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Official Lance Armstrong Thread: Part 3 (Post-Confession)

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Re: Re:

StyrbjornSterki said:
The Hegelian said:
...Ferrari and Armstrong were quite obviously risk averse....
To be risk averse is to avoid risk. To dope is to accept risk. They weren't risk-averse, they were risk managers.

The argument's getting pretty silly. Obviously they were managing risk/reward.

If one really wants to be pedantic, one could say: being truly conservative and risk averse would entail not doping at all and potentially leaving the sport.

But in the context of the 90's/00's, clearly there are different degrees of doping risk management. That's all anyone is talking about.
 
Re: Re:

The Hegelian said:
The argument's getting pretty silly....
It was silly when you started it.

Pharmstrong's success had nothing to do with a "conservative" approach, it had to do with retaining the exclusive services of the most successful and sophisticated professional cheating facilitator in sport, then doping his ass off. He failed (IIRC) 11 doping controls during his seven-year tear, six in 1999 alone, but all were swept under the rug. If he had been being risk-averse, there never should have been even one, much less two. Eleven positives in seven years is completely and utter irreconcilable with claims of "risk-averse."
 
Re: Re:

StyrbjornSterki said:
He failed (IIRC) 11 doping controls during his seven-year tear, six in 1999 alone, but all were swept under the rug.
1) There were actually four positives for 1999 (not six) and those were almost certainly because he forgot to send his TUE application. According to the CIRC-report, "Lance Armstrong was one of 26 riders who tested positive for corticosteroids" and three hadn't applied for TUE and none were sanctioned.(p. 170) No advantage against other dopers nor necessarily preferential treatment by the UCI. You could criticize the TUE policy or the decision to let off the hook three who had no medical reasons to take the corticoids, but I think that UCI guys realized that they either forgot the applications or didn't know that the substance could be tested. And it is always possible that there could've been sanctions against the cortisone-dopers had not one of them been the winner of the "Tour of Renewal".

2) What were these other (5 to 7) of the alleged eleven positives that were "swept under the rug", if I may ask? If you are referring to the urine samples showing possible presence of synthetic rEPO, when the threshold was (and is) still very high, they weren't actually positive according to the testing procedure. If you are referring to the re-tested 1999 blood samples showing clearly positive patterns, there were no B-samples, so they weren't even doping samples. You might as well add that why were there no sanctions brought against other cyclists retrospectively tested positive based on the blood samples drawn for the "health checks"?

I should add that according to the CIRC-report, UCI customarily warned cyclists when they were close to test positive, clearly not just the Texan. (pp. 124-125)
 
Re: Re:

Aragon said:
I should add that according to the CIRC-report, UCI customarily warned cyclists when they were close to test positive, clearly not just the Texan. (pp. 124-125)
In the Dekker book he talks of being called in to Aigle and given the spiel by Zorzoli, how his ABP was 'suspicious'. His lawyer got the UCI to sign a letter saying Dekker wasn't positive. He was bemused by why he was called it. It seems clear that the UCI were trying to tell him to he was going to be busted if he wasn't careful. He wasn't careful, they busted him. The warning, then, should not be seen as an attempt to protect the rider, rather it seems as an attempt to protect the UCI from having to suffer the blowback of busting the rider.
 
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The warning, then, should not be seen as an attempt to protect the rider, rather it seems as an attempt to protect the UCI from having to suffer the blowback of busting the rider.


Bingo.....somebody gets it at last, I've long suspected there are no protected riders, it didn't make sense as the biggest stars like Armstrong and Contador have been busted, if they were protected it just wouldn't happen.
No, worded perfectly above is what really happens, the ICU is always looking out for itself, I strongly believe it sees itself as the protector of the sport and in doing so it (misguidedly) allows some riders to slip through the net so it doesn't have to deal with the fallout and see any harm being done to the sport....the sad thing however is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and by turning a blind eye where they can they have created a monster whereby half the cycling fans want superhuman performance to inspire them and the other half want more realistic human efforts they can believe in, no guessing what race organisers and T.V. stations want!?....they want the spectacular too, it makes for great viewing figures.

It would now take a monumental zero tolerance approach to violations in order to make the sportb credible again and the UCI knows sponsors would run, T.V. channels would drop their coverage and race organisers would fold....i almost feel sorry for them.
 
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huge said:
PPAR-delta said:

This is getting totally ridiculous.
They're (USADA) getting people to see him as a victim and sympathise with him.

What will they come up with next time?
That he cannot walk along the streets of a city if a sanctioned race is planned any time soon?
That he is forbidden to watch cycling on telly?

What a bunch of morons.
I think USADA have no choice, we whine and moan when the rules aren't applied, this is the application of the rules: he's not allowed work in the sport. Asking for them not to be applied I think makes us the morons. However, the solution here is strikingly simple: The Officially Unofficial Lance Armstrong Stages Podcast from the Colorado Classic, featuring all involved with the Colorado Classic.
 
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Re: Re:

huge said:
PPAR-delta said:

This is getting totally ridiculous.
They're (USADA) getting people to see him as a victim and sympathise with him.

What will they come up with next time?
That he cannot walk along the streets of a city if a sanctioned race is planned any time soon?
That he is forbidden to watch cycling on telly?

What a bunch of morons.

If Travis Tygart gave a crap about sport there would be drug testing at Tour of Utah. Get over it Travis.
 
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ScienceIsCool said:
If you don't like being kicked out of your sport forever, maybe, just maybe win something. Anything. Without cheating.

Loser.

John Swanson
National Championships (Jnr + Snr), World Championships, TdF stages x 2, Clásica San Sebastián, Flèche Wallonne: since USADA didn't take them away from him we gotta believe - gotta - they're cleans.
 
Re:

When was Armstrong busted?

Wasn't there suspicion of him doping as far back as '97? He was never really "busted" per se, he repeatedly paid loff whomever to sweep ALL of his positives under the rug. Then,(because he's such a POS douchebag bully), FINALLY admitted to cheating and/or doping, after he pissed off the wrong people.

When was Contador busted? His positive was going to be swept under the rug until it was leaked.

Not so sure about that, his "Clenbuterol" positive from the supposed "tainted meat" he ate excuse,w as comical to say the least. Am I thinking of Ullrich here when I say he(Contadoper) had 2 TDF wins taken from him for doping, or was it just the one?

Trust me, these guys know exactly what goes into their bodies, they know how to get around tests and positives, they know how to make them go away, hence Wonderboy keeping things on the downlow for over a decade.
 
Re: Official Lance Armstrong Thread: Part 3 (Post-Confession

86TDFWinner said:
Loved This clip of Tyler eviscerating Wonderboy, by explaining every drug he and Wonderboy took or he saw Wonderboy do, Sounds a lot like what Betsy was saying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m1A73kt3PE

The most important point in that video was that Ferrari was the best of two worlds. Not only a Doctor but a sports scientist who could marry the drug and training programs.
 
Re: Official Lance Armstrong Thread: Part 3 (Post-Confession

86TDFWinner said:
Loved This clip of Tyler eviscerating Wonderboy, by explaining every drug he and Wonderboy took or he saw Wonderboy do, Sounds a lot like what Betsy was saying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m1A73kt3PE
Slightly OFF-topic, but the more there emerges new information, the more I see Tyler Hamilton as a witness with possible credibility issues. Occasionally my reading is that the one "Believe Tyler"-crowd had been substituted with another one (a larger one that also believes everything he says), because many people seem to believe the cute Tyler telling now the whole truth only because he has said that he is doing so.

Just think the following episodes when he tested positive:

1) His 2004 Homologous blood doping positive. Tyler says that either the test was flawed or there was a mixup of blood bags and in his memoirs he is totally clueless why anyone would use intentionally anyone else's blood. What we do know is that the Kelme rider Jesús Manzano was offered this method around 2002 and Tyler had many former Kelme riders in the Phonak team (Enrique Gutiérrez, Óscar Sevilla and Santi Pérez) of whom Pérez also tested positive for the same thing (that is a red flag if anything is).

In addition, his regular training partner Levi Leipheimer used blood of his brother at the 2003 Vuelta. Leipheimer informed USADA about the Vuelta-episode in 6/22/2012, but curiously insists in his sworn affidavit to USADA three months later (9/21/2012) that "2005 was the first year that I transfused blood". Why wasn't the 2003 information with someone else's blood included in the document? Did USADA want the information to be withheld because the case against Dr. Leinders (the doctor) was still pending? Whatever the reason to fine-tune his recollections, it is highly suspicious when one notices the name of the public notary who authorised the document and could've consulted on the content: Haven Parchinski (Hamilton).

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Yes, he did have access to the "Siberia"-freezer, but only from February 2004 onward, so it didn't make that much a change into his 2004 season. And one gets easily the impression that the guy was more-or-less addicted to transfusions between 2002 and 2004, so much he talks about the issue in the book.

2) His 2009- DHEA bust. Tyler says that it was an over-the-counter product to treat his depression and the active substance has no performance enhancing effect. The product was on the doping list, that tilts to the direction that it has one and in addition, here is a paragraph from a recent USADA decision:
USADA vs. Leinders decision said:
44. Mr. Rasmussen testified that either in 2004 or 2005, Dr. Leinders told him that Mario Zorzoli recommended that Leinders give Rabobank riders DHEA because "all the other teams are doing it as well". Rasmussen further testified that up until the 2005 Tour of Germany Dr. Leinders periodically provided him with DHEA.
No benefit clearly at all.

I am not claiming that he is lying, but only that I can't fully vouch for his credibility, to be honest.
 
Re: Official Lance Armstrong Thread: Part 3 (Post-Confession

Aragon said:
I am not claiming that he is lying, but only that I can't fully vouch for his credibility, to be honest.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks he has credibility. His whole shtick is about painting LA as the worst of the worst so that, in comparison to LA, he's a sweetie. His whole book is about showing how LA was worse than him, virtually every TV appearance is about showing that LA was worse than him. So he comes out with this junk, that LA had access to better drugs, two years ahead of everyone else. But if LA was so 'cavalier' about his doping, keeping the stuff in the fridge, letting people watch, talking about doping at the dinner table, shouldn't Ty be able to name these super-secret miracle pills + potions he claims LA had in his tackle-box?

Also, even parking his motivation, he presents peloton scuttlebutt as fact: Stefano Garzelli's probenecid failure was an echo positive, this notion that LA had access to better drugs was a rumour - he doesn't care that people will take these statements as gospel, coming from the mouth of an anti-doping Jesus like him.
 
Re: Official Lance Armstrong Thread: Part 3 (Post-Confession

fmk_RoI said:
I'm not sure why anyone thinks he has credibility. His whole shtick is about painting LA as the worst of the worst so that, in comparison to LA, he's a sweetie. His whole book is about showing how LA was worse than him, virtually every TV appearance is about showing that LA was worse than him. So he comes out with this junk, that LA had access to better drugs, two years ahead of everyone else. But if LA was so 'cavalier' about his doping, keeping the stuff in the fridge, letting people watch, talking about doping at the dinner table, shouldn't Ty be able to name these super-secret miracle pills + potions he claims LA had in his tackle-box?

Also, even parking his motivation, he presents peloton scuttlebutt as fact: Stefano Garzelli's probenecid failure was an echo positive, this notion that LA had access to better drugs was a rumour - he doesn't care that people will take these statements as gospel, coming from the mouth of an anti-doping Jesus like him.
I think there are a few possible explanations why people believe in him:

1) The Secret Race is actually a well-written and entertaining book and its Amazon rating is something like 4.8/5.0. I think that in many cases it is the only cycling related book people have read. (I was surprised when it was translated into Finnish in 2013 as there are honestly like a five cycling books a decade translated into my language. Juliet Macur's Lance-biography also was translated into Finnish the next year.)

2) There was a strange atmosphere in 2012 when everyone just had to make the decision whether to believe Lance or not and there was a great demand for anti-Lance material and it wasn't a great moment to be skeptical about anything about anyone of Lance's opponents without risking being called a "Lance fanboy" or something similar. Later the momentum was gone and the guy was promoted to the status of a saint.

3) Tyler is clever in not making that many untruths in which you can definitely say that they are deliberate lies instead of just flawed recollections or just him misreading certain events.

4) He is so intimate about many things, so people think he isn't withholding any information.

But there is no doubt that it is troubling that some authors use his memoirs as the sole source on some stories (the 2004 Dauphine UCI phone call, switched blood bags etc.) not even specifying that he is the source in the body text (e.g. "During Dauphiné, Lance made a phone call to Hein Verbruggen about Hamilton" and you must go through the references to find out that it is based on his memoirs)
 
Re: Re:

86TDFWinner said:
When was Armstrong busted?

Wasn't there suspicion of him doping as far back as '97? He was never really "busted" per se, he repeatedly paid loff whomever to sweep ALL of his positives under the rug. Then,(because he's such a POS ***** bully), FINALLY admitted to cheating and/or doping, after he pissed off the wrong people.

When was Contador busted? His positive was going to be swept under the rug until it was leaked.

Not so sure about that, his "Clenbuterol" positive from the supposed "tainted meat" he ate excuse,w as comical to say the least. Am I thinking of Ullrich here when I say he(Contadoper) had 2 TDF wins taken from him for doping, or was it just the one?

Trust me, these guys know exactly what goes into their bodies, they know how to get around tests and positives, they know how to make them go away, hence Wonderboy keeping things on the downlow for over a decade.
Point I was trying to make was, neither was busted by UCI. Maybe caught, but not suspended. Armstrong was obviously never suspended by UCI. Contador would have gotten away clean if a reporter had not outed the results.
 
Re: Re:

veganrob said:
86TDFWinner said:
When was Armstrong busted?

Wasn't there suspicion of him doping as far back as '97? He was never really "busted" per se, he repeatedly paid loff whomever to sweep ALL of his positives under the rug. Then,(because he's such a POS ***** bully), FINALLY admitted to cheating and/or doping, after he pissed off the wrong people.

When was Contador busted? His positive was going to be swept under the rug until it was leaked.

Not so sure about that, his "Clenbuterol" positive from the supposed "tainted meat" he ate excuse,was comical to say the least. Am I thinking of Ullrich here when I say he(Contadoper) had 2 TDF wins taken from him for doping, or was it just the one?

Trust me, these guys know exactly what goes into their bodies, they know how to get around tests and positives, they know how to make them go away, hence Wonderboy keeping things on the downlow for over a decade.
Point I was trying to make was, neither was busted by UCI. Maybe caught, but not suspended. Armstrong was obviously never suspended by UCI. Contador would have gotten away clean if a reporter had not outed the results.


Oh I agree completely.
 

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