silverrocket said:
Actually I understood exactly what he was saying, and why, and how it was linked to the conversation. You might want to check out that reading comprehension course you suggested for PouPou before you insult fellow forum members.
I appreciate that you have risen to the defense of a fellow forum member who you feel has been unfairly disparaged. You are, however, wrong. Let's review.
The ostensible subject of this thread is "the effect of PEDs on cycling performance." What has been discussed through most of the thread, however, is Armstrong and whether he'd have won one or more GTs without PEDs. Poupou has been participating in this discussion, and at one point even provided an attractive chart.
I said
Maxiton said:
As for whether he'd have ever won a Tour without the enhancement and protection: that's really a way of asking if he was somehow deserving, from a sporting standpoint, of any part of his success, I think. And the sad thing is, there's no way of answering that question with any certainty. In the end it doesn't really matter, though. Because none of those Tours was a real contest.
I was postulating something, in other words, about the nature of our discussion, about its very basis: if what we were really asking, unconsciously, was whether LA deserved any part of his success.
My answer was that, in the first place, it doesn't matter, because how he would have performed in a PED-free environment is pure conjecture. It doesn't matter for a more fundamental reason, I added, and that is that none of these Tours was a real sporting contest, anyway (the outcomes being effectively predetermined) - and therefore the critical factor we are occupied with trying to pin down - namely, native athletic ability - is not correlate to them. (That's the long-winded, remedial way of saying it.)
To this, PouPou responded
poupou said:
If I robbed a bank is it correct because I could have earn that monnay by work?
There is no reason to consider if Lance or any dopers deserve their cheated wins.
Wooosh. Clearly, he missed the entire thrust of my comment, thinking instead perhaps that it was I who asking whether LA deserved his wins, but in any case not understanding my point. Later I realized that English is not his first language, so perhaps that explains it.
Then you step in, and, well . . . here we are. I've resisted the urge to be nasty here, or cutting, but as I said up top, and as I hope you can now see and admit, both Poupou and you were wrong, and not reading very well.
And the only reason I haven't taken all this to PMs (for you mods who might be reading), is because I don't like being called out unfairly in public by people who don't make an effort to understand the conversation, number one; and, number two, my point about the nature of our discussion is viable, I think, and worth considering further.