongs team prepared more for the Tour in riding stages and preparing them

4. Armstrong's team was the first/best in using technology to measure and monitor effort

These things would be sufficient to explain his advantage even if there is no doping. Perhaps reason 5 is they were better at doping than anyone but I'll need more than this evidence to convince me.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Winston
I think Datajack was being sarcastic towards Sava, not making allegations as such.

Winston-- you might know this -- Are there legal injections-- the type of stuff you could inject in front of the strogest and most vehement antidoper in the world and it would be ok


I know some things are "on the line" like steroidal creams. My recollection is that they can be used for injury if approved by someone in officialdom

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Flubber
These things would be sufficient to explain his advantage even if there is no doping. Perhaps reason 5 is they were better at doping than anyone but I'll need more than this evidence to convince me.

Indeed. Dope adds to the performance, but it doesn't replace performance.

I for one see nothing wrong with dope. We should acknowledge that fact and make doping legal on the tour. We would finally get rid of the constant nitpicking that reeks of hypocrisy, and that occurs every year.

[Winston]

Originally posted by Flubber
Winston-- you might know this -- Are there legal injections-- the type of stuff you could inject in front of the strogest and most vehement antidoper in the world and it would be ok

I know some things are "on the line" like steroidal creams. My recollection is that they can be used for injury if approved by someone in officialdom

I would think so too. The use of syringes is just another way of administering medicine, maybe even nutrients and liquid mineral solutions in some cases. It's not a very pretty thing to envision for athletes, but I don't think it's necessarily against the rules. It would depend on the actual substances taken.

Edit: That being said, it does add to the incrimination when syringes are discarded outside the normal medical aide system. There have been numerous cases of syringes being found in dumpsters at riders' hotels, often together with discarded packages of illegal drugs. Such finds add substantially to suspicions of doping being an everyday occurence for all riders at a certain level, but most often they can't be directly linked to specific riders.

[Datajack Franit]

I think Datajack was being sarcastic towards Sava, not making allegations as such.

look, athletes are supposed to stay sick, if the only medicine they are supposed to treat themselves with contains illegal stuff. But injections.. come on! Don´t they drink enough stuff already?

[DanS]

Originally posted by Flubber
The thing for me is that I don't buy the argument that for Lance to be "so good" he had to be doping. That just doesn't hold water because

1. he trained for the Tour de France solely when almost no one else had a similar focus-- other riders were riding their guts out mere weeks before the Tour

2. Armstrong often had a superior team making his effort less

3. Armstrongs team prepared more for the Tour in riding stages and preparing them

4. Armstrong's team was the first/best in using technology to measure and monitor effort

These things would be sufficient to explain his advantage even if there is no doping. Perhaps reason 5 is they were better at doping than anyone but I'll need more than this evidence to convince me.

#5 for me is that he was more disciplined than everybody else and worked harder year-round. But I agree with your points besides.

There are lots of people in this world who think they can build themselves up by tearing down the grand efforts of others -- it's a particularly odious form of envy. There's got to be very strong evidence for me to cross over into that camp.

[Datajack Franit]

Dope adds to the performance, but it doesn't replace performance.

Wrong. The huge scandal of chinese swimming of the 90´s began when sports analizers watched carefully the tapes of chinese female swimmers, noticing their extraordinary results were unexplainable considering their poor tecnique and lack of dynamism. Talent means nothing when you against someone that is just stronger and faster than you. But still, there are clean athletes able to defeat doped ones, even if they really have to be in an extraordinary shape.

[Boris Godunov]

A former Spanish winner of the Tour has said something to the effect that if French put as much effort into grooming cyclists as they put into trying to tear down Armstrong, they might have a recent Tour victory under their belt...

[rah]

Naw, they're too lazy. Grooming cyclists is hard work. Tearing down someone else is much easier.

[Sava]

btw...

I've heard Lance Armstrong giving lots of denials...


saying its not true its not true its not true...

that's nice

but why doesn't he tell us WHY it's not true???

I'll wait for boris to post another weak defense from www.lancearmstrongsfanpage.com or some other site with no credibilty... LOL