LeMond III

[sniper]

for 'inaccurate reports', maybe start with scienceiscool's posts on Lemond's two kidneys and genetic mitochondrial myopathy.

i've said what i had to say about hagerman.
anyone can draw their own conclusions on the guy.

 

[@NL_LeMondFans]

Re:

The thing is, you can repeat "it's not proven, it's just your opinion" another five or six times. But it really adds very little to the discussion, or to my understanding of why so many people still believe in a clean Lemond.

So... You saying "there's no other reason to employ Otto Jacome" than him being a fixer is OK, but me reminding everyone it is just an opinion and not some established truth is not OK ? I guess we can add to the discussion when it goes your way, but not balance your claim. There again lies a problem. You're trying to convince people it's highly likely that Greg LeMond doped. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, I'd find it a waste of time. In fact, I am astonished at the amount of time people are putting into pursuing this. I really don't see the point because I don't see what good can come out of this. As you, Sniper, said, it can't be proved either way. There are already an awful lot of people convinced that EVERY cyclist is a doper, including Greg. Job done ! If Greg did dope, there will still be people liking and praising him (as there are today for Armstrong, Virenque, Pantani...). If Greg was clean, this thread is only insulting him and all the people around him : his family, especially his wife and his father in law (Bob LeMond's too, lately), Otto Jacome, all the teams, etc... For my part, I'm just pointing some questionable "dot connecting". As I state in my blog, my goal is to "share the love". I have very little energy for negativity. It is too dark a world already.

It also genuinely makes me wonder why you're not going into the Sky or Indurain or Cancellara-motor threads to claim the same.

Because I don't care about them, I didn't not fall in love with cycling because of them, I don't relate to them as a rider, as a cyclist. All these I do with Greg.

And like you just admitted it cannot be proven that he was clean, I have reversely admitted it can/will probably not be proven that he doped (unless he would admit to such).
But that being the case, we can still talk about these issues in terms of likelihood, plausibility, etc., can't we?

Saying there is no other reason to employ Otto Jacome (but that he is a fixer) is not about plausibility. It's an insinuation. It's misinformation.

Take Jacome: what do you think about him? And why do think that?
I gave my view and told you why I think he was a fixer.
Same for Eddie B.
Same for the whole OTC setup. Investment in Montgomery. etc.
If "it's just your opinion" is all you can muster in response, that's a bit meager. I honestly don't know how else to respond to that than with a teaspoon of sarcasm.

Quick answer : other explanations can apply than your interpretations, that's all. The iron shots, just to name one. You don't buy that, I do. Simple.

 

[the delgados]

In other words, leave those who believe in Santa alone.

 

[Maxiton]

Guys, You've all done a great job of keeping the conversation civil since the thread has reopened. I've only had to do a little editing here and there (while watching over the thread like a mother hen).

Lately, though, it's starting to get back into sarcasm and accusation, and we can't be having that. The next time I have to edit a comment, no matter who makes it, that person is taking a vacation. Too much more of this and we will be locking the thread.

 

[@NL_LeMondFans]

Re:

In other words, leave those who believe in Santa alone.

Greg LeMond exists. I've seen him

 

[sniper]

@nllemondfans: i already stated earlier that i should've added an "imo" wrt otto jacome.
i agree it's not a fact that he was a fixer.

 

[the delgados]

Re:

Guys, You've all done a great job of keeping the conversation civil since the thread has reopened. I've only had to do a little editing here and there (while watching over the thread like a mother hen).

Lately, though, it's starting to get back into sarcasm and accusation, and we can't be having that. The next time I have to edit a comment, no matter who makes it, that person is taking a vacation. Too much more of this and we will be locking the thread.

Point taken.
sniper has done a ton of research to expose what I perceive to be a myth.
I don't want my snarky commentary to play a role in closing a very interesting thread.
I will shut my yap.
Please continue.

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

Guys, You've all done a great job of keeping the conversation civil since the thread has reopened. I've only had to do a little editing here and there (while watching over the thread like a mother hen).

Lately, though, it's starting to get back into sarcasm and accusation, and we can't be having that. The next time I have to edit a comment, no matter who makes it, that person is taking a vacation. Too much more of this and we will be locking the thread.

Point taken.
sniper has done a ton of research to expose what I perceive to be a myth.
I don't want my snarky commentary to play a role in closing a very interesting thread.
I will shut my yap.
Please continue.

Keep talking. It wasn't directed at you, it was directed at everybody. Just avoid anything that smacks of "making fun" of somebody, or somebody's comment(s).

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re:

for 'inaccurate reports', maybe start with scienceiscool's posts on Lemond's two kidneys and genetic mitochondrial myopathy.

i've said what i had to say about hagerman.
anyone can draw their own conclusions on the guy.

Do go on...

Can you tell me when Greg had a kidney removed? Awfully serious procedure, having an organ removed. I ceded that he might have one *functioning* kidney because it didn't matter. Your argument surrounding his kidneys and EPO was bogus.

And mitochondrial myopathy *is* a genetic disorder. The fact that research has shown that lead toxicity may lead to the same symptoms does not make "he doped his way to mitochondrial myopathy" a true statement.

John Swanson

 

[acoggan]

Re: Re:

Confirmation bias compounded with sloppy facts.

Agreed.

One other point worth making: many exercise physiologists have studied ergogenic substances or practices simply as a way of gaining insight into the limitations of human performance, not because they wished to promote doping.

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

for 'inaccurate reports', maybe start with scienceiscool's posts on Lemond's two kidneys and genetic mitochondrial myopathy.

i've said what i had to say about hagerman.
anyone can draw their own conclusions on the guy.

Do go on...

Can you tell me when Greg had a kidney removed? Awfully serious procedure, having an organ removed. I ceded that he might have one *functioning* kidney because it didn't matter. Your argument surrounding his kidneys and EPO was bogus.

And mitochondrial myopathy *is* a genetic disorder. The fact that research has shown that lead toxicity may lead to the same symptoms does not make "he doped his way to mitochondrial myopathy" a true statement.

John Swanson

...gentlemen....sniper got some kidney stuff wrong, you full stopped mito....no blood, no fowl, errr, foul, ok...lets take Max's advice and go tranquillo....and as he pointed out, we have, against all odds been civil, lets keep at it a while longer, who knows we may get to like it....

...gawd, what is the world coming to ?..... blutto of all people, pushing for thread peace, next the sun will rise in the west ?...maybe its a pre-echo of the impending Friday the 13th with a full moon thingee

Cheers

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

for 'inaccurate reports', maybe start with scienceiscool's posts on Lemond's two kidneys and genetic mitochondrial myopathy.

i've said what i had to say about hagerman.
anyone can draw their own conclusions on the guy.

Do go on...

Can you tell me when Greg had a kidney removed? Awfully serious procedure, having an organ removed. I ceded that he might have one *functioning* kidney because it didn't matter. Your argument surrounding his kidneys and EPO was bogus.

no sarcasm here: I honestly don't think you ever understood my argument, which wasn't really an argument in the first place. I merely repeated what Lemond (viz. his PR team) has told us on different occasions, which is:
- anemia/iron deficiency
- one kidney
- chronic kidney infections from the day he was born
- EPO would have dramatically sped up his recovery post-shooting.

Those are Lemond's (team's) words, not mine.
I never claimed to know more than that, i.e. never claimed to know what happened to his other kidney, or whether he still has chronic kidney infections, etc. According to djpbaltimore I made a causal link between anemia and the condition of his kidney(s). But when I asked djpbaltimore to show me where I did this, he never responded. Which is logical, because I never made such a causal link.

To clarify, take Froome: I have no idea how Froome's different medical conditions correlate (or not) with each other, or whether or not he always was asthmatic, whether he really has bilharzia, and if so, how serious it was, etc.
Bottomline is that we shouldn't be blaming each other for these uncertainties and gaps in our knowledge; rather, it's a logical result of the inconsistencies in Froome's and Lemond's background stories.
So as for Lemond's kidney(s), epo, etc., if there's any part of that story that strikes you as bogus, you have to take it up with Lemond, not with me.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re: Re:

no sarcasm here: I honestly don't think you ever understood my argument, which wasn't really an argument in the first place. I merely repeated what Lemond (viz. his PR team) has told us on different occasions, which is:
- anemia/iron deficiency
- one kidney
- chronic kidney infections from the day he was born
- EPO would have dramatically sped up his recovery post-shooting.

Those are Lemond's (team's) words, not mine.
I never claimed to know more than that, i.e. never claimed to know what happened to his other kidney, or whether he still has chronic kidney infections, etc. According to djpbaltimore I made a causal link between anemia and the condition of his kidney(s). But when I asked djpbaltimore to show me where I did this, he never responded. Which is logical, because I never made such a causal link.

To clarify, take Froome: I have no idea how Froome's different medical conditions correlate (or not) with each other, or whether or not he always was asthmatic, whether he really has bilharzia, and if so, how serious it was, etc.
Bottomline is that we shouldn't be blaming each other for these uncertainties and gaps in our knowledge; rather, it's a logical result of the inconsistencies in Froome's and Lemond's background stories.
So as for Lemond's kidney(s), epo, etc., if there's any part of that story that strikes you as bogus, you have to take it up with Lemond, not with me.

viewtopic.php?p=1774013#p1774013

here's a good concise website about (chronic) kidney failure, anemia and EPO.
http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-topics/kidney-disease/anemia-in-kidney-disease-and-dialysis/Pages/facts.aspx
One thing that immediately stands out is the strong correlation between (chronic) kidney failure and anemia.
Bottom line: If you suffer from the former, the chances are high you will also suffer from the latter.
Now Lemond's official version is he had chronic kidney infections since the day he was born, and has been riding around with just one functional kidney ever since he was a kid.
So if you go from there... to give any sort of credibility to the story that in 1989, after at least two decades of being a kidney patient, Greg didn't know he had anemia and needed his soigneur to tell him... well, that's one way of completely discrediting all the doctors Greg has ever worked with since a child, including his parents for failing to inform him on some of the very basics of being a kidney patient.
It's ridiculous.

 

[sniper]

great example of what i was saying: if there is any part of his story that sounds bogus to you, take it up with lemond, like i did in that post.
and u do know the difference between kidney failure and infections, i know u do.
so if u read from that post that i,m making a causal link between his infections and his anemia, thats really ur misreading as i.m doing exactly the opposite: calling bs.
but as i said earlier, since neither you nor scienceiscool understood my kidney related posts, i must concede that its probably due to my poor formulation. and to lemonds poor bakcground story.
(sorry, written from my tablet)
and i stick with that post. Its utterly ridiculous. One kidney, chronic kidney infections, kidney damage from shooting, but no idea about anemia. Doesnt cut it.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Guys, You've all done a great job of keeping the conversation civil since the thread has reopened. I've only had to do a little editing here and there (while watching over the thread like a mother hen).

Lately, though, it's starting to get back into sarcasm and accusation, and we can't be having that. The next time I have to edit a comment, no matter who makes it, that person is taking a vacation. Too much more of this and we will be locking the thread.

Point taken.
sniper has done a ton of research to expose what I perceive to be a myth.
I don't want my snarky commentary to play a role in closing a very interesting thread.
I will shut my yap.
Please continue.

thanks, delgados, appreciate it. Blutto also did some great work btw.
i,m largely done for now, dont think there is much more, or if there is i,m not gonna find it.
(i have some smaller bits and pieces of info left, which i will post if/when the context of discussion warrants it).
Time to dedicate some quality time to Team Sky again Just kidding.

For Lemond and Hampsten, and that whole generation,
i think all the cards are on the table, people can and should draw their own conclusions from all the info out there. or remain agnostic, as one wishes.
ur remark wasnt snarky, imo. more like bang on the money.
imo what remains is a sort of mythical faith jn Lemond (and hampsten, and heiden, and bauer)?somehow being totally different from all his predecessors and sucessors and colleagues. Arguments to back that up are rather thin, from memory, and It,s been a while since someone actually tried to argue (in the true sense of the word) viz. explain why we should believe in this miracle. The defense of Lemond currently seems largely limited to finding small insignificant errors in the background info i and blutto and some others have brought to the fore, and using those errors (e.g. hagerman not being a hematologist) to discredit all other info, including the messengers.
djpbaltimore accusing me of lying, for an error i owned up to, Scienceiscool calling me an idiot, pcmg calling my arguments ***. And I,m just cherrypicking there. Oh well. As i said earlier, i wouldnt want to be in the shoes of the guy who blows the whistle on Lemond. This thread has given only a small pretaste of what that whistleblower will have coming at him.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Defend Lemond from what? He had friends in the cycling world that doped and/or promoted doping. That's the sum total of the facts. As for doping, there's no case to answer. Nothing to defend.

With guys like Lance you at least had trash bins full of drug paraphenalia, eye witnesses like Betsy and Mike Anderson. Post-dated TUE's. Zip-the-lips... Well you get the idea.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Confirmation bias compounded with sloppy facts.

Agreed.

One other point worth making: many exercise physiologists have studied ergogenic substances or practices simply as a way of gaining insight into the limitations of human performance, not because they wished to promote doping.

but those exercise physiologists were not in bed with dardik and ariel at the OTC in the late 70s doing physiological testing on junior athletes whilst faced with political pressure to produce olympic champions.

and what bias do you guys mean?
if you mean the hypothesis that Lemond doped, that,s not a bias by any stretch of the meaning.
it,s merely a plausible assumption informed by the history and nature of procycling.

and what facts are sloppy? sure, hagerman is not a hematologist. but that is hardly relevant; I could have said he was a shoemaker, and it wouldnt have made any difference to the likelihood that he helped dope juniors.

 

[blutto]

Re: Re:

agree about the Squaw Valley value sounding legit, and the rest sounding a bit iffy.

In a more recent interview he talks about his vo2 max again, saying it hasn't changed.
Can somebody tell me how/whether that makes sense, also in the context of his alleged myopathy?

While LeMond retired over 20 years ago, he said that his ability to use oxygen remains the same as when he was a competitive racer. “I took 6.4 litres in [as a pro],” he said, by way of example. “I did a VO2 Max test at 47 [years of age] and I take 6.4 litres in. My weight is way different, but when I saw my wattage output after four months [training], I was 380 watts sustainable for 30 minutes. It kind of matched.

“I know exactly where I was 15, 20 years ago…It doesn’t really change. Now what would change it is blood doping, that could artificially boost the VO2 Max. If your haematocrit is 45 and you boost it to 50, you can improve it quite a bit. Because of that, you have to combine [VO2 Max] testing with the passport.

http://cyclingtips.com/2015/07/tour-de-france-lemond-repeats-calls-for-greater-transparency-in-the-sport/

I think he is full of **** if he says his vo2 score has not changed with age. No freaking way.

....your problem dude, is you just don't believe in miracles, or supergreg, errr whoops, Superman, or Santa Claus, full stop...funny, I don't either because this is pretty well the most putrid cherry on a pretty rancid cake....so lets just call this a wrap, we've established motive means and opportunity, led horses to water, so give Aphro et al a call and lets go and do some serious drinkin' ....and leave everybody else to keep dreaming about their first kiss...

Cheers

...sniper, we'll catch you and everybody else on the other side of the pond when this pub crawl goes intercontinental....

 

[sniper]

Re:

Defend Lemond from what? He had friends in the cycling world that doped and/or promoted doping. That's the sum total of the facts. As for doping, there's no case to answer. Nothing to defend.

With guys like Lance you at least had trash bins full of drug paraphenalia, eye witnesses like Betsy and Mike Anderson. Post-dated TUE's. Zip-the-lips... Well you get the idea.

John Swanson

and what did you have for cancellara?

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

Defend Lemond from what? He had friends in the cycling world that doped and/or promoted doping. That's the sum total of the facts. As for doping, there's no case to answer. Nothing to defend.

With guys like Lance you at least had trash bins full of drug paraphenalia, eye witnesses like Betsy and Mike Anderson. Post-dated TUE's. Zip-the-lips... Well you get the idea.

John Swanson

and what did you have for cancellara?

Hey! Look at that squirrel!

John Swanson

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re: Re:

thanks, delgados, appreciate it. Blutto also did some great work btw.
i,m largely done for now, dont think there is much more, or if there is i,m not gonna find it.
(i have some smaller bits and pieces of info left, which i will post if/when the context of discussion warrants it).
Time to dedicate some quality time to Team Sky again Just kidding.

For Lemond and Hampsten, and that whole generation,
i think all the cards are on the table, people can and should draw their own conclusions from all the info out there. or remain agnostic, as one wishes.
ur remark wasnt snarky, imo. more like bang on the money.
imo what remains is a sort of mythical faith jn Lemond (and hampsten, and heiden, and bauer)?somehow being totally different from all his predecessors and sucessors and colleagues. Arguments to back that up are rather thin, from memory, and It,s been a while since someone actually tried to argue (in the true sense of the word) viz. explain why we should believe in this miracle. The defense of Lemond currently seems largely limited to finding small insignificant errors in the background info i and blutto and some others have brought to the fore, and using those errors (e.g. hagerman not being a hematologist) to discredit all other info, including the messengers.
djpbaltimore accusing me of lying, for an error i owned up to, Scienceiscool calling me an idiot, pcmg calling my arguments ***. And I,m just cherrypicking there. Oh well. As i said earlier, i wouldnt want to be in the shoes of the guy who blows the whistle on Lemond. This thread has given only a small pretaste of what that whistleblower will have coming at him.

If you can't get the basics right, why should the rest of your data be given a free pass? And since you keep bringing me in to the conversation, your earlier claim that I never responded about your linking anemia to LeMond's kindney is yet another falsehood. It is can be seen plain as day below that I responded with my evidence.

viewtopic.php?p=1906902#p1906902

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

Confirmation bias compounded with sloppy facts.

Agreed.

One other point worth making: many exercise physiologists have studied ergogenic substances or practices simply as a way of gaining insight into the limitations of human performance, not because they wished to promote doping.

but those exercise physiologists were not in bed with dardik and ariel at the OTC in the late 70s doing physiological testing on junior athletes whilst faced with political pressure to produce olympic champions.

and what bias do you guys mean?
if you mean the hypothesis that Lemond doped, that,s not a bias by any stretch of the meaning.
it,s merely a plausible assumption informed by the history and nature of procycling.

and what facts are sloppy? sure, hagerman is not a hematologist. but that is hardly relevant; I could have said he was a shoemaker, and it wouldnt have made any difference to the likelihood that he helped dope juniors.

Okay. You don't understand confirmation bias. You really should look that up.

"in bed with"
"wished to promote doping"
"faced with political pressure"

See, unless you have testimony that directly states this, you couldn't possibly know what's in the heads of these people. You are building a narrative (fiction) that supports your hypothesis. This is confirmation bias.

John Swanson

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Confirmation bias compounded with sloppy facts.

Agreed.

One other point worth making: many exercise physiologists have studied ergogenic substances or practices simply as a way of gaining insight into the limitations of human performance, not because they wished to promote doping.

but those exercise physiologists were not in bed with dardik and ariel at the OTC in the late 70s doing physiological testing on junior athletes whilst faced with political pressure to produce olympic champions.

and what bias do you guys mean?
if you mean the hypothesis that Lemond doped, that,s not a bias by any stretch of the meaning.
it,s merely a plausible assumption informed by the history and nature of procycling.

and what facts are sloppy? sure, hagerman is not a hematologist. but that is hardly relevant; I could have said he was a shoemaker, and it wouldnt have made any difference to the likelihood that he helped dope juniors.

Okay. You don't understand confirmation bias. You really should look that up.

"in bed with"
"wished to promote doping"
"faced with political pressure"

See, unless you have testimony that directly states this, you couldn't possibly know what's in the heads of these people. You are building a narrative (fiction) that supports your hypothesis. This is confirmation bias.

John Swanson

i know what confirmation bias is.
just that the examples given by djpbaltimore and acoggan and now you are not examples of that.
your two kidneys and genetic mitochoondrial myopathie, and buildkng facts from the horse's mouth, otoh, are striking examples.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

thanks, delgados, appreciate it. Blutto also did some great work btw.
i,m largely done for now, dont think there is much more, or if there is i,m not gonna find it.
(i have some smaller bits and pieces of info left, which i will post if/when the context of discussion warrants it).
Time to dedicate some quality time to Team Sky again Just kidding.

For Lemond and Hampsten, and that whole generation,
i think all the cards are on the table, people can and should draw their own conclusions from all the info out there. or remain agnostic, as one wishes.
ur remark wasnt snarky, imo. more like bang on the money.
imo what remains is a sort of mythical faith jn Lemond (and hampsten, and heiden, and bauer)?somehow being totally different from all his predecessors and sucessors and colleagues. Arguments to back that up are rather thin, from memory, and It,s been a while since someone actually tried to argue (in the true sense of the word) viz. explain why we should believe in this miracle. The defense of Lemond currently seems largely limited to finding small insignificant errors in the background info i and blutto and some others have brought to the fore, and using those errors (e.g. hagerman not being a hematologist) to discredit all other info, including the messengers.
djpbaltimore accusing me of lying, for an error i owned up to, Scienceiscool calling me an idiot, pcmg calling my arguments ***. And I,m just cherrypicking there. Oh well. As i said earlier, i wouldnt want to be in the shoes of the guy who blows the whistle on Lemond. This thread has given only a small pretaste of what that whistleblower will have coming at him.

If you can't get the basics right, why should the rest of your data be given a free pass? And since you keep bringing me in to the conversation, your earlier claim that I never responded about your linking anemia to LeMond's kindney is yet another falsehood. It is can be seen plain as day below that I responded with my evidence.

viewtopic.php?p=1906902#p1906902

u said i claimed one was caused by the other. where did i do that? nowhere.
if u stop making stuff up about me, i,ll stop mentioning u, u have my word.

 

[@NL_LeMondFans]

Re: Re:

imo what remains is a sort of mythical faith jn Lemond (and hampsten, and heiden, and bauer)?somehow being totally different from all his predecessors and sucessors and colleagues. Arguments to back that up are rather thin, from memory, and It,s been a while since someone actually tried to argue (in the true sense of the word) viz. explain why we should believe in this miracle. The defense of Lemond currently seems largely limited to finding small insignificant errors in the background info i and blutto and some others have brought to the fore, and using those errors (e.g. hagerman not being a hematologist) to discredit all other info, including the messengers.
djpbaltimore accusing me of lying, for an error i owned up to, Scienceiscool calling me an idiot, pcmg calling my arguments ***. And I,m just cherrypicking there. Oh well. As i said earlier, i wouldnt want to be in the shoes of the guy who blows the whistle on Lemond. This thread has given only a small pretaste of what that whistleblower will have coming at him.

I see that post as disinformation. And it's quite ironic too. What I read here is someone trying to pass for a victim. It's unfair because insults and sarcasm have been coming both ways. But it's ironic because the same disinformation method has been applied to Greg. There are still people claiming Greg attacked Armstrong, not the other way around. Now, with this post, we are lead to believe there is a pro-LeMond conspiracy and there is a minority of "informed" people who know better... We should fail to interpret this thread as an attempt to throw all kind of garbage at Greg LeMond and everyone around him when he was a pro rider.

I'm a LeMond fan, a U2 fan, a George Lucas fan. I'm used to bashing. Believe you me. It's just everywhere if you care to see. It actually lead George Lucas to retirement. It's been a sport for so many years I stopped counting. From the moment Greg became the most well paid rider in the peloton, he had it coming at him. And it's fine, it's in the human nature to antagonize and so on... Get rich and successful and half the people on this earth will hate you, by principle because, all of a sudden all you care about is money. Try to move your as* and do something with that fame and money and it's even worse because you're an hypocrite...

What this post fails to address is that many sound people will believe it's possible Greg was clean in spite of all the stories that were brought up by this thread. It's not because they're naive or stupid. It's because they have a different opinion. The defense is weak ? But since the accusation is based on "guilt by association", it's un-defendable because every pro rider is surrounded by dopers.

I think I understand more why, early on, I was accused of "having an agenda". I came here pretty late in the game and there has been some sort of paranoia growing in this forum, from what I could gather. It's sad and it certainly doesn't help the discussions to move forward.

A whistleblower ? Let me tell you this. In 2009 or 2010, I don't remember which, Lance Armstrong said live on public television "Greg LeMond will have to tell the truth about 1989". Laurent Fignon was standing right next to him. Yep, Laurent-dying of cancer-Fignon. I don't want to discard Sniper's work because he sure did a lot of work and it's admirable from that regard. But, in the end, this thread is not doing anything more than what Armstrong did : insinuate things.

I believe what motivated this thread in the first place was : question the general consensus that Greg LeMond was clean. Fair enough. But what it achieved to claim is just "the barstool claim" : everyone is a doper. I maintain this is a waste of time and energy. And a lot of people were tarnished in the process.