byu123 said:
This is precisely my point and all I have ever asserted on this issue. The cobbled together case that . . . "Lance Armstrong doped" . . . is based on sleight of hand by French journalists; 6 year old bodily substance samples, which may or may not have been altered or degraded and may or may not be Armstrong's; which were analyzed by a person with a bias and an agenda, according to standards and protocols accepted and followed by no one, to produce a sheet of paper that says "there's EPO here in these samples" here in 2005 and . . . "Voila!" . . . Armstrong doped in the 1999 TDF.
This is a far cry from any sort of proof that when Armstrong rode those stages in 1999 he had banned EPO in his system. Pure and simple.
"Foodforthought" you going to make it "ugly" for me? Go for it . . . display for all of us your high brow intellect in the process. The amusement meter may edge even a little higher. Now I'm really scared . . . "Foodforthought" is going to make things "ugly" for me . . . OH NO!
Here, I will give you another chance to refute the case around the 1999 samples. Try not to blow it off with some handwaving about being a big bad FBI agent this time.
Let's review, for fun's sake, some of the circumstantial evidence that surrounds those 1999 positives.
1) The samples were tested anonymously. The lab had no knowledge of who each sample belonged to. I will defer to Ashenden on the validity of the testing procedure.
2) The identity of the samples' owners was only known by the UCI. The lab had no access to the doping forms then and they still do not.
3) Armstrong's samples were identified a long time after the testing was completed by a journalist who obtained Armstrong's doping forms from the UCI with Armstrong's permission.
4) Six of the positive samples turned out to be Armstrong's.
5) The pattern of the tested samples matches what would be expected as a rider injects EPO and the over the course of a few days it becomes harder to detect.
6) Armstrong was recently offered the chance to have the samples retested, including a DNA test to show that they were really his. He refused.
7) Postal's soigneur Emma O'Reilly was asked by Armstrong to dispose of syringes and other doping paraphernalia before the 1999 TdF. She also delivered drugs to Armstrong.
8) O'Reilly helped Armstrong cover up injection marks with make-up.
9) Another Postal soigneur, Ron Jongen, listened to Johan Bruyneel talking on the eve of the 1999 TdF about how all the riders' hematocrits were just under the 50% limit.
9) The chance of a person in the general population being at or near a 50% hematocrit is roughly 2%. Trained endurance athletes have an even smaller chance of being at 50%. Take 2/100 and raise it to the ninth power. The chance of nine riders having Hcts near 50% is close to the chance of winning the lottery.
10) On team Motorola, Armstrong encouraged his teammates to use EPO. He entered into an agreement with the other riders that all riders on the 1995 TdF squad would use EPO.
11) Armstrong encouraged members of Postal, like Andreu and Vaughters, to dope. He told his teammates that it was normal and everyone else was doing it.
12) When Armstrong joined Postal, he brought on board Johan Bruyneel, a man who was nicknamed the Hog because of the vast quantities of drugs he consumed while on team ONCE.
13) Team ONCE had a teamwide doping program since before 1998.
14) Dr. Prentice Steffan, who had refused to help Tyler Hamilton and Marty Jemisen dope, was removed from Team Postal.
15) Bruyneel brought doctors from Team Once to replace Steffan.
16) Armstrong had a long term relationship with Dr. Ferrari, an expert in the use of EPO.
17) Armstrong kept his relationship secret. It was only discovered when an Italian police investigation of Ferrari revealed that Armstrong was periodically travelling to Italy to see Dr. Ferrari.
18) When the rider Simeoni testified that Dr. Ferrari had helped him dope, Armstrong maintained the peloton's policy of omerta by punishing Simeoni during a race.
19) After he prevented Simeoni from being included in a break, Armstrong was seen to make a "zip the lips" gesture to other riders. Armstrong's teammates spit on Simeoni as he rolled past.
20) In a phone call to Greg Lemond about the revelations that he had been seeing Dr. Ferrari, Armstrong said that using EPO was no big deal and everyone did it.
21) In the 1999 TdF, Armstrong told Christophe Bassons, who was revealed to be the one clean athlete on Team Festina and had been speaking out about doping, to stop talking about doping. He encouraged Bassons to leave the sport.
22) As a way to explain his sudden rise, Armstrong constructed and maintained a lie that he had lost large amounts of weight. This was shown to be untrue during the SCA case.
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