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Did Nike pay $500,000 to Verbruggen to cover up Armstrong positive?

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unclem0nty said:
Throw in the fact that this was supposed to be the post-Festina "tour of redemption" & you have a perfect storm. The UCI would hardly have needed any financial encouragement to cover it up, which makes me suspect that if there's any truth in this (PLEASE LET THERE BE LOADS) it's as much to do with Lance wanting to make sure that everyone's hands were as dirty as possible, to minimise the future risk of somebody blowing the whistle on him.

you ninja'd me here quite well. ;)
 
unclem0nty said:
The corticosteroid positive was near the end of the 99 Tour, stage 15 I think - Armstrong had a healthy lead in the GC, and one of the greatest (& so most lucrative) comeback stories in sporting history was thus nearing its soul-stirring, cash-jangling final chapter.

Throw in the fact that this was supposed to be the post-Festina "tour of redemption" & you have a perfect storm. The UCI would hardly have needed any financial encouragement to cover it up, which makes me suspect that if there's any truth in this (PLEASE LET THERE BE LOADS) it's as much to do with Lance wanting to make sure that everyone's hands were as dirty as possible, to minimise the future risk of somebody blowing the whistle on him.

Yes a company which happily pays small filipino children 70c per day to make $250 shoes would probably shirk at dropping 500k on the Armstrong Tour of Redemption train :rolleyes:
 
Jun 26, 2009
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There's a lot to this: editorial boards and publishers won't let accusations like this print unless legal has gone throught them - there is clearly a paper trail. Here's Nike's senior management: http://nikeinc.com/pages/executives
Their email address protocol is firstname.lastname@nike.com.
Might want to ask Derek Kent, who was global communications director at Nike during the '00s and is now heading up communications for the Canadian Olympic committee - sure he has some insight...
 
Oct 22, 2009
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lean said:
you ninja'd me here quite well. ;)
Yep, sorry about that.:)

The great thing about all the details we're now getting on the dumbfounding extent of Armstrong's scheming nastiness is that NOTHING IS BEYOND BELIEF.

He & Bruyneel really could have persuaded Nike to shove Verbruggen a massive bung he didn't even want or expect, just to ensure everyone was enmeshed in his great big web of evil $h1t.

Of course it must have helped to be certain that the eagerly corruptible Verbruggen would happily grap any fat brown envelope shoved into his hand.
 
Aug 7, 2010
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Some more....

BOD Pre-requisites:

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS:
A candidate must possess the following individual attributes:

Desire to represent and serve the interests of all shareholders.
Keen intelligence.
Mature judgment.
The highest personal and professional ethics, integrity, and moral character.
Ability to remain objective and independent.
Willingness to ask difficult questions.
Capacity to objectively appraise management’s performance.
Excellent inter-personal skills and superior communication skills.
Ability to develop a productive working relationship with Board members and senior management.
Meet the independence standards of the NYSE and the Company.
Have no prohibited interlocking relationships.
Involvement only in activities or interests that do not conflict with or compromise a director’s responsibilities to the Company and its shareholders.
Meet the board’s age election requirements.
Willingness and ability to serve on the Board for several years to develop knowledge of the Company’s business and make a significant contribution over time.
Ability to devote sufficient time to discharge the duties of a Board member.
 
The timing of the positive during the TDF does seem critical, as going in LA was not given much of a chance to win. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the positive test might have occurred in the Prologue, and that makes sense, because it was a trace amount resulting from intentional doping earlier, before the Tour. One would expect that over time, less and less would be present in his body, and so the most likely time he would test positive would be the earliest time in the Tour that he was tested, which was obviously the Prologue.

However, remember that it takes several days or more for the sample to be tested and the results presented to the rider. Here is an article that suggests the positive became an issue only near the end of the Tour. I love this quote from LA:

''They say stress causes cancer,'' said Armstrong, who had testicular cancer two and a half years ago and underwent three months of chemotherapy. ''So if you want to avoid cancer, don't come to the Tour de France and wear the yellow jersey'' of the overall leader. ''It's too much stress.''
 
This is pure speculation but Armstrong team would have had the UCI/Verbruggen by the balls after the first coverup.

"If i ever test positive again im bringing you down with me"
 
Jun 15, 2009
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Roadent said:
There's a lot to this: editorial boards and publishers won't let accusations like this print unless legal has gone throught them - there is clearly a paper trail. Here's Nike's senior management: http://nikeinc.com/pages/executives
Their email address protocol is firstname.lastname@nike.com.
Might want to ask Derek Kent, who was global communications director at Nike during the '00s and is now heading up communications for the Canadian Olympic committee - sure he has some insight...

So if i want to write pvuck you Mr Knight for sponsoring Armstrong and helping to milk cancer patients, i write:

PhilipH.Knight@nike.com
or
Philip.Knight@nike.com
?
 
Oct 16, 2010
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unclem0nty said:
...
Of course it must have helped to be certain that the eagerly corruptible Verbruggen would happily grap any fat brown envelope shoved into his hand.
cut the guy some slack.
life in the netherlands aint cheap these days, you know.
 
Oct 22, 2009
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Merckx index said:
The timing of the positive during the TDF does seem critical.

Indeed it does. OK, so you're right - the sample WAS taken during the prologue. Would have been a few days wait for the test result... Armstrong won the prologue, but he also won the stage 8 ITT, which would have marked him out as a genuine potential winner.

In any event, it wasn't until stage 15 that someone leaked the hushed-up positive to the press, thus sparking off the postdated TUE farce:

In 1999, while Armstrong was on his way to his first Tour victory after beating cancer, a French newspaper received a tip that Armstrong had tested positive for a corticosteroid and had no therapeutic use exemption (TUE) on his medical form. Armstrong, who was riding for the Postal team, had just said in a press conference that he did not have any prescriptions for banned products. When the team discovered that the newspaper had received the tip, panic hit Armstrong and his inner-circle, according to Emma O'Reilly, a soigneur from Ireland who worked with the team and specifically with Armstrong. She was in the hotel room after the 15th Tour stage when, she says, Armstrong and team officials devised a plan.

"They agreed to backdate a medical prescription," O'Reilly tells SI. "They'd gotten a heads up that [Armstrong's] steroid count was high and decided they would actually do a backdated prescription and pretend it was something for saddle sores."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/magazine/05/23/lance.armstrong/index.html#ixzz29TP3Vy9t
 
hfer07 said:
BINGO!!

If the money trace is found-then is NIKE taking the toll on LA's falling too. either way, NIKE will drop him sooner than it was expected, since this kind of accusations are serious & do damage their so called "Public image".....

If there is a 500k payment it’s not going to read Nike Corp -> 500,000 H. Verbruggen.

It’s going to be a subaccount of a child account of a offshoot account in Cayman which wired small transactions over a 18 month period to an account in Switzerland in gold bullion which has now closed down.
 
Jun 26, 2009
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Phil won't have an email address that is accessible by the public - better to go to US brand VPs and BOD members: as someone upstream said, they don't need this kind of thing...John Slusher, VP of Global Sports Marketing would be a good place to start...
 
Oct 11, 2012
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Carols said:
Lance the gift that just keeps on giving! This would be HUGH if it can be proven!!!

?

hugh-grant.jpg
 
Jul 19, 2009
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He tested positive for the first stage, and its announcement was made after the second rest day (Tarbes). At Tarbes press conference, Armstrong had stated 2 or 3 times that he had NO TUE on that TDF after having put under pressure with suggestion of doping according his stupefiant transformation!
 
Oct 22, 2009
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thehog said:
If there is a 500k payment it’s not going to read Nike Corp -> 500,000 H. Verbruggen.

It’s going to be a subaccount of a child account of a offshoot account in Cayman which wired small transactions over a 18 month period to an account in Switzerland in gold bullion which has now closed down.
Well, you'd certainly have thought so. But USADA didn't seem to have too much trouble linking Armstrong with Ferrari to the tune of a million dollars, and I recall that Frank Schleck left an incriminating paper trial that connected him directly to Fuentes.

So we can but hope.
 
Oct 22, 2009
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poupou said:
He tested positive for the first stage, and its announcement was made after the second rest day (Tarbes). At Tarbes press conference, Armstrong had stated 2 or 3 times that he had NO TUE on that TDF after having put under pressure with suggestion of doping according his stupefiant transformation!

Yep, but I don't think any "official" announcement about the positive was made at the Tarbes press conference. It was a journalist whose newspaper had been leaked the story about it.

Prologue: July 3.
Tarbes rest day: July 19.

Surely the lab would have given the test results to the UCI long before then. But the UCI didn't announce them, so there was pretty definitely a cover up.
 
unclem0nty said:
Well, you'd certainly have thought so. But USADA didn't seem to have too much trouble linking Armstrong with Ferrari to the tune of a million dollars, and I recall that Frank Schleck left an incriminating paper trial that connected him directly to Fuentes.

So we can but hope.

You can thank the Italian Authorities for that not USADA.

Alas that’s slightly different. Whereby Armstrong is paying for “coaching services” not paying off a sports administrator. It’s in his interest to ensure its comes from regular accounts.

Why do you think the UCI announced the donation for the Sysmex machine?

It’s better to pretend that these payments are “normal” especially if they’re regular.
 
Aug 13, 2009
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Verbuggen has multiple corporate entities. He is primarily a marketing guy who have been in the broadcast rights business for decades. It would be very simple for Nike to pay one of his corporations and bury it as a marketing expense
 

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