Lance Armstrong charges

Vonhelmet said:
Maybe he's just got fed up.

I think I'd probably get fed up.
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Yep, at the end of the day it matters no how tough or resilient we are - we all have our breaking point. It does not necessarily mean guilt it could just mean he knows the outcome and there is nothing he can do to change that. Doesn't make him a defeatist just a realist.
 
mrthingyx said:
I don't know. As far as I am concerned, the whole thing stinks. IT would be better for cycling to move on and enjoy the fact that notionally clean athletes are doing so well currently.
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have to agree with this really.

The tour has such a poor history regarding doping.

IF they stripped his titles, they'd be going some way down the rankings before they found a non-doper, and it's not like he hasn't ever been tested or something....

I was watching a program on the BBC just the other day about the 1988 Seoul 100m final, where Ben Johnson was banned and disqualified for doping...

They had an interview with one of the guys who just happened to have all the urine samples still there twenty years later or something, and decided to see what modern doping systems would turn up. He ended up looking through it and basically said that you got to a point and just stopped, because you weren't going to achieve anything, what was he going to do with the results, publish them? Because so many people at the time were on drugs (or so he said) that yeah, it was basically implying most of the field were on some kind of drugs, they just couldn't pick them up then. That said as well, half the field later had issues and bans for drug abuse...

Similar kind of situation here really, they just need to move on and just be happy that there's no doping now a days...

kd
 
if hes stripped of the titles who will they then be given to and will there be a ceremony etc?

they cant just have no name next to the years he won it lol
 
Xordium said:
It is proven we have used it for years to test the efficacy of auto-tranfusions. Whether they want to take it up or not as an anti-doping measure is their business. I was merely pointing out we can test for it and it's something that we do all the time to see how we are doing say with Jehova's Witnesses before/after big surgery.
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Not accepted by WADA though.
 
Can't say I understand or approve of his decision to walk away. It's disrespectful to le Tour and just leaves him open to spending the rest of his life having people say he was (second to Ben Johnson, sports most notorious) doper, even if he wasn't...

Of course if he was doping, he should be burned at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Do you think that because he is a legend that he should be exempt from the normal punishments or am I misreading?

If the sport lives or dies based on whether Lance Armstrong is found guilty then it's arguably not worth saving in the first place.
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No, my point was that I think he is a legend because he came back from Cancer and won so many Tours. I'd like that to be because he did so of his own back and possibly due to being gifted with being born with a body that is more suited to it.

He shouldn't be exempt from punishment I agree.
However, as others have pointed out, it seems wrong that he tested negative in his drug tests, yet it now comes down to witness testimonies from other people, years after the events. He passed through all their hoops, whether he doped or not, so it seems wrong to then charge him now without real evidence, which is why it really does come down to it being a witch hunt.

Of course the sport won't live or die on whatever the outcome is. However, Lance is the most high profile athlete to have ever emerged from the sport, not to mention he has done a lot for it and charity. Charging him would bring back the mindset that all Pro-Cyclists must be dopers to anyone who doesn't really follow the sport, something which I doubt the UCI would be too keen on.
 
Plenty of people have been banned without failing tests.

David Millar for one. Everyone involved in the Festina Affair, everyone implicated by Operacion Puerto.

Banning in the basis of evidence other than test failure is how you catch people when there isn't / wasn't an approved test or there are ways of avoiding the testing protocols.
 
The fact is you have to be enormously naturally gifted as well as hard working to become a professional cyclist. I find it a huge stretch however that Armstrong was naturally gifted enough to do things like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXPXHK7I1iQ given that Marco Pantani was doped to the gills on EPO and possibly HGH.

Pantani was an enormously gifted cyclist and he doped on top of it, and given that crude estimates of the effect of EPO give a 7-10% improvement in performance and endurance. then you'd have to be very naive to believe that Armstrong was naturally good enough to overcome opponents like that. On top of that Armstrong climbed Alpe d'Huez in an almost identical time to Pantani, who we now know was doping.

Given the quality of doping controls in the Armstrong era, it is meaningless to suggest that by never failing a test he is innocent, and that assertion has been challenged numerous times anyway.
 
Xordium said:
Yep, at the end of the day it matters no how tough or resilient we are - we all have our breaking point. It does not necessarily mean guilt it could just mean he knows the outcome and there is nothing he can do to change that. Doesn't make him a defeatist just a realist.
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I find it difficult to believe that an endurance athlete has given up on a lifetime's work. You just don't 'give-up', you finish every event.
 
One More Solo said:
The fact is you have to be enormously naturally gifted as well as hard working to become a professional cyclist. I find it a huge stretch however that Armstrong was naturally gifted enough to do things like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXPXHK7I1iQ given that Marco Pantani was doped to the gills on EPO and possibly HGH.
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thats like saying how does usain bolt destroy gatlin and dwain chambers in the 100m both who have doped to the hilt
 
[DOD]Asprilla;22629198 said:
Not accepted by WADA though.
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Which is why I said whether they want to use it or not. It's just you originally corrected someone by saying it can't be tested for. Now you have read around it you seem to agree it can be. Whether that test is used or not it a whole other question as I alluded to. Any doping can be caught if you have the finance, mandate and will to do so. We rarely have one of those let along all three. Cycling gets bad press but it's prevalent throughout sport.
 
Xordium said:
Which is why I said whether they want to use it or not. It's just you originally corrected someone by saying it can't be tested for. Now you have read around it you seem to agree it can be. Whether that test is used or not it a whole other question as I alluded to. Any doping can be caught if you have the finance, mandate and will to do so. We rarely have one of those let along all three. Cycling gets bad press but it's prevalent throughout sport.
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I don't know enough about it to say whether it can be used or not. It depends how legally defensible the test is when it comes to banning someone.

I was aware that there was a test and that WADA here hoping to sanction it but haven't yet.
 
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