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USADA Strip Lance Armstrong of 7 Tour De France Titles.....
IMO this is an absolute disgrace. The USADA are a private body assuming themselves the role of the NADO for the US and have severe question marks over their conduct. My take is quoted below but please discuss.
It's a cynical world we live in when we find the accomplishments of someone so incredible that we have to question whether they were honest, despite him NEVER failing a drugs test! Hypothetically, they might have all been doing it... IF they were and IF Lance was too, then it was still a level playing field as they were all in it together..... and he still won! I shall choose to believe he is innocent and just about the greatest cyclist that ever lived! He has had too much to lose with is foundation to have cheated. Cycling is so competitive and emotional with sooo much pride at stake that it sounds like major sour grapes and jealousy to me. I am sure others will have a different view though so each to their own....
and
He has NEVER failed a sample which is very impressive if he did take drugs as he was one of the most tested riders.
So in addition to the fact there is NO confirmed physical evidence against him, they just have some speculated evidence and the word of some other riders (who may have their own agenda - being paid off, trying to get leniency for being caught themselves, just a dislike of Lance, jealousy etc), the latest allegations supposedly stemmed from blood samples taken in 2009 & 2010, after he returned to the sport. This for me really does not add up as, given the only reason he got back into cycling was to promote this cancer charity, would he really have risked it all by doping? I just can't see it.
I'm a real believer that he is clean and was clean after his cancer (before that he may well have dabbled in the odd drug, I don't know) but I acknowledge that it is only my belief and may not be true. Even if he did take drugs, given that he has been an inspiration to so many people, cyclists, general sports enthusiasts, cancer victims, victims of other diseases and many many more, and he has probably saved lives (by inspiring people to get on a bike and to get fit, by giving victims of cancer and other diseases the courage to fight) and he has touched and given hope to so many cancer sufferers (including a friend of mine who recently passed away), surely, even if he did take drugs, there should be a little amount of compensation given to him for all the good he has done. It would surely outweigh and wrongs of taking drugs so in my opinion the USADA and the WADA should leave him alone. His Tour's are history, it's the past it is irrelevant now.
The USADA are a joke (and I quote these lines about them from the web) -
"The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is a non-profit, private organization not subject to governmental oversight...with no apparent authority or legitimacy"
"US District Court Judge Sam Sparks has stated that the USADA pursues investigations into sports figures '.. acting according to less noble motives'."
"Armstrong is now subject to an investigation by the USADA lacking due process where the USADA refuses to disclose the names of Armstrong's accusers and hides from accountability in federal court. The USADA has insisted that Armstrong participate in an arbitration process created and run exclusively by the USADA"
The USADA think they have jurisdiction over the world cycling body (UCI) as USADA are the ones stripping Lance of the titles, however given the Tour De France is a UCI event, only the UCI should be allowed to strip him of them. The UCI have been supporting Lance in his fight against the USADA. It's typical in this world that any US body believes they have the rule over everyone else and it ****es me right off! IMO it is the responsibility of the USADA to present evidence they find to the sporting governing bodies and governments who should then make the decision about punisments etc.
Also if the USADA are so caught up in looking back in history, maybe they should look at the US LA1984 Olympic team and re-test all the samples they still have..... guarantee there will be many positive samples that passed back in 1984.
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How has that American lot got the power to take French titles away? Can't see how they can,
arrogant lot and I mean the Americans not the French. Mind you from what I have read LA only
says he has never given a positive test result, he doesn't appear to have said he doesn't take drugs.
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It's throwing up a bit of an issue between the USADA and the UCI. That in itself is a major issue but also that the USADA is a private organization not subject to governmental oversight and with no apparent authority or legitimacy (apparently). If this is the case then the way the USADA is run is severely open to being run with a not necessarily moral agenda. I mean who scrutinises the USADA and their actions? If, as they are, private companies are authorised to act as a country's NADO then surely they would need some government (or public service) oversight to ensure they are being run in a moral and non-corrupt manner.
As I have mentioned, IMO it is the responsibility of the USADA to present evidence they find to the sporting governing bodies (like the UCI) who should then make the decision about punishments etc.
You make a good point about LA only referring to not giving a positive test and not saying he doesn't take drugs but unlil the USADA or the WADA have physical evidence (i.e. a positive sample) then the presumption has to be of innocence.
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A few random points :
Lance Armstrong can be a very difficult person to get on with, he is driven, focussed, and self-centered. None of this in any way counts against him, but I think somewhere in the past he really p!$$ed somebody off and as a consequence the USADA have conducted a witch hunt, and they have finally worn their target down.
The USADA have several former team mates willing to testify - as far as I can work out ALL of them have plea-bargained their 'convictions' for failed dope tests and given their statements as a result. Currently the USADA refuses to name them, but it certainly includes Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton. ( the latter of which coincidentally has a book coming out soon - no such thing as bad publicity ), and apparently George Hincapie may also be on the list.
None of the evidence has been publicly presented, and the process seems to have been conducted on the basis of 'guilty until proven innocent'. Because LA has now stopped trying to fight them, they announce that this 'proves' his guilt.
The USADA apparently have 8 B samples that have tested positive for EPO, but they haven't, as far as I am aware, been independently verified.
One line of argument against him is that he beat a doped peloton and therefore MUST have been doping himself, he couldn't have done it any other way. ( A similar line has been trotted out by some French media about Bradley Wiggins this year ).
If they strip him of his titles, what do the UCI do ? ( The USADA have absolutely no authority to do this ). In each of his 7 Tours de France wins, if you look at the top 10 in the GC, almost all of them have served some form of drugs related suspension. ( I saw a quote on a cycling forum pleading with the USADA to ensure they didn't also strip him of his cameo appearance in Dodgeball ).
Personally, my 'heart' says he's clean - the best TdF rider ever, my 'head' is unsure, but without being openly presented in a legitimate public court, the evidence will remain circumstantial, but as is stated above, even IF he did it, all it did was level the field of battle - he still put in the hours of graft, went through pain barriers we can't even imagine, and some of his stage wins were simply epic.
Roger Hammond, a team-mate of LA for 2 years and who has taken a very firm stance against doping, said on ITV4 last night said he believed Lance was clean, and that he ( Hammond ) only joined Lance's team because they were clean.
Most of the USADA's allegations were subject to a 2 year federal investigation, which closed with no further action being taken.
Last edited by badgerx16; 25-08-2012 at 08:34 AM. Reason: 1) wrong tyler (2) addedd the bit about the feds
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He is quite clearly guilty. There have been loads of allegations over the years but the main one is that he beat a load of people seven times who were doping. It's virtually impossible to do that once but seven times?
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Agreed.Originally Posted by badgerx16
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Presumed guilty until proven innocent then? How do you explain not one failed drugs test then?
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Marion Jones never failed a drugs test (her A sample was positive but not the B), but after following the same procees as they have with Armstrong ( collecting witness statements ect) she cracked and admitted her guilt. I dont know if he was doping or not, but just thought it was worth mentioning that never failing a test, is not a guarantee you are not a cheat.
According to an expert on Talk sport this morning, there is allegations that he failed one in 2001 but it was hushed up.He claims that USADA, have evidence of this. He also said that Armstrong would have had an oppurtunity to answer this eveidence but has thrown the towell in.
Surely an innocent man would fight these accusations, I find it strange that a man who has battled in the toughest race of all, has battled a serious illness, will give in without a fight, when faced with accusations that will ruin his whole reputation.
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Someone summed it up yesterday. He is either incredibly stupid if he is innocent or incredibly clever if he is guilty. By doing this there will remain a lot of ambiguity and we will not get to see the (I suspect) extremely damning evidence against him.
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Generally yes, but consider the life LA has had. He is had to fight and work very hard to become and elite athlete in his discipline, then he had to spend over a year fighting cancer, not just cancer in one place but 4 places in his body - testicles, abdomen, lungs and brain. Riding the tour and keeping fit enough to do so puts your body and mentality to it's absolute limits, isolating yourself from the outside world putting yourself through hell. 7 years he did this for then 3 more years after a 3 1/2 year sabbatical. He's had the constant battle of the drug allegations and has has the USADA pursuing him for years. It certainly appears that Lance will not be in for a fair fight and given all the battles he has gone through I do not blame his decision to not fight it. He's probably just been broken by the constant badgering by the USADA.
Another question I have surrounds the motives of the USADA. 1984 LA Olympics were clean in regards to the US athletes, however the was and still is rampant speculation that many of them were on PED's. The officials of the LA olympics refused to supply the IOC with a safe and subsequently the medical records of athletes were stolen. In 1994 these records were discovered to have been destroyed. One of the scientists involved in the testing commented in a recent documentary that he thought the samples all looked very watery, (insinuating that the athletes were using diuretics). Samples of the 1984 US team were still available so he retested a couple of random ones only to discover that with modern technology, the trace elements of drugs that were not detected in 1984 were present in the samples. Given this, given they are happy to pursue LA and given they have no issues in investigating the past, why have the USADA not pursued the 1984 LA Olympic team?
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Good article about it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/aug/25/lance-armstrong-cycling-richard-williams
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Thinking abouty publicly admitting he doped.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/sp...ping.html?_r=0
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Needs to get his ban reduced to be able to compete and get sponsors to be able to pay off all the claims that he's going to get to pay back sums awarded by courts against people who said he was doping in the past. It was pretty obvious really when he ran about 3 hrs in the NYC marathon and looked "eyeballs out". Can't win 7 tours on that sort of aerobic state. He should never have tried marathon running, turned all the WADA's eyes onto him. Now if he's ever lied to federal agents he'll get time, just like Marion Jones, could go down for perjury as well.
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Read David Walsh's book 'Seven Deadly Sins about his 10 year + campaign to find out the truth - and he wanted Armstrong to be clean. Facinating read - could not put it down, and sadly indicates that Lance's wins are all sadly tarnished.
The problem is that doping was systematic in most teams, even after Festina scandal in 98, with average times INCREASING in 99 despite claims from teh UCO and the Tour that they had eliminated the systematic doping.... yet no reliable test for EPO existed then, and when it did, they moved on to blood doping... But the improvements post cancer treatments for an average rider (v good by most standards, but relative to the heights reached in early tours by the best youngsters) seem incredible, especially his time trial improvements etc. The saddest part for me is we will never know how good he could have been clean versus a clean tour. NOt sure we have a fully clean tour now. Belive Wiggins may be the first clean champion in over 15 years - even major suspicions over Ulrich in 97 given his ban....
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May I suggest as an accompaniment 'Lanced - The Shaming of Lance Armstrong' a selection of articles by David Walsh et al. Very similar to what you are reading. Also got Secret Race on the go too. At the time, like most people I wanted to buy in to the Armstrong miracle but watching the tour from 96 onwards was like watching a freak show. How Bjarne Riis is allowed anywhere near a cycling team is beyond belief. Ditto Johan Bruyneel. As far as I am aware Carlos Sastre's TdF win has not been called into question probably because he was never brilliant enough to standout enough to be labelled a doper and he does seem to have a reputation as riding clean. The issue I have with cycling is people's attitude to the obvious cheating that has gone on. Like it doesn't happen in athletics (Marion Jones, Ben Johnson) or swimming (Michelle Smith) all in a similar era, and don't even get me started about simulation on the football pitch or doping in the NFL. It is as if cycling is the fall guy for all the evils in sport with regards to cheating. I do not deny it has existed and may still exist at a variety of levels within the sport and I accept that the Armstrong thing is the equivalent of finding out that Brazil won all their World Cups by foul means but a sense of perspective needs to be found
Part of me hopes that LA will reveal all, but I suspect a highly scripted confession designed to limit the personal damage to him will be all we get..... I so wanted to believe!
The reason he generally is not talked about as doping apart from links etc is asEffectively his career path seems logical and possible without doping.
. I dont know how that might have come about as his best years were before my time, but I doubt that such a reputation was based on hard evidence or facts.
.
Registered User
Maybe it'll go something like this!
1 Have the past few months been crazy, emotional, frightening and full of lots of scandalous – truly scandalous – lies that sadly you can't talk about right now for legal reasons?
2 Would you like to see an uplifting montage of slow-motion footage of you looking triumphant and sad, soundtracked by Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes?
3 If you feel the need to cry, or even make your voice wobble a little like you're going to cry but instead fight back those tears and take a breath and keep right on with what you were saying because dammit you're better than this and you owe it to not just the world but to yourself to tell this story then do you think, Lance, that you might be best just giving in to it?
4 Do you by any chance have a folksy anecdote about something your father said to you when you were a very small boy, perhaps while sitting on a porch or playing catch in the back yard? You do?
5 Would you like to talk for quite a long time about what Being An American means to you?
6 Is there a sense that perhaps a lot of people have always been jealous of your success? That maybe there was and remains a lot of jealousy out there, a lot of European jealousy, a British press-led European conspiracy of jealousy? Do you think, Lance, that might be a possibility? I'm just putting it out there.
7 Looking back, how badly did the death of your dog when you were seven years old affect you? Looking at this picture of your dog can you feel the tears welling up, the anger coming out? Can you feel the tears for your dog? Would you like to reach out and pat the dog? Pat the dog, Lance. Cry. Cry and pat the dog.
8 Do you by any chance have plans for a nationwide tour of schools speaking about the dangers of caring too much, falling foul of the temptations of others, being at the wrong end of a vast sporting witch-hunt and basically not learning to love yourself enough?
9 How about a new book too? Possibly something in big type with lots of pictures called Lance: My Longest Journey or Lance: A New Hope or perhaps just Lance: I Suffered For Your Sins?
10 Shall we hug now?
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Needs to get 5 to 10 years inside and be made to pay back all the honest riders he's robbed of glory and money. I have seen at first hand how a promising young athlete can be destroyed by ones who are nowhere near as talented with the aid of performance enhancers, they don't believe that their "friends" are cheating and just train harder and harder to keep up until they self-inflict irreparable damage.Then many suffer mentally as well.. Nicole Cook said it all yesterday. Sport needs to make an example of Armstrong.
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The is excellent - should imagine Oprah has used most of these lines, interested to see the interview
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