if they were all clean during LAs 7 wins ?

[Mrs John Murphy]

Yip.
Recovery is what its all about in a GT, LA could do really well in many types of events but was prone to off days.


Again agree - but as BPC corrected me on once, that would have been LA against a lot of riders who were on big programs.
So, if the EPO generation was 10 years later, perhaps he could have got top 10, but no way he would win.

As others have said - it is not as if Armstrong was riding clean at Motorola.

Maybe he could have got a top 10 by being in some breaks but his climbing and ITT was not very good at that point.

He was almost an hour and half back on the winner, and 1h 15 on 10th place. Considering he moved up 3 spots on the basis of his stage 18 win, he was nearer 40th than 30th. He gained time as well by being in the break on stage 13 where he picked up 12 minutes. So he picked up 20 minutes by being a one day rider which he was at the time.

I find it a bit of a stretch to believe that the doping programs of 2/3 of the riders ahead of him was so much more advanced than the Motorola program to make such a difference.

The big programs - Festina, ONCE, Banesto, Gewiss, Mapei, but while the others were doping were they really that far ahead of Motorola? Were Motorola really the poor country cousin when it came to doping?

 

[airstream]

history

It is false. History and life are never so simple. This assumption bristles with simplicity. It is wrong just because a bike racer often finds himself in cycling (how a man does in in real life), explores himself and rarely finds himself to embody his potential completely. It is banal, but a rider becomes a GT rider. No one is born with that and not everyone can open himself up in this quality on young age. Honestly, I don't know whose that thought, perpaps Lemond's or just LA's haters' one. I just disagree. However, if Armstrong had been out of nowhere, I would probably been agreed. But he already was a great cyclist before the Tour, the world champion, the 1998 high place finisher, a rider with an excellent set of basic skills, a sportsman with mad ego and unhealthily huge ambitions. He had a pedigree for big deals.

 

[WinterRider]

It is false. History and life are never so simple. This assumption bristles with simplicity. It is wrong just because a bike racer often finds himself in cycling (how a man does in in real life), explores himself and rarely finds himself to embody his potential completely. It is banal, but a rider becomes a GT rider. No one is born with that and not everyone can open himself up in this quality on young age. Honestly, I don't know whose that thought, perpaps Lemond's or just LA's haters' one. I just disagree. However, if Armstrong had been out of nowhere, I would probably been agreed. But he already was a great cyclist before the Tour, the world champion, the 1998 high place finisher, a rider with an excellent set of basic skills, a sportsman with mad ego and unhealthily huge ambitions. He had a pedigree for big deals.

Armstrong was associating with know dope pedalers from at least 18 years old:

http://www.gazette.com/articles/carmichael-149946-armstrong-coach.html

any there have been many allusions to earlier doping by seemingly knowledgeable posters on these forums.

The only skill Armstrong is know to have excelled at is doping. His only athletic result that has not been tarnished by drugs is a 4th place finish in the Texas swim meet at the age of 12.

 

[hrotha]

Armstrong was actually a pretty good time-trialist before his cancer. You don't need to distort history just because we all hate the guy.

 

[WinterRider]

Armstrong was actually a pretty good time-trialist before his cancer. You don't need to distort history just because we all hate the guy.

Drugs are drugs. His history is very long, and his true potential a complete mystery.

 

[hrotha]

Drugs are drugs. His history is very long, and his true potential a complete mystery.

Doesn't stop people from saying he couldn't time-trial at all before his cancer.

 

[Bosco10]

Armstrong was actually a pretty good time-trialist before his cancer. You don't need to distort history just because we all hate the guy.

Pretty good is not win-win-elite though. But why did Lance suddenly become TDF elite post cancer?

 

[Mrs John Murphy]

Armstrong was actually a pretty good time-trialist before his cancer. You don't need to distort history just because we all hate the guy.

Nothing to do with distorting history. His ITT performances in the TDF pre-cancer with the exception of prologues was not great. As we're discussing his likely TDF performance without drugs they seem like a good measure.

If you are coming in behind Pantani then I don't think it is unreasonable to say he was a poor ITTer .

 

[Dr. Maserati]

As others have said - it is not as if Armstrong was riding clean at Motorola.

Maybe he could have got a top 10 by being in some breaks but his climbing and ITT was not very good at that point.

He was almost an hour and half back on the winner, and 1h 15 on 10th place. Considering he moved up 3 spots on the basis of his stage 18 win, he was nearer 40th than 30th. He gained time as well by being in the break on stage 13 where he picked up 12 minutes. So he picked up 20 minutes by being a one day rider which he was at the time.

I find it a bit of a stretch to believe that the doping programs of 2/3 of the riders ahead of him was so much more advanced than the Motorola program to make such a difference.

The big programs - Festina, ONCE, Banesto, Gewiss, Mapei, but while the others were doping were they really that far ahead of Motorola? Were Motorola really the poor country cousin when it came to doping?

The simple answer to this is yes. (Well documented in FLTL) Motorola did not have an organized team program until 95.

But I suspect that LA was already on EPO before starting up with Ferrari in late 95, but he was not getting the bang for his buck he expected.
So as regards doping, LA was on a better program then most of his team-mates at Motorola, he still was probably behind some of the better set up teams.

 

[skidmark]

As others have said - it is not as if Armstrong was riding clean at Motorola.

Maybe he could have got a top 10 by being in some breaks but his climbing and ITT was not very good at that point.

He was almost an hour and half back on the winner, and 1h 15 on 10th place. Considering he moved up 3 spots on the basis of his stage 18 win, he was nearer 40th than 30th. He gained time as well by being in the break on stage 13 where he picked up 12 minutes. So he picked up 20 minutes by being a one day rider which he was at the time.

I find it a bit of a stretch to believe that the doping programs of 2/3 of the riders ahead of him was so much more advanced than the Motorola program to make such a difference.

The big programs - Festina, ONCE, Banesto, Gewiss, Mapei, but while the others were doping were they really that far ahead of Motorola? Were Motorola really the poor country cousin when it came to doping?

I would also take option 1 - he wouldn't have won any - but I don't think analyzing where he ended up vis-a-vis the overall pre-cancer is really useful. Tactics are different for GC riders vs. non-GC riders, and Lance was a decent, but non-GC, rider (which says it all, really). Just want to throw out there that his 30th place or whatever isn't necessarily indicative of him trying as hard as he possibly could to get a good GC place. It's just the nature of cycling that once the elastic snaps and you're not with the leaders, you take it easy if you want enough recovery to get a stage win or something. Analyzing GC times beyond the top 15 (and sometimes even beyond the top 5-8) is distorted at best, and meaningless most of the time. Maybe a pre-cancer Lance, if he tried as hard as he could, might get top 15, who the hell knows. But I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have won, that is for certain.

 

[airstream]

How a classic rider can be good at TT if it is not his specialization? Cancellara was great on the cobbles not at once and there are lots of examples like that. Anyone may have hidden talents. Why do you deny this guys?

 

[Mrs John Murphy]

The thing is - how different was Armstrong from the 35 guys who finished ahead of him in terms of program and degree of doping, I find it hard to believe that they were all on a significantly more advanced program than he was.

I think top 20, if he got lucky with breaks and the parcours was in his favour.

Who knows he might have won, but only if he'd channelled Oscar Pereiro and picked up a 50 minute head start.

 

[Benotti69]

Not if he had a 30 minute lead from a break could he have won clean.

It takes a certain constitution to be able to take punishment day after day and come out on top. And that is not Armstrong.

But this is all rhetorical, achieves and proves nothing.

 

[airstream]

It is an interesting situation guys. For instance we have 2 riders:

1. A promising GC contender, who uses doping (for simplicity let's imagine all riders do this) and shows himself as talented gc rider on young age. Say at 27 this hypothetical guy reaches his first GT win; [Contador / Nibali]

2. A great TT'er or classics rider, who achieved a lot in his initial specialiation. All of a sudden a guy decides to set himself a new goal to become a GT contender. He passes certain VAM tests and recognizes his nature allows him to win GTs potentially. He trains a lot, dopes and wins GT in a few years. [Armstrong / Wiggins]

So we have doper and doper. Why for you the first rider is a disgrace and out-of-law cheat whereas the second one is a legit doper. Explain to me this pls.

 

[Big Doopie]

his more accurate tt ability: (probably relatively epo-free)

http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/road/2005/mar05/parisnice05/?id=results/parisnice050

140th.

ouch.

the guy who said that the reason he was so good is that he trained year round and never put on more than a couple of pounds.

he would drop out of paris-nice. headed immediately to tenerife. and met up with ferrari. two weeks later he was at the front of the race in the tour de flandres.

the fraud would never have won a tour. i reckon his career -- if he even had one -- may have been relatively short-lived without doping.

 

[MarkvW]

"If they were all clean during LA's 7 wins?"

How would the peloton be constituted?

You don't just dope to be in the peloton. You dope to get in the peloton. If everybody was clean, then the peloton--especially the team leaders--would look a lot different. The clean peloton would have been slanted way in favor of riders with high natural HCT. Those people are often not the people who respond best to EPO. The whole topography of the peloton would have been completely reshaped.

And if they were all clean, there never would have been a Postal Service team. That team was built around dope from the top down to the bottom. No dope--no Posties. The Posties weren't just a team--they were a Conspiracy built around doping.

Without a totally doped-up team, completely built around him, Lance couldn't possibly have become a Tour team leader. So he'd be out of the contending equation.

There is always the problem of determining the meaning of "clean." Years of ongoing doping permanently modify the human body. Is such a modified rider clean? I believe not. That would wipe out Lance and an awful lot of the people that we routinely consider as Lance's challengers.

The pro peloton is, and always has been, such a doped up freakshow that I can't begin to imagine what a clean peloton would be like.

Somebody ought to write a novel about a clean Tour de France. It would be great fiction!

 

[elapid]

It is an interesting situation guys. For instance we have 2 riders:

1. A promising GC contender, who uses doping (for simplicity let's imagine all riders do this) and shows himself as talented gc rider on young age. Say at 27 this hypothetical guy reaches his first GT win; [Contador / Nibali]

2. A great TT'er or classics rider, who achieved a lot in his initial specialiation. All of a sudden a guy decides to set himself a new goal to become a GT contender. He passes certain VAM tests and recognizes his nature allows him to win GTs potentially. He trains a lot, dopes and wins GT in a few years. [Armstrong / Wiggins]

So we have doper and doper. Why for you the first rider is a disgrace and out-of-law cheat whereas the second one is a legit doper. Explain to me this pls.

Two things win you GTs: TTing and climbing. A one-day specialist does not make a good GT contender. You talk about lots of training. Lance went from a doped one-day specialist in 1996 to cancer treatment to coming back to the professional peloton in late 1998. A 2-year break from competitive racing, as well as being treated for cancer during this time, is barely enough time to get back into the professional peloton let alone develop into an entirely different rider (one-day specialist to 3-week specialist). I just recently read Robbie MacEwen's biography - it took him a year to return back to his previous form after breaking his leg, including 6+ months of hard racing in the peloton, and that's returning back to his speciality of sprinting. Lance did not have the physiology of a GT contender, did not have the results pre-1998 as a GT contender, and did not have the climbing or TTing skills of a GT contender. Number 1 - no way would he have even been in the top 10 clean.

 

[86TDFWinner]

Option 1, he was never a GT contender. At best he could have done something similar to what Voeckler did a couple of years ago and pick up big time in a breakaway to nick a top 10/20 spot, but I doubt he had the capability for that.

This. I think it's been said here MANY times in the past w/o doping, Wonderboy wouldn't have won squat. Iirc, his best tour finish pre epo was something like 24th.

 

[Bat Man]

It isn't just propaganda to say he was a different rider after cancer not only for doping. Even Hamilton said in his CBS interview that the type of training that Armstrong did after cancer was completely different, his mindset, his approach were different. He had doped before but never got that level of improvement. Lance Armstrong is a immature person in many ways, as is well documented. He matured late as a rider.

Look at the evidence from his last tour win. According to Hincapie, he used 1 blood bag for the entire three weeks. Hamilton and Landis used 3 that year, yet were miles off his level.

During the comeback, whilst Armstrong's blood profile indicated doping, it was at a relatively low level, yet he still made the podium at 38. He was beaten by a rider who broke the power record that year. Pretty impressive. And lastly, he was the smartest on the bike. Jonathan Vaughters explained on this very forum how the rider with the best physiology in the lab is not the best on the road. He himself had a great engine but had poor depth perception, which I guess means he couldn't suffer very well. It's about tactics and psychology - and Armstrong got very good at that. In his early career he was too immature to read a race well.

I think he is massively underestimated by the critics who tend to use binary logic to assess him. Cyclists level of performance isn't stationary in time. LeMond says you can lose 20% just by over training - there are so many different factors at play.

 

[MarkvW]

This. I think it's been said here MANY times in the past w/o doping, Wonderboy wouldn't have won squat. Iirc, his best tour finish pre epo was something like 24th.

I fault your reasoning because you are comparing a hypothetically clean Lance against an EPO peloton that was doped to the gills.

But I agree with your conclusion, though.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

It isn't just propaganda to say he was a different rider after cancer not only for doping. Even Hamilton said in his CBS interview that the type of training that Armstrong did after cancer was completely different, his mindset, his approach were different. He had doped before but never got that level of improvement. Lance Armstrong is a immature person in many ways, as is well documented. He matured late as a rider.

Look at the evidence from his last tour win. According to Hincapie, he used 1 blood bag for the entire three weeks. Hamilton and Landis used 3 that year, yet were miles off his level.

During the comeback, whilst Armstrong's blood profile indicated doping, it was at a relatively low level, yet he still made the podium at 38. He was beaten by a rider who broke the power record that year. Pretty impressive. And lastly, he was the smartest on the bike. Jonathan Vaughters explained on this very forum how the rider with the best physiology in the lab is not the best on the road. He himself had a great engine but had poor depth perception, which I guess means he couldn't suffer very well. It's about tactics and psychology - and Armstrong got very good at that. In his early career he was too immature to read a race well.

I think he is massively underestimated by the critics who tend to use binary logic to assess him. Cyclists level of performance isn't stationary in time. LeMond says you can lose 20% just by over training - there are so many different factors at play.

Even believing that story from Hincapie (which i dont) it would be pretty amazing that Hamilton finished the race at all even with 3 BBs, as he was suspended by 2005.
Also, Floyd says he took 2 BBs in 2005, not 3.

 

[WinterRider]

This. I think it's been said here MANY times in the past w/o doping, Wonderboy wouldn't have won squat. Iirc, his best tour finish pre epo was something like 24th.

His best Tour finish pre EPO? Which Tour did he ride without EPO? We know he was taking it pre cancer at a minimum, and we have only his word (in a lie filled interview with Opra) that he started in the "mid 90s".

All his results are trash.

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

If Pantani wasn't assassinated at the 1999 Giro by Hein Verbruggen and the maffia nobody would even be asking if wonderboy was clean/able to win a GT. Really, Armstrong winning a GT, hahahhaha. Ardennes Classics material.

I will even go further, thanks to the Pantini - murder by Hein and his maffia friends wonderboy HAD to win that 1999 Tour de France. And subsequentually all of those seven laughable wins.

In a clean field the boy wonder would never have a chance in TT's or high mountains.

 

[Bat Man]

Even believing that story from Hincapie (which i dont) it would be pretty amazing that Hamilton finished the race at all even with 3 BBs, as he was suspended by 2005.
Also, Floyd says he took 2 BBs in 2005, not 3.

It's possible Hincapie was lying, but I don't see why he would in a private conversation with Leipheimer. They are two calm guys not prone to bull****.

You're correct Hamilton didn't compete that year, though he tended to take the most blood transfusions of anyone according to Coyle at least. Landis, however, did take 3 BBs according to his interview with Kimmage.

 

[fatsprintking]

Dont we understand that Armstrongs method was to be ahead of the game? Maybe he only took one BB because he was taking something else that the others did not have access to? Maybe he told Hincapie that he only used one blood bag to f--- with him because thats the type of a-----e he is?

We dont know the full story, but what we know is bad and it does not get any better. Armstong would only take less of something if he was taking more of something esle that others did not have or know about - regardless of his claims he is not conservative in his approach - the only risk that he was adverse to was the risk of loosing.