USADA - Armstrong

[Krebs cycle]

You have a Ph.D in altitude training physiology? Man that's narrow...

Yeah, I thought so too until I discovered the fact that exposure to hypoxia affects every tissue, organ, and system in the entire human body and oxygen is essential for life.

 

[MarkvW]

Deadline is the 22nd. They have another full day. I don't see any reason to file something today rather than tomorrow. That's another FULL day of billable work.

Yup. It costs a lot to go full ***.

 

[Race Radio]

Yes, time is money! Plus it's probably taking the secretary very long to type out all those numerous paragraphs of adjectives describing the process.

Anyway, joking aside, if it goes uncontested, what happens?

I doubt any judge would grant an injunction so late so tomorrow will go ahead as usual. Wonderboy will then file and absurd civil rights lawsuit that will rally the troops but fail miserably.

All while Luskin pays for his new beach house with the bill able hours

 

[ChewbaccaD]

Krebs posts have been courteous and reasonable.
Try it out yourself.

Cool story bro.

 

[Krebs cycle]

Sure, if the troll brigade would stop posting cool stories...

You guys continue to pretend that most of the new posters who are spouting the same crap defenses of Armstrong that the multitudes have been spouting since 2003 are providing legitimate discourse, so you leave me with little else to do. You can't engage them in serious conversation, so I engage them in the most appropriate way.

I've been registered on this website for 3yrs more than you and I've never sprouted Armstrong crap. Maybe if you weren't such a n00b yourself would know my posting history better as the longer term residents here clearly do.

I'm lamenting at the whole miserable drug taking mess that cycling became especially in the 80s, 90s and has continued until this day. Despite my dislike of Armstrong and his systematic doping practices, I haven't lost sight of the fact that doping was almost ubiqitous in the pro-peloton in the 1990s. Busting LA is the best thing that can possibly happen to pro-cycling and I hope it becomes the catalyst for breaking the omerta in the future.

Thank you all for an entertaining day of discussion, but I must confess I have more pressing work to do. Happy clinic raving

 

[Merckx index]

I doubt any judge would grant an injunction so late so tomorrow will go ahead as usual. Wonderboy will then file and absurd civil rights lawsuit that will rally the troops but fail miserably.

All while Luskin pays for his new beach house with the bill able hours

Responding by tomorrow is meaningless. Regardless of what LA’s team submits, the Review Board will almost certainly approve of the charges. So why bother to submit anything? It is after the Board approves of the charges (probably by the second week in July) that LA can request a hearing, or try to transfer the case to a civil court. I will be very surprised if he doesn’t respond in some fashion.

 

[MarkvW]

I doubt any judge would grant an injunction so late so tomorrow will go ahead as usual. Wonderboy will then file and absurd civil rights lawsuit that will rally the troops but fail miserably.

All while Luskin pays for his new beach house with the bill able hours

There's a problem with that approach for Lance.

As discussed in the NYT article, Lance may want to argue that USADA "is" the federal government and that in this instance the USA is not providing him 'procedural due process.'

If he's gonna make that argument, he has to exhaust his administrative remedies first before he plunges into federal court--otherwise he risks getting tossed. Exhaustion means playing the USADA game all the way to the end, and only then complaining to the federal judge.

There's no cheap way out of this for Pharm.

 

[131313]

Quite simply, Armstrong showed zero ability in stage races prior to hooking up with Ferrari. If all doping was removed I doubt he would have been a GT winner, probably top 10 and certainly a Classics rider.

While not generally in the habit of "defending" Armstrong, I have to disagree. The Tour duPont wasn't exactly a weak field, and it was a big race considering (below euro races but probably bigger the the ToC), and at a young age he showed himself there. He certainly demonstrated that he could climb pretty well. Secondly, it's pretty hard to determine where how he would have done w/o EPO, since by the time he started racing grand tours and racing in Europe, the playing field was already in disarray. I agree with Krebs, I think he coulda been a ton 10 GC guy, and a potential winner if the planets aligned, the right guys broke their collarbone and that year's course suited him. I certainly don't see him being the dominant guy though, by a long shot. Regardless though, it's all speculation. What we do know is that we'll never know...

Where I disagree w/Krebs is on the whole "bottle fetcher to Tour Champion" thing. This has already been answered: Bjarne Riis. He went from bottle fetcher to multiple time podium guy, numerous top-10 finished an a tour title. A true "donkey to racehorse".

There are two things to remember about the whole EPO thing and donkeys becoming racehorses. First, whatever the % improvement in sustainable wattage in trained athletes (which is what really matters, time to exhaustion is a red herring), whether it's 5% or 11% etc, there's always scatter. That's why it's an average some improve a good bit more than others. Secondly, a professional water carrier is still pretty fast! Take the worst professional rider and increase his threshold wattage by 15%, and you have a champion.

 

[ChewbaccaD]

I've been registered on this website for 3yrs more than you and I've never sprouted Armstrong crap. Maybe if you weren't such a n00b yourself would know my posting history better as the longer term residents here clearly do.

I'm lamenting at the whole miserable drug taking mess that cycling became especially in the 80s, 90s and has continued until this day. Despite my dislike of Armstrong and his systematic doping practices, I haven't lost sight of the fact that doping was almost ubiqitous in the pro-peloton in the 1990s. Busting LA is the best thing that can possibly happen to pro-cycling and I hope it becomes the catalyst for breaking the omerta in the future.

Thank you all for an entertaining day of discussion, but I must confess I have more pressing work to do. Happy clinic raving

Cool story bro. If you've been here that long you'd know I have been here since the beginning. I just have a new name. I think I was one of the first 10. Try again.

 

[GJB123]

Come on you cannot be serious? I should not have to provide specific proof when there are dozens of books and dozens of ex riders and dozens of journalists all throughout the pro-cycling community that have graphically detailed how deep the doping went, what they were doing, how much, how often, dosages etc. Were you living under a rock when the Festina affair broke?

Oh, now who is taking the easy way out.

Yes, a lot of riders doped and that hasn't been contested by anyone. However you state quite categorically ("strongly believe") that all GT-hopefuls were more or less on the same kind of PED-program and were more or less maxed out PED-wise. I say that there has been testimony provided by numerous witnesses that Ullrich for example wasn't maxed out in the early years by any means. So yes, please provide proof of your claim other than professed "common knowledge".

Your argument is basically that they were all doing it to the same extent so Armstrong also had to do it to make sure he was competing on the same level. Since they were allegedly on the same level his TdF-wins are legitimate? What is your point? If all this is to show they I shouldn't have said that he was donkey turned race horse with PED-use then okay, he wasn't a donkey. He was a talented one day rider and an average GT-rider turned record breaking TdF-winner due to PED's. Forgive the hyperbole.

Regards
GJ

 

[GJB123]

And you should read the numerous accounts of how easy it is to manipulate a Hct test with the smallest of advanced warning or some simple planning.

Yes for tests you are quite right. But if teammates and a soigneur state as a matter of fact (so not with regard to any doping tests) and quite well afterwards that Ullrich raced with a crit of 43%, that is saying something. There is no logical reason whatsoever they would make false claims in that respect. It is not as if they were claiming he rode clean, just that he wasn't maxed out.

Regards
GJ

 

[JRTinMA]

Yes for tests you are quite right. But if teammates and a soigneur state as a matter of fact (so not with regard to any doping tests) and quite well afterwards that Ullrich raced with a crit of 43%, that is saying something. There is no logical reason whatsoever they would make false claims in that respect. It is not as if they were claiming he rode clean, just that he wasn't maxed out.

Regards
GJ

Fair enough, the only problem I have is we don't know what tests they were referencing when they made those statements. Were they official drug tests potentially manipulated or were they commenting on private/team testing that were unmolested. Hct was a key anti-doping test then. In the end I'm not sure it matters, he seems to have moved on in life.

 

[MarkvW]

Oh, now who is taking the easy way out.

Yes, a lot of riders doped and that hasn't been contested by anyone. However you state quite categorically ("strongly believe") that all GT-hopefuls were more or less on the same kind of PED-program and were more or less maxed out PED-wise. I say that there has been testimony provided by numerous witnesses that Ullrich for example wasn't maxed out in the early years by any means. So yes, please provide proof of your claim other than professed "common knowledge".

Your argument is basically that they were all doing it to the same extent so Armstrong also had to do it to make sure he was competing on the same level. Since they were allegedly on the same level his TdF-wins are legitimate? What is your point? If all this is to show they I shouldn't have said that he was donkey turned race horse with PED-use then okay, he wasn't a donkey. He was a talented one day rider and an average GT-rider turned record breaking TdF-winner due to PED's. Forgive the hyperbole.

Regards
GJ

Are you suggesting that Ullrich was a "moderate" doper?

 

[DirtyWorks]

.. You do however, need to be winning junior national championships and single day classics etc early in your career to be considered GT material. Lance is not out of the ordinary on this fact.

It's not clear to me if you are accounting for his very likely doping regimen as an under 23. It doesn't seem like you are. If you just pretend that doping had nothing to do with the one-day and national results, then you are just pretending to maintain a fundamentally flawed opinion.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

[mikkemus23]

Oh, now who is taking the easy way out.

Yes, a lot of riders doped and that hasn't been contested by anyone. However you state quite categorically ("strongly believe") that all GT-hopefuls were more or less on the same kind of PED-program and were more or less maxed out PED-wise. I say that there has been testimony provided by numerous witnesses that Ullrich for example wasn't maxed out in the early years by any means. So yes, please provide proof of your claim other than professed "common knowledge".

Your argument is basically that they were all doing it to the same extent so Armstrong also had to do it to make sure he was competing on the same level. Since they were allegedly on the same level his TdF-wins are legitimate? What is your point? If all this is to show they I shouldn't have said that he was donkey turned race horse with PED-use then okay, he wasn't a donkey. He was a talented one day rider and an average GT-rider turned record breaking TdF-winner due to PED's. Forgive the hyperbole.

Regards
GJ

I fully agree.

I don't dispute Krebs phd, but what he`s talking about here stands out as pure speculation. There is no way to know, but imho it`s unlikely.

 

[caryopsis]

Please, can this speculation on Armstrong's historical natural or unnatural potential vs. whoever else in some alternate reality be taken to a new thread (or one of the exisiting ones where this was discussed at length)? It'd be nice to keep this to the current issues at hand with USADA.

Respectfully all y'alls,

 

[shawnrohrbach]

Come on you cannot be serious? I should not have to provide specific proof when there are dozens of books and dozens of ex riders and dozens of journalists all throughout the pro-cycling community that have graphically detailed how deep the doping went, what they were doing, how much, how often, dosages etc. Were you living under a rock when the Festina affair broke?

They are baiting you. Keep calm and don't wade through their sewage.

 

[college]

What if there is illegal or unlawful disclosure of grand jury information on usada’s part. Travis T. was on a ride along with bald head novitz during some of the investigation. It would then appear that usada might be corrupt.
Maybe Lance is having his lawyers work on some type of legal action against usada along with the response to usada’s claim letter?

 

[DirtyWorks]

There's a problem with that approach for Lance.

As discussed in the NYT article, Lance may want to argue that USADA "is" the federal government and that in this instance the USA is not providing him 'procedural due process.'

If he's gonna make that argument, he has to exhaust his administrative remedies first before he plunges into federal court--otherwise he risks getting tossed. Exhaustion means playing the USADA game all the way to the end, and only then complaining to the federal judge.

There's no cheap way out of this for Pharm.

IMHO, this is a likely scenario.

Grind away at the USADA process until Wonderboy has enough outside pressure on USADA to drop the case with a deal and another "I won" press release a decade from now when no one cares and doping in pro cycling has gone from "don't kill yourself" to "Party like it's 1995." It will create some precedent for other cases though, and that's not a bad thing.

I want a similar outcome as many do. But, this is a power and money game and for now anyway, Wonderboy still has both.

 

[Krebs cycle]

Where I disagree w/Krebs is on the whole "bottle fetcher to Tour Champion" thing. This has already been answered: Bjarne Riis. He went from bottle fetcher to multiple time podium guy, numerous top-10 finished an a tour title. A true "donkey to racehorse".

There are two things to remember about the whole EPO thing and donkeys becoming racehorses. First, whatever the % improvement in sustainable wattage in trained athletes (which is what really matters, time to exhaustion is a red herring), whether it's 5% or 11% etc, there's always scatter. That's why it's an average some improve a good bit more than others. Secondly, a professional water carrier is still pretty fast! Take the worst professional rider and increase his threshold wattage by 15%, and you have a champion.

Bjarne Riis won only one tour though. I think his example supports my contention. He was nowhere near as dominant as LA.

See the thing is that, since I nor anyone else has any clue about whether or not any pro rider is a "responder" or "non-responder" to PEDs, I'm assuming the next most logical approach to the problem and that is to apply a normal distribution in which 96% of the population lies within 2 SDs of the mean. If Riis actually was and LA was destined to be a water bottle fetcher in GTs and PEDs alone changed all that, then they both must have had average physiology only (for the pro-peloton) but instead have experienced an outstanding response to PEDs, perhaps 2 or 3 SDs away from the mean. Lance even moreso, because he was much more successful than Riis.

This seems less plausible to me than beginning with above average physiology combined with an above average PED response.

If you take the worst rider in the pack and give him a 15% increase in threshold power he becomes a tour champion. If you take one of the best riders in the pack and do the same, he becomes a 7x tour champion.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

What if there is illegal or unlawful disclosure of grand jury information on usada’s part. Travis T. was on a ride along with bald head novitz during some of the investigation. It would then appear that usada might be corrupt.
Maybe Lance is having his lawyers work on some type of legal action against usada along with the response to usada’s claim letter?

Ah, so this is what you mean when you suggest that USADA are corrupt.

Do you have anything to show that USADA have anything from a GJ? Thought not.
Indeed Travis was in Europe with Nobitzky, can you show how that is illegal, yet alone corrupt? Didn't think so.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

While not generally in the habit of "defending" Armstrong, I have to disagree. The Tour duPont wasn't exactly a weak field, and it was a big race considering (below euro races but probably bigger the the ToC), and at a young age he showed himself there. He certainly demonstrated that he could climb pretty well. Secondly, it's pretty hard to determine where how he would have done w/o EPO, since by the time he started racing grand tours and racing in Europe, the playing field was already in disarray. I agree with Krebs, I think he coulda been a ton 10 GC guy, and a potential winner if the planets aligned, the right guys broke their collarbone and that year's course suited him. I certainly don't see him being the dominant guy though, by a long shot. Regardless though, it's all speculation. What we do know is that we'll never know...

Where I disagree w/Krebs is on the whole "bottle fetcher to Tour Champion" thing. This has already been answered: Bjarne Riis. He went from bottle fetcher to multiple time podium guy, numerous top-10 finished an a tour title. A true "donkey to racehorse".

There are two things to remember about the whole EPO thing and donkeys becoming racehorses. First, whatever the % improvement in sustainable wattage in trained athletes (which is what really matters, time to exhaustion is a red herring), whether it's 5% or 11% etc, there's always scatter. That's why it's an average some improve a good bit more than others. Secondly, a professional water carrier is still pretty fast! Take the worst professional rider and increase his threshold wattage by 15%, and you have a champion.

Ack, I must admit I had forgotten his Tour du Ponts results, but the premise still holds as although a tough event it lacked the serious GC riders.

To the highlighted - I have said I believe he probably would have been a top 10 in TdF (if no such thing as rEPO), but breaking top 5 would be a huge ask.
Krebs position has shifted, they said that LA would still have been a dominant GTer regardless. Now they have watered it down to a level that I agree with.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you, "cool story bro" was cool if you were an obese nerd-raging gamer in 2008. Sorry Chewie.

Meh.

As long as the trolling is allowed to go unabated then so shall the "cool story bro." Sorry, JRT.

 

[WinterRider]

Take a look at Lars Boom. He won just about everything there is to win the way of national and WC-titles under 23, but I don't think anyone including Boom himself feels he has it in him to win one let alone 7 TdF's.

I defense of krebs though, he isn't saying that every junior champion will automatically be a GT-contender, however every GT-contender probably was very good under 23 already.

Regards
GJ

But that is what Krebs is saying. He said that Lance probably would have won the TdF clean if everyone was clean, and might have even won 7.

Basically Krebs is saying that the difference between the athletes all doped, is the same as the difference when none of them are doped. Whereas most of the people who frequent this board are arguing that if no one was doped, Lance would not be a GT contender.

 

[Anonymous]

It's not clear to me if you are accounting for his very likely doping regimen as an under 23. It doesn't seem like you are. If you just pretend that doping had nothing to do with the one-day and national results, then you are just pretending to maintain a fundamentally flawed opinion.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

Well then I'm reading it wrong too.

To assume LA was clean when he won the worlds in 1993 is, at the very least, naive.