stephens said:
the bottom line is this: fail and official test and you've officially broken the rules of the sport. anything else is just he-said-she-said material for internet forum soap operas and material to sell newspapers and books.
now, if it was shown that there are official uci tests or any of the other official testing bodies and these were swept under the rug because they didn't want to bust Lance for some reason (after all, they've busted other grand tour winners), then we'd have something.
But it also holds true, as so many cases have demonstrated in the past (with Rijs being only the most clamorous one), that the fact that you have not failed an official doping test does not mean that you haven't brooken the rules.
As regards to Armstrong, as has been said so many times before, he has failed an anti-doping test. And there are strong indications which should lead us to believe that a rider of his calliber had access to the most advanced blood doping practices offered by the "best" medics, for which the testing proceedures in their current state would not have been able to expose. As is well known the best doping is usually 2-3 years ahead of the tests, whereas for some blood doping practices no test even exist, which places the tests themselves in an inadequite position to be a truly effective weapon in the fight against doping.
Lastly, in terms of the economics of anti-doping as weighed against the finanical intrests of the UCI in profiting from the sport: the sheer conflict of interests here makes any critical thinker wonder what insentive did the UCI have in exposing Armstrong (if one even were to believe that that was possible with the weapons at their disposal)? Very little. To the contrary, such a clamorous event could ahve turned the world's richest market away from a sport which desperately needs more financing. The pure market logic means that Armstrong is way too big a fish to catch. Better to ride his popularity in the US, than expose him as other less big fish have been. As if the thinking were: we gotta show to the moralistic public that the controls are working, by getting some positives, but not too well and, in especially in regards to a certain big fish, lest we only shoot ourselves in the foot. Whereas OP had nothing to do with the UCI, has been covered up for just as many "special interests," occult reasons, and were it not for OP the likes of Ullrich and Basso would have never have had to go through anything, precisely because the type of blood doping they were doing was supposed to be a shoe in the box in terms of beating the tests. If they were doing it, then all the Tour frontrunners, including Armstrong, were involved. Unless you believe aliens exist. I don't and so it's not possible to fathom that a Tour winner since this type of blood doping existed, could have beat those practicing it clean. That's just not possible. And anyone who believes otherwise in this regard is just stupid.