Lance Armstrong

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I am glad to hear that Lance is better liked. However, he still likes to thumb his nose at the Tour's traditions, as even this year one day he said he wouldn't wear the yellow jersey even though he was in the lead. The Tour's officials told him he would be DQed if he didn't don it, so he put it on.

As Jim Rome is fond of saying, "If you aren't cheating you aren't really trying" and "it is only cheating if you get caught". I don't agree with him, but it does seem to be the MO for today's athletes. Of course that seems to be the MO for any enterprise where there are millions of $'s at stake.

 

This is a fact I got from my english teacher who was on the Canadian alternate cycling team' next to body building, cycling is probably the "dirtiest" sport in the world. So I would be surprised if Armstrong did not dope.

 

Other point is that, even with doping he's a remakable athlete still.

In the sense that when I start doping, that wouldn't make me a crack athlete able to win the tour. It merely gives an unfair advantage that improves a good athlete. And yes, I don't think he's much worse or better than the rest of the lot.

Even when the EPO was a remainder from his cancer therapy, so what?

The result of the test only tells there was EPO in his blood in 1999, nothing more. Now I'd be curios to know why, which is a legitimate question as EPO was banned in 1999 already.

As I consider the result corrcet, flatly denying it IMO doesn't really make Armstrong any more credible, to the contrary.

[ August 28, 2005, 21:08: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

They all dope. Armstong did it, Pantani did it, our great Merckx did it. *shrugs*

Imho it doesn't make the sport any less attractive. If everyone dopes you can just as well ignore it and take the tour for the superhuman effort it still is.

So yes he has been the best tour cyclist of an all-doping taking peloton for the past seven years.

Just a shame they're destroying their bodies. Then again it takes a top athlete's mind set to want to push himself always a bit further till he's over the self-destruction line. At which point he continues to push.

 

He did come out and say that he had taken EPO as a part of his cancer treatment back in 1996. Just read a headline.

 

It would still be an excellent excuse, plus, why didn't he say that in 1996 already?

 

There's so many ways to avoid getting busted that it almost makes drug testing useless. There is so much money involved at that level that people will do just about anything to be that tiny bit better. Many athletes would consider a life shortened by 10-15 years to be an acceptable price for a gold medal or seven Tour de France victories.

I don't know enough about the Armstrong allegations to make a comment on it; it wouldn't surprise me either way. Nothing will be done about it either way - and again, I'm not surprised.

As Uytuun said, if you think that any professional sport is clean, you're kidding yourself. If you think that the best of the best are all clean, you're dreaming. If they're super-fit and super-human without super-juicing, how come so many ex-athletes die so young? Not all of them can have freakish natural heart conditions.

 

Surprise, Surprise

 

Not true, EPO came on the "black list" in 2000, so before that everyone was freely experimenting with it, and apparently Lance as well. But hey...if it's not on the list, you can't be punished. They probably found some new sort of drug by now, that's not on the list and almost intracable, the doctors in the world of professional sports are pretty damn good at that.

If they have a well preserved sample from Lance with EPO in it, it proves that Lance cheated in 1999, the reason why he didn't come out positive on EPO after 1999, is that either he stopped cheating, or his medical advisors found something new which is not yet on the list. There are so many ways to cheat in this sport it's not even funny anymore.

 

For myself, I never really followed Armstrong or the last American who kept winning the TdF -- but I was immediately skeptical of claims that he was doping.

Why?

Because the accusations came from the French.

If he needed EPO to win, then why did he keep winning after TdF had an EPO test?

 

He may come back, just to piss the french. These days we have La Vuelta a España and Discovery Channel team's boss said here that is almost 99% sure that he will return.

This was something I didn't know.

 

Nah, there was something on MSN earlier today that said Lance has decided to spend his competitive energy some other way, that he doesn't want to put up with all the BS that accompanies the cycling.

 

Yep, that was his heart speaking the first time, but after some consideration he thought it was best not to make a comeback, and ignore the French and their accusations altogether. He said he wanted to stay away from France as far as possible.