US prosecutors drop case against Armstrong/USPS

[Hugh Januss]

To the general American public?

Look at the Tea Party and comments in Velosnooze, the "general American public" only "knows" what they are told to know.
Why do you think political campaigns focus on personalities and not issues (well other than the fact that there is usually not much of an actual divide on the issues)?

 

[andy1234]

I dont agree with Armstrong making the sport bigger and better. It was never a one man and his dog sport, not in Europe. It gets more TV viewers because there are umpteen sports channels nowadays that have to put sport on 24 hours a day. A cycling gets some showing to break up the major sports.

The more money in the sport has meant the more expensive everything got from dope to carbon frames and everything in between.

Europe is a big place, not just Italy, France and Spain.

You cant have done much racing or spectating outside of those countries in the 80s and 90's if you think cycling wasn't a minority sport back then.

 

[MarkvW]

Blind worship of narcissistic tyrants will eventually bring USA in the same position that Europe was in under WW2. Why do you think I have so much against Armstrong and the culture he brings with him?

I don't think Americans, in general, care too much about Lance Armstrong. He's a major player in a fringe sport who has been effectively marketed because he sells bicycles. You get a distorted picture of us, just like we get a distorted picture of you.

Saying that Armstrong brings American culture with him to pollute Europe reminds me of one of my very favorite movies, "The Americanization of Emily." If you get a chance, watch it, and give me a private post. It will definitely make you rethink your ideas about any "uniformity" in American culture. We're not all the same. Europeans get our full force commercial-materialistic advertising blast, just like we do--and many of us don't like it either.

And I'm not ever going to hate on Denmark, because it is one of the greatest countries on Earth, with among the highest proportion decent human beings! So you can cast your insults without fear of counterattack.

(The last sentence wasn't intentionally written to be ironic, but I'm going to leave it that way because it makes me laugh. No insult intended.)

 

[rhubroma]

This is really what it's always been about, all along. It's a European sport that was dominated recently by doping Americans, who were doping to keep up with doping Euros. You gotta be an ******* to thrive in the peloton, and that is exactly what Lance Armstrong is.

The problem is, he is an American *******.

You guys can have your sport back. Time to let go of the Anti-Armstrong/American campaign. Unsticky the useless conspiracy threads and stop the witchhunt against the successful Americans.

It is some unwritten historical law that great privileges come with great responsibility, when the latter is wanting the former invariably comes under fire.

Life's a b!tch that way isn't it?

 

[Benotti69]

Europe is a big place, not just Italy, France and Spain.

You cant have done much racing or spectating outside of those countries in the 80s and 90's if you think cycling wasn't a minority sport back then.

It was a European pro sport till the 90s then we have seen it grow to other continents. But it still is a predominantly a European Sport.

 

[hrotha]

This is really what it's always been about, all along. It's a European sport that was dominated recently by doping Americans, who were doping to keep up with doping Euros. You gotta be an ******* to thrive in the peloton, and that is exactly what Lance Armstrong is.

The problem is, he is an American *******.

You guys can have your sport back. Time to let go of the Anti-Armstrong/American campaign. Unsticky the useless conspiracy threads and stop the witchhunt against the successful Americans.

Yeah, it's not like Spain gets a bad rap (mostly rightfully) around these parts, is it.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

The whole world embraced his story. Not just the US, so Im not sure what you are talking about.

Am I right in thinking you are from Denmark? If so, for such a small country, you have certainly played your part in sh**ing over this "beautiful sport"

No, no, no.... Germany did not. I remember it as if it was yesterday. Stage to Sestriere 99: "Armstrong, a guy who had cancer, was tested positive of cortisone" (Original Live Commentator on German-TV; BTW nobody really cared anyway since Ullrich didn´t attend that year).

Nobody with his right mind believed Armstrong from day one (even the smart US-Guys posting here). So please, don´t confsuse the USA with the world. That sounds arrogant, and is just another reason for the so called "america bashing".

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

no, the argument about countries needs a new thread not this one.

i'm all for freedom of speech

Got it.
Sometimes in a good discussion you get a little bit off topic and then back to the point. I think that´s pretty normal.

 

[Aleajactaest]

You are aware the GJ witnesses have been firstly interviewed by Federal investigators before their GJ appearances under oath?

The testimony before the GJ should only be a replication for the purpose of the GJ jurors to make an assessment on the evidence to make determinations on the indictments.

The Federal investigators' interview notes, transcript and video must align on Q&A with the witnesses' sworn GJ testimony otherwise the witnesses were capable of being indicted for lying to a Federal investigator.

Yes, but GJ testimony has a way of going different places. FWIW, I think the WADA should have to do their own work but if Justice wants to share, that's their business.

 

[blutto]

Just a few things:

*US Attorney Andre Birotte Jr unilaterally ends investigation on Friday

* Reportably, he only informs other investigators Inc Novitzky only 30 mins before going public

* Reportably, investigators and witness alike amazed, flabbergasted, pi$$ed, etc

* Birotte appointed by one Sen Boxer (Cal), who has strong ties to a cancer charity

*The same day GJ disbanded, LiveStrong announces 100K donation to charity that Sen Boxer has strong ties to

*As we already know, LA's legal team has strong ties to influential members of both sides of US political aisle

*Target of GJ is an American hero (ie, a winner) and whole case a bad PR exercise

*This poster dislikes being an involuntary and extremely minor character in bad airport novel...

I'd much rather believe the case was just a loser. I really, really hope the above is either wildly inaccurate or just coincidental.

And if it's not, we don't have to do $hit about it, because vice cultivates in its own breast the demons that will carry it away.

Long live the USA

...to the casual observer the idea that big money, and the influence it exerts, was the deciding factor in the decision being discussed here, could easily smack of desperation driven conspiracy mongering...that being said, it would be interesting to look at another example of a major part of the cancer industry that is in deep doodoo...keep in mind, that the use of the term industry here is intentional, because that is how it should be seen ( and not as a series of mom and pop charities that are run off a kitchen table )...also keep in mind that this industry is notorious for having absolutely the worse ratio of donation input to actual work done in the field of charitable organizations ( and there have been more a few critics that have called this industry as one rife with corruption and set up merely to benefit handsomely its various organizational components...and not at all aimed at finding a cure...cancer, in these critiques, is seen as merely as the golden goose and removing that from the equation, as in actually curing cancer, would only reduce donations, which is not a good thing when your salaries are tied to it.)...also note the way the particular the charity in the link provided is operated and by whom and how huge it is...and then note the number of times and in which key places that cancer is mentioned in the attached quote....

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13309

...so is this a smoking gun?...or just as series of odd coincidences?...all good questions...all I know is that there is a very weird odour that permeates this whole drama, and it is not very pleasant...and that this smell has more than a passing resemblance to other smells that permeate other parts of the US body politic...

Cheers

blutto

 

[Aleajactaest]

Just a few things:

*US Attorney Andre Birotte Jr unilaterally ends investigation on Friday

* Reportably, he only informs other investigators Inc Novitzky only 30 mins before going public

* Reportably, investigators and witness alike amazed, flabbergasted, pi$$ed, etc

* Birotte appointed by one Sen Boxer (Cal), who has strong ties to a cancer charity

*The same day GJ disbanded, LiveStrong announces 100K donation to charity that Sen Boxer has strong ties to

*As we already know, LA's legal team has strong ties to influential members of both sides of US political aisle

*Target of GJ is an American hero (ie, a winner) and whole case a bad PR exercise

*This poster dislikes being an involuntary and extremely minor character in bad airport novel...

I'd much rather believe the case was just a loser. I really, really hope the above is either wildly inaccurate or just coincidental.

And if it's not, we don't have to do $hit about it, because vice cultivates in its own breast the demons that will carry it away.

Long live the USA

You left out the gunman on the grassy knoll.

 

[Abstainer]

From about 1990 to 2010, a period of twenty years, virtually every GC rider in professional road racing was blood doping, one way or another. I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that. I feel it is bordering on the intellectually dishonest to label anyone from this era a cheat and while I'm 100% convinced Armstrong took drugs, I can't get myself worked up into a fury knowing that he did.

The federal investigation was interesting because we never knew what they were looking for. I think people who imagined it was about establishing whether Armstrong doped were deluding themselves. Perhaps they did think they could make a case that by doping, USPS was being defrauded but given that rule breaking and doping is a feature of pretty much any sport, that would be opening a real can of worms. I thought it was perhaps more to do with illegal drug trafficking, or money laundering. But I don't feel the need to evoke conspiracy theories now it has transpired they powers that be don't think they can make a case.

But reading this and other threads, I feel that like it or not, it is time to move on. Betsy Andreu's gem of evidence is 15 years old. Tyler Hamilton left US Postal in 2001. Floyd left them in 2004. What can the USADA usefully do? I submit nothing very much. Like it or not, the horse has bolted.

It is time to move on.

 

[MarkvW]

You left out the gunman on the grassy knoll.

That guy? From Texas? Maybe he's Daddy Gunderson!

 

[Anti-doping]

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/usa...all-evidence-in-lance-armstrong-investigation

 

[Maxiton]

C'mon, Sporting Fraud - Really?
Come On.

Lance's Defense Team will have to show the American Prosecutors that
Euro Pro Cycling & the Tour de France are as AUTHENTIC as US Pro Wrestling.

pic by splitzwheel

Get Greg on the stand under oath to discuss what he saw pre-Lance,
maybe get Alberto on the stand to discuss OP and Manolo.
Eddy and Big Mig as Character Witnesses.

And forget the Power Point Defense, Lance should hire F. Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz...maybe get DNA Experts Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. Dream Team ReUnion 2010. Too bad Johnnie Cochran did lot live long enough to witness the 2005 TdF and "Believe" Podium Speech.

Anyway, Play by Play by Van Susteren, O'Reilly, and Roll.
Awesome.
The TV Ratings would top the TdF Ratings - that is for SURE!

Professional cycling until recently was European and at its heart it still is. What this means is that corruption and cynicism are as much a part of the sport as athleticism and strategy. It's all intertwined and the total package is what makes cycling as it is and has always been.

Postwar Europe has been transformed by the progressive ideas and supposed transparency of the Social Democracy, but pro cycling is one of the areas where it never cast its light. Rather, pro cycling represents the values and ethos of the Christian Democrats and the Church - the old in Old World.

The "crime" of the Americans (subsequent to male ingenue LeMond) - Lance and the older business handlers behind him - is that they understood the character of this game too well and played it on its own terms - especially Armstrong, who came to be not just Le Patron - essentially a tyrant - but Le Patron par excellence; the most dominant and powerful tyrant of all in cycling. Among many fans, this tyranny is supposed to be the province of Europeans - specifically French or Italian - a kind of charming, romantic, and even innocent, Old World minstrel show of sorts. For Americans to do it, on the other hand, is well beyond the pale and truly offensive.

So what you see in the pictures and words posted by Polish, and his point, I think, is that Armstrong is merely one among many, a secular Pope in a long line of them, and different only in that he was more successful at it, and American. None of which bothers Eddy Merckx, by the way, who is supremely entitled to judge, so why should it bother anyone else? Polish is right.

Mods: please don't you dare clean up the anti-American clap-trap in this thread. Finally, people are admitting what I've said for a long time: their problem with Armstrong isn't that he's a tyrant, a thug, a bully; their problem with Armstrong is that he's an American tyrant, thug and bully. If he haled from the hills and dales of the Continent, so called, they'd long since have added his pretty face to their pantheon of heroes. These particular Euros just can't abide the fact that an American would travel all that way, repeatedly, to dominate their provincial sport like no one else, and do so for a very long time. Granted, I wrote the above before I knew the full extent of Armstrong's dooshery, but its central point, it appears, still holds true.

Speaking in general terms, this barbarism that is ripping to shreds the social compact in Europe is of European origin. Much of it may have stemmed recently from US shores, but where do you think we got it? This ideology is ripping up our social compact, too (the very one that gave the US any practical or historic claim to exceptionalism, and allowed it to function as an imperfect model for liberty), and its main sources can be found in recent immigrants from Europe such as Ayn Rand (1925), Leo Strauss (1937) and Ludwig Von Mises (1940). Its primary impetus, however, might be the military-industral complex whose creation was necessary in order to prevent European Fascists from doing to Europe and the world the very things you now accuse us of doing, and more. We bailed your asses out and lost something of ourselves in the bargain. So our barbarism screwing up your social compact is nothing more than the chickens coming home to roost.

On a related note, those barbarians over at NYVelocity have something important to say:


"Birotte’s decision may be reversed. If he made his decision for purely political reasons, he’s surely facing a department wide revolt right now. And if he was worried about prosecuting a popular sporting figure, he probably wouldn’t want to be perceived as showing favoritism towards the rich and powerful either.

"And this is where you come in.

"This is Birotte’s email address: andre.birotte@usdoj.gov. Send him an email if you think criminals shouldn’t escape prosecution if they’re wealthy and connected. Let him know that the government shouldn’t encourage whistleblowers like Landis and Hamilton to speak up against an immensely powerful figure, only to pull the rug out from under them. Tell him he shouldn’t unilaterally negate two years of Novitzky’s hard work. Get the word out on Twitter, Facebook, smoke signals, whatever. Feel free to post all of this on your site or blog. If this investigation was quashed for political reasons, it is our job as fans of our sport to make our voices heard."

 

[Race Radio]

It is time to move on.

I suggest you reach out the USADA, they are interested in your input.

 

[Anti-doping]

I suggest you reach out the USADA, they are interested in your input.

Don't you get it? Your days as forumpolice are gone. No one would ever believe a word from you again.

Do as many other of us, accept that it is over now..we lost, Armstrong and his fans won. EOS. Move on.

 

[Berzin]

I suggest you reach out the USADA, they are interested in your input.

I suggest that if Armstrong had the pull to get a Federal investigation against him dropped, the USADA will not stand a chance.

I hold absolutely no hope that his antics will ever see the light of day in full detail.

And Dr. Ferrari walks away again, free as a bird.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

Mods: please don't you dare clean up the anti-American clap-trap in this thread. Finally, people are admitting what I've said for a long time: their problem with Armstrong isn't that he's a tyrant, a thug, a bully; their problem with Armstrong is that he's an American tyrant, thug and bully. If he haled from the hills and dales of the Continent, so called, they'd long since have added his pretty face to their pantheon of heroes.

OMG. You call it america bashing and then start european bashing. Arrogant hypocrisy at its worst. And on top of that asking for censorship. It´s a shame.

We call dopers dopers (Ullrich, Pechstein, whoever). Thus, at least in my (german) direction your post is untrue nonsense. Sorry that i have to say that.

Most of us europeans have the same problem as the smart americans have: Armstrongs behaviour, arrogance, ongoing lies, his intimidating of his selfmade "enemies", etc.! If this guy came from Denmark we still would not throne him.

Virenque, Rijs, Ullrich, Contador all showed humanity. Those guys we forgive. We even love those who never won (Polidour), because they show.... humanity. We don´t have that "the winner takes it all" mentality. Sorry for enlightning you to european tradition.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

Don't you get it? Your days as forumpolice are gone. No one would ever believe a word from you again.

Do as many other of us, accept that it is over now..we lost, Armstrong and his fans won. EOS. Move on.

As you say lets move on....... to the USADA case.

With a name like Anti-doping I can assume that you will welcome that the case is now back with those who can quickly sanction dopers.

 

[HL2037]

Mods: please don't you dare clean up the anti-American clap-trap in this thread. Finally, people are admitting what I've said for a long time: their problem with Armstrong isn't that he's a tyrant, a thug, a bully; their problem with Armstrong is that he's an American tyrant, thug and bully.

I can off course only speak for myself, but my problem with Armstrong is exactly that he is "a tyrant, a thug, a bully". My problem with USA is that a majority of americans apparently think that these dysfunctional characteristics are admirable qualities.

 

[patricknd]

You left out the gunman on the grassy knoll.

the gunman made the payment

 

[Velodude]

I suggest that if Armstrong had the pull to get a Federal investigation against him dropped, the USADA will not stand a chance.

I hold absolutely no hope that his antics will ever see the light of day in full detail.

And Dr. Ferrari walks away again, free as a bird.

No, USADA was established to be free from outside tinkering. It is accountable to no one.

It is only partially funded by the US government. If you can recall it was part of Floyd's strategy in defending his AAF to attempt to stifle USADA by encouraging supporters to lobby their Congressmen to cut USADA funding.

Effect would be, if successful, that US would have been seen as a pariah in the world anti-doping fight and tacit supporter of drug cheats. US would be seen to be persona non grata in world sport.

Did not happen and could not happen.

 

[Maxiton]

OMG. You call it america bashing and then start european bashing. Arrogant hypocrisy at its worst. And on top of that asking for censorship. It´s a shame.

We call dopers dopers (Ullrich, Pechstein, whoever). Thus, at least in my (german) direction your post is untrue nonsense. Sorry that i have to say that.

Most of us europeans have the same problem as the smart americans have: Armstrongs behaviour, arrogance, ongoing lies, his intimidating of his selfmade "enemies", etc.! If this guy came from Denmark we still would not throne him.

Virenque, Rijs, Ullrich, Contador all showed humanity. Those guys we forgive. We even love those who never won (Polidour), because they show.... humanity. We don´t have that "the winner takes it all" mentality. Sorry for enlightning you to european tradition.

Do they teach reading where you're from, or were you not paying attention that day? I said, "Mods: don't you dare clean up this anti-American clap-trap." (Not "America bashing".) And thanks for the enlightenment on European tradition - that would be the same tradition in which tyranny, torture, corruption, cronyism, and bully behavior play such a prominent role, that it was necessary to found a new country, this one, dedicated to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps you can understand, then, why some Americans have been isolationists.

I am on your side here. And it´s not only happened to cycling. This whole sharholder value/co operate capitalism BS swashed over to europe and is basically destroying our hard fought for social societies, like it did destroy south america in the 60/70s. But Rome was also swept away. So there is hope. Unluckily we´ll not see it happen in our lifetime...

Edit: And you´ll see once McQuaid is gone and Vaughters has built his franchise cycling BS (constructed like NFL/NBA) how good cycling still was in 2012. It´s the time when you have to pay entrance to watch the riders on mountain stages, when TV dictates schedules, when the smaller races are made kaputt, when the TdF can only be seen by some rich grumpy old white men in pay per view. It´s all coming. Thank you USA.

What fire, the disneyfication of a beautiful sport? There might have been doping in cycling before armstrong, but the americans have a way of turning everything into a tacky circus with no sense of real values. Making cycling into some parody of pro wrestling, thanks a lot!

In no other country would armstrong ever have gotten to the position to be able to polarize anything.

1++

You are so right. Thank you for that. It needed to be said. Agree 100%.

I have always said that Mr. Armstrong, his methods and way of going about things, was simply the incarnation of a corporate praxis and world view that, in these times, has taken all the culture and romanticism out of everything, and not only out of cycling, but the world in general. Performance is no longer about the human spectacle of a variegated mosaic, but the crushing potency of an invincible force. It has reduced everything to maniacal calculations for profit and gain, under the forces of the hyper-business-commercialization machine, for which simplicity is replaced by sophistication and there may well soon come a time "when you have to pay entrance to watch the riders on mountain stages, when TV dictates schedules, when the smaller races are made kaput, when the TdF can only be seen by some rich grumpy old white men in pay per view. It´s all coming..." Blah, puke, vomit!

With this European jingoism you cheapen and degrade the argument for clean sport.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

I thought it couldn't get any worst but the thread is getting ridculous.