Lance Armstrong is he...

[kiddy]

http://velonews.competitor.com/2005/08/tour-de-france/lequipe-alleges-armstrong-samples-show-epo-use-in-99-tour_8740

Quote

"Throughout his career only one test showed indications of the presence of doping products. In the 1999 Tour, a urine sample showed small traces of cortico-steroids. Armstrong was cleared, however, when his U.S. Postal team, produced a medical certificate showing that he used a cream to ease the pain of a saddle sore. Even that sample, however, was below the levels that would have triggered a positive result at the time."

In case you didn't see it:

Quote

Even that sample, however, was below the levels that would have triggered a positive result at the time."

And this is IT? This is the research I should go and do?

That was the case with Contador's positive test, & his titles were stripped.

[xbl]

That was the case with Contador's positive test, & his titles were stripped.

So why weren't Armstrong's titles stripped back when the test was positive?

[Desert Nomad]

You are keeping up with the UCI corruption thing I presume?

You've already said you don't like cycling & wouldn't recognise Armstrong. Why do you persist, other than the obvious trolling reasons?

[winaukee]

In my eyes cycling at the highest level is/was on a par with weighlifting as far as drugs are concerned. I just take it for what it is, no point condemning 'til caught, but who knows, we might be at the forefront now after our meteoric rise to the top in the high profile disciplines, don't think so, but I won't rule it out completely.

Bolt is the 1st # 1 sprinter for a wee while that I would give more than a 50% chance of being clean.

Perhaps we should just introduce 2 classes in some sports and see what the human body is capable of with a wee helping hand.

I know a few sport scientists and they claim that most top athletes are on some form of performance drugs.

[ayrmad]

I know a few sport scientists and they claim that most top athletes are on some form of performance drugs.

Wouldn't argue with that, I'm just giving Bolt the benefit of the doubt due to his stride count and ability to relax.

[ICTChris]

Paul Kimmage article on Lance Armstrong

During the final week of the 88th Tour de France in July 2001, a 28-year-old American rider called Jonathan Vaughters was riding with some team-mates during the rest day in Pau, when a wasp became trapped in his sunglasses. Vaughters was allergic to stings and when he returned to the team hotel, his eye was the size of a golf ball. "The only thing that's going to reduce that swelling is a cortisone injection but if you take it you'll test positive," his team doctor told him.

Vaughters was distraught. "But that's ridiculous … I can't see! I can't ride my bike! How will I finish the race?" he said. "I'm sorry Jonathan," the doctor replied. "There are no exemptions for allergies. We have to do this by the book."

"I understand," Vaughters conceded, "but I'm not going to abandon. We'll see how it is in the morning."

The swelling did not recede and the following morning Vaughters stepped from the team bus in Pau looking like the Elephant Man. His Tour was effectively over, but as a gesture to highlight the absurdity of the doping laws, he had decided to line up for the start and climb off his bike as soon as the flag dropped.

As he was making his way to the start line he crossed paths with the race leader, Lance Armstrong. Two years previously, during Armstrong's first Tour win in 1999, they had been team-mates at US Postal, but Vaughters had not enjoyed the experience. The win had been fuelled by doping and Vaughters had left at the end of the season and found a much saner working environment with the French team, Crédit Agricole.

Armstrong did not disguise his contempt. "Poor Jonathan and his stupid little French team," he spat. "What the f**k are you like? If you had stayed with me, this would have been taken care of but now you are not going to finish the Tour de France because of a wasp sting."

Vaughters was distraught. "I thought: 'f**k! Here I am, on this team that is really trying to stick by the books and this guy is making fun of us for playing by the rules. That was the moment that effectively ended my career," he says. "I didn't want to race any more. It just didn't seem to matter to me after that."

Armstrong liked to boast about his friends in high places and those friends had served him well. During that first Tour win in 1999, he should have been disqualified after testing positive for a corticosteroid but was saved by a backdated therapeutic exemption. In 2002, Floyd Landis says that Armstrong told him that another positive test at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland had been overturned.

For Landis, who would succeed Armstrong on the list of Tour winners three years later, it was the pivotal moment in his decision to dope. "That was all of it," Landis says. "If I had any reason to believe that the people running the sport really want to fix it, I may have actually said: 'If I wait long enough I'll have the chance to win without doing this [doping]', but there was no scenario in my mind where in my lifetime I was going to get a chance to race the Tour and win clean."

Since Tommy Simpson's death in 1967, 86% of Tour de France winners have been tarnished or implicated by doping. What's wrong with this sport? Why does it keep happening? As Armstrong is confined to history, it's his relationship with the International Cycling Union (UCI) – he made donations to the sport's governing body while competing – that disturbs most.

Why have they been bending over backwards this last month to wrestle his case from the US Anti-Doping Agency? Why wasn't Armstrong sanctioned in 1999? What happened at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland? Why were Floyd Landis's claims about doping at US Postal never investigated? Why are the UCI suing journalists who have asked these questions?

Do we have any reason to believe that the people running the sport really want to fix it? The jury is out.

[myshkin]

He never misses..............

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/kimmage-uci-needs-root-and-branch-surgery

Kimmage: UCI needs root and branch surgery

Rough Ride author on cycling’s future in the wake of Armstrong case

Even now, Lance Armstrong probably still thinks it was all about him. In declining to contest the US Anti-Doping Agency’s charges of doping and conspiracy on Thursday, Armstrong decried the process as an “unconstitutional witch hunt,” continuing with the same rhetoric that has seen him spend the past thirteen years branding his accusers as trolls.

Such delusions may satisfy Armstrong’s ego and his self-perpetuating sense of martyrdom, and it may even inspire his biographer to pen a risible attack on USADA for the Washington Post, but he may be disappointed to find in the weeks and months to come that the so-called trolls always had bigger, over-arching targets in mind.

Author of the seminal Rough Ride, the former professional rider and journalist Paul Kimmage was a man in demand over the weekend, as radio station after radio station sought the opinion of one of Armstrong’s most forthright critics during his years of excess. But time and again, Kimmage looked to move the discussion forward from the fallen Armstrong to an assessment of the rotten system that allowed him to prosper. “This couldn’t have happened in a vacuum,” he stressed.

A little under a century ago, a fellow Dubliner wrote that “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” and Kimmage can surely identify with the sentiment. USADA’s Armstrong case may feel like a seminal moment, but after would-be watersheds like Festina (1998), San Remo (2001), Puerto (2006) and Rasmussen (2007) failed to bring about any tangible change, it’s not easy to be optimistic.

“Nothing has changed. Another cheat has been confined to history but in terms of the future of the sport, it means absolutely nothing unless there’s some form of accountability here and someone is held to account for how this happened,” Kimmage tells Cyclingnews.

Rough Ride, though a poignant human story in its own right, is also a detailed invective beseeching cycling’s governing body to take decisive action against doping in the sport. When Kimmage wrote the book in 1990, Hein Verbruggen was president of the UCI. In 2012, Verbruggen’s acolyte Pat McQuaid performs the ceremonial duties. In the intervening period, blood doping spread through the professional peloton like wildfire, but at the top table, things have remained largely unchanged.

“It needs root and branch surgery,” Kimmage says of the UCI. “Hopefully if there’s one positive to come out of this Armstrong thing it’s that there’ll be some accountability and changes at the top. McQuaid needs to resign and Verbruggen needs to be removed from the sport. Until that happens, until there’s someone put in there who takes a look at the sport from top to bottom and just literally has an absolute clean out, then nothing will change.

“It will have to be radical and the bottom line is this – unless riders believe that the rules apply to everybody, that doping will not be tolerated in any form and speaking out against doping does not come with a penalty, then there’s no way you can change.”

If Kimmage has one nagging regret about Armstrong’s decision not to contest the USADA charges, it’s that some of the evidence accumulated might not now make its way into the public domain and so it may prove difficult to truly assess the level to which the UCI was complicit in the American’s story. Nonetheless, he feels that the UCI’s heavy-handed attempts to seize jurisdiction of the Armstrong case from USADA in the past month were a stark indictment of its mindset over the past decade and beyond.

“Even by their own miserable standards, the UCI have absolutely disgraced themselves this last month – they had that statement from McQuaid during the Tour saying that they were going to leave it totally up to USADA and then the very next day they’re sending off letters trying to wrest jurisdiction of the process,” Kimmage says. “I mean, my God, come on! Come on!”

Earlier this year, the UCI moved to sue Kimmage for defamation, in response to an interview with Floyd Landis first published in the Sunday Times in January 2011, where Landis detailed the intimidation he suffered at the hands of the UCI and alleged the body’s collusion in covering up an Armstrong positive test in 2001. Kimmage subsequently published the full transcript of the seven hour-long interview on nyvelocity.com and believes there is no better account of the sport’s problems than Landis’ own words.

“There have been so many questions about what’s going on now, but I’d really go back to that interview I did with Floyd,” he says. “If you read that transcript, you understand why the sport is in the mess it’s in now. It opened my eyes to it. It gave me a deeper understanding of what had happened from the time that I had spent out of it and that basically nothing had changed. The truth is in there, and the way out of it is in that interview that Floyd gave. All of the problems are there.”

Clean out

The solution for Kimmage would be to weed out the nefarious figures from all levels of the sport, the kind of independent audit that he freely admits “is pie in the sky because the UCI seem to be accountable to nobody. I mean, God knows what they’re going to do with this Armstrong thing and the stripping of the titles.”

Even so, in an ideal world, Kimmage has firm ideas on who he would expel from the sport and who he would like to continue trying to move cycling in the right direction. After spending the 2008 Tour de France embedded with the Garmin team, Kimmage has been a firm supporter of Jonathan Vaughters’ project, which features figures who themselves raced and doped at US Postal.

“Vaughters and the Garmin team have been caught up in this before and doped themselves but they have really shown a great attitude in terms of taking the sport forward and learning from those lessons,” Kimmage says.

And yet in the past two years, Vaughters has also contributed to one of the more discouraging examples of cycling’s failure to awake from the nightmares of its past. In seeking to form a breakaway league operating outside the UCI’s sphere, Vaughters aligned himself with his former US Postal manager Johan Bruyneel, even while the federal investigator Jeff Novitzky and later USADA were amassing evidence on his activities.

“I agree with you,” Kimmage concedes. “I’ve singled Vaughters out as someone I would keep in the sport but I do have reservations about him. I had reservations about him hiring [Thomas] Dekker, I had reservations about him trying to hire Contador. I thought that was the wrong thing to do.

“But on the whole, I think he has been very positive for the sport and I think were he not working within the constraints of the governing body as it is now under McQuaid and Verbruggen, we could see some real difference there. But I agree, if he was talking about this breakaway league and associating with Bruyneel, that’s a serious black mark against him in my view, definitely.”

ASO

The UCI, of course, are not the sole powerbrokers in the sport. Amaury Sport Organisation [ASO] owns cycling’s golden goose, the Tour de France, but little comment has emanated from Issy-les-Moulineaux in recent days. It wasn’t always thus – in the interregnum between Armstrong’s retirement in 2005 and his comeback in 2009, the ASO took an aggressive stance in its dealings with the UCI.

One product of the stand-off with the UCI was that the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) carried out a hugely successful targeted testing programme at the 2008 Tour, with Riccardo Riccò, Bernhard Kohl and Stefan Schumacher among those to fall foul of a new test for CERA. That autumn, however, Armstrong announced his return to cycling: within weeks, progressive ASO president Patrice Clerc had been removed from his post and a rapprochement between the UCI and the ASO began in earnest.

“One of the most devastating things that happened for me was when they welcomed Armstrong back with open arms in 2009 – talk about raising the white flag on doping and any respect for the race,” Kimmage says sadly. “Well, to welcome him back with open arms, knowing that he had cheated told me a lot about where they were going.

“I remember how animated and upset Patrice Clerc was in Pau in 2007 when Vinokourov tested positive. That was in the day when the ASO called press conferences and told journalists, ‘this is what is happening, we’re not happy with the UCI.’ I remember that being quite impressive and really having a sense that they were deeply upset at how doping was destroying their race, but I’ve had no sense of that since then. So that’s very discouraging.”

Omerta

One of the key problems Kimmage identified in Rough Ride was the culture of silence, the omerta that surrounded cycling’s doping problem. Twenty-two years on, it seems that little has changed. At the time of writing, the highest-ranked to openly applaud USADA’s work has been Gustav Erik Larsson of Vacansoleil-DCM. The Swede lies 156th in the WorldTour standings.

“Obviously, you’ve got cranks like me ranting and railing over the past couple of days but in terms of the riders who are leaders of the sport – the Bradley Wiggins, the Froomes, the Contadors – has there been one strong, coherent statement about this?” Kimmage asks. “Has there been one positive statement where somebody actually applauds an anti-doping agency for doing its work, for exposing a cheat? Has there been any statement from any of these guys about this? Not one.

“What does that tell you? What it tells me is that omerta, the problem that existed in my time when I left the sport in 1989 is still there. For me, it’s not reflective of the fact that these guys are all cheating, even if you could be forgiven for assuming that. My own belief is that the real problem is the fear of speaking out. When there are repercussions for speaking out against doping, it means that nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. For me that’s the real problem there.”

While pressure from the sport’s top table may contribute to the silence – “If you speak out against it, you are deemed to be critical of the leaders and your punishment can come in many shapes and many forms” – Kimmage notes that everyone involved in cycling has a responsibility to facilitate the breaking of the omerta. In particular, the onus is on the media to be more courageous in its approach.

Reminded of Sky’s first rest day press conference at this year’s Tour, when reporters were curtly informed that doping questions would be cut off immediately, Kimmage maintains that journalists present in such situations have no excuses.

“This is your problem. This is where the journalists are complicit in what happens,” he says. “When they come in and say that ‘we’re not talking about doping’ it’s paramount that every journalist in that room gets up and walks out and says ‘we’re not talking to you. If you’re not interested in treating us like journalists, then we’re not going to talk to you.’”

On that point, Kimmage notes that the media has failed to hold Sky to account for the hiring of former Rabobank doctor Gert Leinders, who worked at Rabobank in a period when doping was tolerated on the team, thus rowing back on its original commitment to employ only doctors from the United Kingdom with no previous connection to professional cycling.

“Has nobody gone back to Brailsford about this investigation into Leinders? What’s happened to that?” Kimmage asked. “Is Brailford too busy now teaching Philip Hindes to fall off his bike properly? Is that what he’s been up to?”

Lessons from history

Those seven Tour wins may not ultimately be airbrushed from the record books, and regardless, Lance Armstrong will never lose an entrenched constituency of believers, but for Kimmage, the key point is that cycling – finally – learns from the mistakes of its past. The environment in which Armstrong thrived needs to be cleaned out.

Yet for now, the lie of the land remains strikingly similar to how it appeared in 1999. Back then, the UCI, ASO and large swathes of the press were lauding Armstrong as the saviour of cycling as he opened up the hitherto largely untapped American market.

Fast forward thirteen years and Bradley Wiggins’ Tour victory is bringing cycling centre stage in another new market, Great Britain. The general euphoria was summed up by a British tabloid printing cut-out Wiggins sideburns for fans to wear on the roadside, but on the eve of the Olympics, McQuaid himself went so far as to tell The Associated Press that he was hoping for more British success at the Games.

“It would be great if it happened because it's another edition to this fairy-tale story," McQuaid said. "It would be great for cycling and great for the Olympic Games."

On its launch in 2010, Sky was widely lauded for its proudly stated commitment to clean cycling, but in spite of its current status as the sport’s flagship team, Sky has shown no willingness to break the pervasive silence on the Armstrong affair and its possible repercussions for the future governance of cycling.

“Let’s make no bones about it – this Wiggins victory is huge for the UCI,” Kimmage says. “Britain is a big market with bike sales going through the roof, massive interest there. It’s Big Pat’s back garden and he’s very obviously thrilled by it because every time you look at him, he’s got his arm around Brailsford. So is it a coincidence that something like this happens and we don’t hear a word from any of them? Not Brailsford, not Wiggins, not any of them.

“Is that a coincidence? Because that will upset Pat and we can’t upset Pat. Brailsford understands how the system works and every decision he makes is based upon ‘what does the UCI want? What does McQuaid want me to do here?’”

In an opinion piece on the Armstrong case for the Observer on Sunday, Kimmage asked, “Do we have any reason to believe that the people running the sport really want to fix it?” Twenty-two years after first asking the question, Kimmage can be forgiven for not holding his breath on a straight answer at this point.

[TheGreenElves]

I have decided to call myself The Lance Armstrong, buy his old bike, claim his titles & demand entry into next years tour. If anyone objects I will call them a bigot. Lance Armstrong then, lance Armstrong now, lance Armstrong forever. I don't do cycling away.

[Gaz]

They should just let everyone go at it to make it a level playing field. I'd love to see 200 doped-up cyclists gunning down the Alps stoned out of their tits.

Utter fail if you are actually being serious?

[ICTChris]

Yet for now, the lie of the land remains strikingly similar to how it appeared in 1999. Back then, the UCI, ASO and large swathes of the press were lauding Armstrong as the saviour of cycling as he opened up the hitherto largely untapped American market.

Fast forward thirteen years and Bradley Wiggins’ Tour victory is bringing cycling centre stage in another new market, Great Britain. The general euphoria was summed up by a British tabloid printing cut-out Wiggins sideburns for fans to wear on the roadside, but on the eve of the Olympics, McQuaid himself went so far as to tell The Associated Press that he was hoping for more British success at the Games.

“It would be great if it happened because it's another edition to this fairy-tale story," McQuaid said. "It would be great for cycling and great for the Olympic Games."

There's no way I can claim to be as big a cycling fan or as knowledgable as some on this thread but I think this is a pivotal point. Armstrong was allowed to get away with what was going on because he was such a huge star, he was the biggest cyclist on the planet, probably the biggest star in the history of the sport. The thought process is pretty easy to understand - he isn't doing anything that other people aren't doing, there's no harm in covering up the test, it's for the greater good. What that mentality does though is normalise doping in the sport. The quote from Landis in the Observer article I linked to sums it up - If I wait long enough I'll have the chance to win without doing this [doping]', but there was no scenario in my mind where in my lifetime I was going to get a chance to race the Tour and win clean.. That's the logical result of giving Armstrong the benefit of the doubt.

From reading about the case it seems obvious what's happened - Armstrong doesn't want his day in court because rider after rider will declare, on oath, that they saw Armstrong doping, the test results will be brought up and analysed and the whole world, rather than just some cycling geeks, will hear testimony like that in the link that TSAR posted earlier in thsi thread. Doing this, that evidence won't be heard (unless it's leaked, get Assange onto it) and he can claim that it's bitter cheats and tampered samples.

It is interesting what Kimmage says about COntador, Wiggins etc not making comment. I'd guess that they just don't want to talk about doping because it reinforces the image in the general sporting publics mind that cycling is a sport for dopers and that they are just lucky for not getting caught (well in Wiggins case as Contador has already been caught but you know).

[Desert Nomad]

Omerta is a vicious circle, but all it takes is for one (brave)man to break it. Needs to be a star to really drive it home though. Wiggins should be that man, he certainly isn't afraid to speak, come on Brad, why not eh?

[T_S_A_R]

On that point, Kimmage notes that the media has failed to hold Sky to account for the hiring of former Rabobank doctor Gert Leinders, who worked at Rabobank in a period when doping was tolerated on the team, thus rowing back on its original commitment to employ only doctors from the United Kingdom with no previous connection to professional cycling.

“Has nobody gone back to Brailsford about this investigation into Leinders? What’s happened to that?” Kimmage asked. “Is Brailford too busy now teaching Philip Hindes to fall off his bike properly? Is that what he’s been up to?”

this times a million.

how hard it is for someone to go up to manchester and ask brailsford if he has asked leinders whether or not he has ever been involved in doping riders?

[Gnash]

Omerta is a vicious circle, but all it takes is for one (brave)man to break it. Needs to be a star to really drive it home though. Wiggins should be that man, he certainly isn't afraid to speak, come on Brad, why not eh?

Even if Wiggins is doping, if and when he gets caught it wouldn't make much difference if he comes out now to break the "omerta". The only thing that could be stopping him is the reaction he would face from the rest of the cycling world - which I suppose is the how the omerta holds its power.

[Desert Nomad]

Dear oh dear

[Carilly]

Is he what?????? GAY???? Yes as the day is long!

[xbl]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/19433990

The bulk of that evidence is testimony from at least a dozen of his former team-mates and associates, but it is not, as has been reported, evidence gathered during the federal investigation into allegations of systematic doping at the US Postal Service cycling team.

...

Using state money to buy performance-enhancing drugs would have been a criminal offence, but it was decided this would be too difficult to prove and the two-year investigation was halted earlier this year. But Usada has not had access, despite requests, to the evidence the Food and Drug Administration investigators gathered, and has built its own case.

I'm following this with interest. If they don't have something better than testimony from losing drugs cheats who already have a history of lies and cheating, then they're going to be a laughing stock!

[xbl]

Except there are guys who have never been caught coming out and saying both they and Armstrong doped.

So basically, drugs cheats. See my post above. As I said, I hope they have some actual evidence. You know, some of these blood and urine tests that people claim exist.

[Hampden Diehard]

If we are saying that people who are willing to testify is absolute proof, as some are here, then what about the likes of the Tommy Sheridan case? Both sides swore under oath in court that either "A" happened, or that it didn't happen. Some of them were lying. That's what people do. Other than the testimonies, what other proof is to be produced?

Frankly, I admire Armstrong and what he achieved, particularly after his cancer and i desperately want to believe him. Who needs the character of your heroes smashed to bits? I'm still trying to get over Gary Glitter being outed as a paedo. And baldy.

[ICTChris]

I'm following this with interest. If they don't have something better than testimony from losing drugs cheats who already have a history of lies and cheating, then they're going to be a laughing stock!

If you are making a case about doping in sport then it's inevitable that some of your witnesses are going to be drug cheats. If witness after witness gives testimony to the same events then it's evidence. If the witnesses aren't credible then why didn't Armstrong go to arbitration and use his legal team to attack their credibility?

[xbl]

Some of the witnesses being drugs cheats fair enough, but a roomful of liars isnt sufficient on its own. We've had several pages on here talking about positive tests and known evidence, so presumably we'll see some of that?

Also, one of the claims that I read up on, based on this thread, points out that those who claimed that there were positive samples had no way of identifying who's sample it was. But i will be following this with interest to see if they have any actual real evidence.