Lance Armstrong... cheater

[MRT144]

Who cares? He won the races, everyone knows it. It's like getting a post count reduction on Apolyton.

Whens the last time that happened.

[MikeH]

PCRs are only a punishment for people who actually think the number of posts they have on a nerd messageboard is actually in any way important.

I doubt anyone could have self esteem that low.

[Alexander's Horse]

accuracy is important

[MikeH]

Sorry. It appears I was wrong.

[Hauldren Collider]

Whens the last time that happened.

Plomp gave Kuci a PCR like a year ago. Kuci and I thought it was hilarious.

[Patroklos]

They were basically all at it. Most of his contemporaries have been caught. It would be... surprising... if he'd managed to beat all those dopers without doping, and there is an absolute ton of evidence against him. He's just the highest profile of a long line to be found out.

I think his manager is still accused and is going to contest his case - so we'll get to see most of the evidence anyway.

How can you claim there is a ton of evidence when so far none has been produced. All we know is that he passed all his actual tests to everyone's standards at the time (which is all that matters), and that apparently they have convinced some teammates to testify against him.

Call me crazy, but if I were on a jury years of exonerating physical evidence trumps after the fact plea bargained produced testimony.

Do you know what this evidence is supposed to include?

[MikeH]

There's plenty of evidence in the public domain already - see some of the links above.

And they are going to release everything else too anyway.

Here's a lengthy post with links to a whole bunch of different stuff.

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

[MikeH]

The important thing is -

Years of exonerating evidence is just not true. It is mostly clever PR spread by his own team.

Years where there were no tests for the most common forms of doping, years where dope tests were easily avoided (the phrase "failing a drugs test is failing an IQ test" 'cause you couldn't work out how to be clean in time for the test) during which, despite those things he still had some situations where people have testified with some evidence he deliberately got out of at least 2 positive results.

Multiple positive results when applied retrospectively to samples that were given before EPO testing.

The confirmed fact that Lance Armstrong paid UCI - who were in charge of dope testing - $125,000 dollars during the period he was racing an they were testing him. That's right, an athlete made large payments to the organisation that was testing him for drugs, in the period they were involved in testing him. If that's not a conflict of interest I don't know what is.

A history of bullying and intimidation of people speaking up on anti-doping.

A history of meeting accusations of doping with counteraccusations and things that can easily be proven to be misinformation.

A long series of witness statements made under oath, by people with no grudge to bear personally not just by bitter haters, of people who have witnessed first hand his doping or heard first hand his admissions of doping.

Yes, his story sounds incredibly and it would be great if he did it all without doping, but I think the evidence is pretty damning, even before we see what else the USADA have got.

[Alexander's Horse]

What Mike said.

Those clever dicks in cycling were into blood doping to boost oxygen and reduce tiring lactic acid. They all thought there would never be a reliable test, because supplements based on natural human blood products were used, and all got caught when science caught up with them.

After each day of the tour it must have looked like Dracula in the blood bank. Still, I love the Tour, and since everyone was cheating there was perversely a kind of level-playing field. But Armstrong should not claim he was the only virgin in the brothel. His performance this year suggests, even given his age, that without mother's little helper he comes back to the pelaton, albeit still close to the front.

[Jon Miller]

mother's little helper is amphetamines?

JM

[Tupac Shakur]

AH is right. Armstrong almost certainly cheated, but everyone in cycling cheated at that time, so what's the point in taking away his titles a decade later?

[MikeH]

1. They've taken away the titles of other people who were caught cheating.
2. It highlights the complicity and corruption in the UCI which might still be allowing cheats to prosper.
3. The case against him also implicates a bunch of coaches and others who are still involved in the sport.
4. Although others have cheated it seems like his cheating and cover up was even more extreme.
5. It is important to highlight to athletes for the future that if you are cheating using something there isn't a test for, and a test becomes available you can still be retrospectively stripped of your medal. This is important to try and prevent people doping in future.
6. If they didn't, probably the message that he is a cheat and bully wouldn't get out there. The fact that they are stripping his titles means it's newsworthy which means those people that have only heard the Armstrong PR machine side of the story get to hear what he's really like.

That's all I can be bothered of thinking of right now. Probably more.

[Tupac Shakur]

If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. Armstrong earned those titles fair and square, by cheating better than his competitors.

[Jon Miller]

If you are good enough, there is never any reason to cheat.

JM

[Tupac Shakur]

Unless people only slightly worse than you become better by cheating, of course.