USADA - Armstrong

[Jeremiah]

Decanio on Vaughters and beating the EPO test...

http://su13.us/this_just_in___/view/18617/how_to_avoid_testing_positive

"This was explained to me by Jonathan Vaughters who you should know if you know anything about pro cycling.* As he was my teammate on Prime Alliance I will tell you what he told me was the way to avoid testing positive for EPO.* I used EPO briefly but never tested positive.* But I was never tested for EPO while using it but if I was a constant I imagine Vaughters technique would have been the way Lance could have gotten away with it.* Please keep in mind they didn't have a test for many years, and Lance's samples that were frozen and saved, all of his B samples tested positive for EPO when later tested.* He got away with it, and if you look at the case of Kayle Leogrande, he had positive B samples, and an eye witness to him admitting his usage, well Lance did too.* Frankie Andreu and his wife in the hospital room.* The SCA Promotions Trial.* Lance had numerous B samples test positive.* Well Kayle got busted and Lance got off then.* Lance should have been sanctioned then if the system was fair.

Back to avoiding the positive test by Vaughters.* He told when you use EPO it produces a synthetic product in your blood and this is what is flagged.* But if you use EPO and put your body at altitude this will cause your body to replace those flags so you will not test positive for EPO.* So having an altitude chamber or living at altitude while using EPO you will not test positive for EPO.

That is from the highest secrets of the pro racers.* Consider with careful planning how Lance could have avoided testing positive.

Matt DeCanio"

Remember back when Lance used to talk in interviews about how inconvenient it was to sleep in the 'tude tent while being married to Kik?

I scanned down the page and looked at what Matt said about Testosterone patches. Hypberbolic statements IMHO.

Transdermal testosterone patches or gels/creams, deliver a dosage that puts a person in a normal or high normal range. It's nowhere near what injectable steroids do although there are noticeable effects.

Your junk shrinking from this kind of stuff is way over the top. The whole point of transdermal administration is that one would apply the stuff at the beginning of the day to mimic natural testosterone delivery which peaks in the morning. That's the therapeutic use anyway. Getting shots delivers big emotional highs and lows.

Someone who is training a lot would feel "normal" as opposed to super charged.

Many of Floyd's statements confirm this. He just took enough Testosterone to be able to train and feel ok although rumor had it, he was taking a lot of Hgh. The staples for him were the EPO and blood transfusions.

 

[BillytheKid]

Didn't the move to Girona start when the French police started to get nosy?

The French are hypocrites. The sport, the TdF, has had always had a problem, but when the French were winning they looked the other way.


http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/lamentation

"Anquetil, however, was always nice to me. He was 18 years old, and he was already a star. He just got better and better. But he also took a fair amount of pills, you know. It is not something we talked much about. Of course a lot of guys would take stuff, but only when it was valuable."

Roger Walkowiak, Tour de France winner 1956.

A great interview. Insight and evidence this is not an Armstrong invention, but a long held dark-side of this sport and I beleive others as well. It does not make it right. Testing should go forward. Armstrong was a true talent, I think at that level I agree with Walkowiak on "a lot of guy took stuff."
Those who bend it to be like a massive invention of doping by Armstrong and Bruyneel are just playing a nationalistic fiddle. There's nothing new under the sun here.

 

[Hawkwood]

The French are hypocrites. The sport, the TdF, has had always had a problem, but when the French were winning they looked the other way.


http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/lamentation

"Anquetil, however, was always nice to me. He was 18 years old, and he was already a star. He just got better and better. But he also took a fair amount of pills, you know. It is not something we talked much about. Of course a lot of guys would take stuff, but only when it was valuable."

Roger Walkowiak, Tour de France winner 1956.

A great interview. Insight and evidence this is not an Armstrong invention, but a long held dark-side of this sport and I beleive others as well. It does not make it right. Testing should go forward. Armstrong was a true talent, I think at that level I agree with Walkowiak on "a lot of guy took stuff."
Those who bend it to be like a massive invention of doping by Armstrong and Bruyneel are just playing a nationalistic fiddle. There's nothing new under the sun here.

I sort of agree, plus the French police got nosy about cycling, not necessarily about other sports. During the year of the Festina affair the French minister of sport appeared to be saying here we have `dirty cycling' and on the other hand here we have `nice clean football' as evidenced by the World Cup taking place in our country.

 

[Dr. Maserati]

The French are hypocrites. The sport, the TdF, has had always had a problem, but when the French were winning they looked the other way.

So, Festina - that wasn't "the French" catching their own team with Frances biggest star.

http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/lamentation

"Anquetil, however, was always nice to me. He was 18 years old, and he was already a star. He just got better and better. But he also took a fair amount of pills, you know. It is not something we talked much about. Of course a lot of guys would take stuff, but only when it was valuable."

Roger Walkowiak, Tour de France winner 1956.

A great interview. Insight and evidence this is not an Armstrong invention, but a long held dark-side of this sport and I beleive others as well. It does not make it right. Testing should go forward. Armstrong was a true talent, I think at that level I agree with Walkowiak on "a lot of guy took stuff."
Those who bend it to be like a massive invention of doping by Armstrong and Bruyneel are just playing a nationalistic fiddle. There's nothing new under the sun here.

Sorry Billy - could you point out those who said LA or JB invented doping - or was that just your invention.

 

[BillytheKid]

Sorry Billy - could you point out those who said LA or JB invented doping - or was that just your invention.

It's implicit to the tenth power here.

 

[VeloCity]

It's implicit to the tenth power here.

No, that's just the way you choose to take it.

 

[BillytheKid]

No, that's just the way you choose to take it.

No, really? This is all opinion, yours, mine....

 

[Race Radio]

Rider fled France when they criminalized doping. Girona attracted some because Johnny Weltz was living there and had apartments that he rented out to riders.

I think the first year Lance lived somewhere else in Spain before moving to Girona with the rest

 

[Dr. Maserati]

It's implicit to the tenth power here.

So, it was your invention. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[GJB123]

The French are hypocrites. The sport, the TdF, has had always had a problem, but when the French were winning they looked the other way.


http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/lamentation

"Anquetil, however, was always nice to me. He was 18 years old, and he was already a star. He just got better and better. But he also took a fair amount of pills, you know. It is not something we talked much about. Of course a lot of guys would take stuff, but only when it was valuable."

Roger Walkowiak, Tour de France winner 1956.

A great interview. Insight and evidence this is not an Armstrong invention, but a long held dark-side of this sport and I beleive others as well. It does not make it right. Testing should go forward. Armstrong was a true talent, I think at that level I agree with Walkowiak on "a lot of guy took stuff."
Those who bend it to be like a massive invention of doping by Armstrong and Bruyneel are just playing a nationalistic fiddle. There's nothing new under the sun here.

What a load of hogwash. Nobody is bending it like Armstrong and Bruyneel invented doping. Just look at any goven topic in the Clinic. That is strawmen!

It is well known and well accepted that doping is nothing new in cycling. However in the '90's it was no longer just a few pills but donkey were transformed into race horses (or one day specialists into GT contenders) overnight. It made a mockery out of talent. Pre 90's clean riders could compete with riders using PED's, in the '90's you either were on EPO or you lost. Period.

What sets Armstrong aside from others in the '90's and the beginning of this century was the scale of his fraud and the fact that he knew he could get away with it. In that respect it was new. Never before did anyone manage to cheat themselves to a string of TdF-wins. If you chose to deny those facts, you are so blinded by fanboi-ism and basically any discussion with you is useless.

Regards
GJ

 

[Race Radio]

The French are hypocrites. The sport, the TdF, has had always had a problem, but when the French were winning they looked the other way.


http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/lamentation

"Anquetil, however, was always nice to me. He was 18 years old, and he was already a star. He just got better and better. But he also took a fair amount of pills, you know. It is not something we talked much about. Of course a lot of guys would take stuff, but only when it was valuable."

Roger Walkowiak, Tour de France winner 1956.

A great interview. Insight and evidence this is not an Armstrong invention, but a long held dark-side of this sport and I beleive others as well. It does not make it right. Testing should go forward. Armstrong was a true talent, I think at that level I agree with Walkowiak on "a lot of guy took stuff."
Those who bend it to be like a massive invention of doping by Armstrong and Bruyneel are just playing a nationalistic fiddle. There's nothing new under the sun here.

Ridiculous

The French criminalized doping after the Festina affair took down some of their biggest stars, Richard Virenque, Pascal Hervé, Didier Rous, Laurent Dufauxed. The management was also French. Other French teams were also exposed (Casino).

The French did something about it, the rest of the countries ignored it

 

[Hugh Januss]

What a load of hogwash. Nobody is bending it like Armstrong and Bruyneel invented doping. Just look at any goven topic in the Clinic. That is strawmen!

It is well known and well accepted that doping is nothing new in cycling. However in the '90's it was no longer just a few pills but donkey were transformed into race horses (or one day specialists into GT contenders) overnight. It made a mockery out of talent. Pre 90's clean riders could compete with riders using PED's, in the '90's you either were on EPO or you lost. Period.

What sets Armstrong aside from others in the '90's and the beginning of this century was the scale of his fraud and the fact that he knew he could get away with it. In that respect it was new. Never before did anyone manage to cheat themselves to a string of TdF-wins. If you chose to deny those facts, you are so blinded by fanboi-ism and basically any discussion with you is useless.

Regards
GJ

This has been said over and over and over, but there are a number of people who choose either to ignore or not believe it because of the unfortunate implication it holds for their hero. They would rather bang on about how there has always been doping bla bla. There have been automobiles for a long time but we didn't need speed limits untill the car was capable of exceeding 20 mph and roads were paved.
The game changed in the beginning of the 90s, teams didn't have a full time staff of "Doctors" before that. Lance and Bruyneel embraced that change and rode it to the biggest scam in sports.

 

[Animal]

Those who bend it to be like a massive invention of doping by Armstrong and Bruyneel are just playing a nationalistic fiddle. There's nothing new under the sun here.

Like who?

You just did to invent a whole bunch of imaginary enemies to slay. Well done. You got em!

 

[thehog]

Ridiculous

The French criminalized doping after the Festina affair took down some of their biggest stars, Richard Virenque, Pascal Hervé, Didier Rous, Laurent Dufauxed. The management was also French. Other French teams were also exposed (Casino).

The French did something about it, the rest of the countries ignored it

Good to see we got ourselves back to blaming the French again!

The Festina trials were pivotal for doping in France. It was the catalyst for Virenque's confession and the implementation of doping as a crime laws.

Do you think we’ll get a teary confession from Lance at the USADA trials?

__

"In making this confession, you have grown in stature," Delegove told Virenque.

"You have dropped a defence that was bound to fail. You can now look at yourself in the mirror," the judge said.

Virenque, who now rides for Italy's Polti team, is the only cyclist on trial. He is charged with "complicity in facilitating and inciting the use of doping," but not with taking drugs. Virenque risks up to two years in prison.

Among the other nine are former Festina team trainer Bruno Roussel and Willy Voet, the Belgian physiotherapist caught just before the Tour started with a load of the performance-enhancing erythropoietin (EPO), in a team car.

The nine defendants risk up to 10 years in prison for "infraction of drug laws and doping legislation and importing medication as contraband."

Virenque fell into Voet's arms after leaving the courtroom, bursting into tears.
"The first step, the toughest, has been made," Voet said later on the French LCI television channel. Voet reiterated the bitterness he felt at having been isolated by team members after confessing to police.

Virenque's lawyer, Eric Hemmerdinger, commended his client's "great courage."

 

[pmcg76]

Yes it did. It was very sudden and a LOT of riders all went almost at the same time.

C'mon people. Those of you who know Lance. It's not like he is a truly "friendly" guy. You don't go over to his apt in Girona after a long day of training and play scrabble with him and Kik. And last I heard, JV was never really Lance's bud either, yet of all the pretty places in Spain, he picks that one?

For somebody who claims they know a lot of things, you clearly dont and are just randomly making stuff up.

Pre Tour 99, Armstrong, the Andreu's, Kevin Livingston and non Postie Bobby Julich lived in Nice. Anyone who purchased the first ever issue of ProCycling magazine also received a free video about Armstrong called 'Lust for life'. The interviews for the video took place at the house in Nice whilst it was under construction and you can hear the construction guys working in the background. Armstrong was complaining about shoddy French workers.

US Postal were introduced to Girona by Johnny Weltz who was DS at Postal in 97-98 but was ditched in favour of Bruyneel according to the wishes of Armstrong for the 99 season. Most of the other US guys on the team lived in Girona and had been there since before the Festina affair broke in 98. Hincapie, Hamilton, Jemison, Vaughters and indeed the Dane Frank Hoj all lived in Girona before the 99 season. Again ProCycling conducted an interview with the Girona Posties in early 99.

It is clear that the fact that US Postal were based in Girona pre 99 and pre Festina was a mere coincidence. It was simply a small community of US riders living in close proximity in a nice city with good weather, good transport links and excellent training conditions. Much like the fact that there was an Aussie community based around Toulouse pre Festina, O'Grady, Sweet, Jenner, Vogels and the French rider Moncassin. Why did they all pick Toulouse?

The French criminalised doping in 99 I think so Armstrong was actually living in Nice and indeed spent a fortune on developing a nice pad to live in. My guess is that the French never really considered bothering a few yankee's who didnt exactly have high profiles at the time. Obvioulsy this changed after the 99 Tour and Armstrong hightailed it out of France sometime in 2000 and used Girona as his European base but was rarely there.

If you want to claim that Girona became a hub for doping after 99 with riders trying to escape France, then that is totally realistic but the original reason that US Postal were based in Girona was not related to doping as you are claiming and they were there before Armstrong arrived.

Vaughters did come into contact with Armstrong in Girona as he wrote an article about Armstrong visiting his apartment for Cycle Sport in either 00/01. Vaughters continued to make Girona his base even when he rode for Credit Agricole. Yes, it is clear that Armstrong and Vaughters were not great buddies but obviously their career's and lives overlapped sometimes.

Finally, having personally visited Girona and done some training around that area, it is totally understandable why it is a popular place for pros to base themselves. The weather is perfect for training from about Feb onwards and the surrounding countryside is perfect for training with little to no traffic once you leave the main roads and you can hit the mountains in no time at all or head for the coast. Girona itself is a nice city and the transport is good, airport near by and Barcelona just an hour by train.

In terms of somewhere for a pro to live, I dont think you could do much better.

 

[Maxiton]

Good to see we got ourselves back to blaming the French again!

The Festina trials were pivotal for doping in France. It was the catalyst for Virenque's confession and the implementation of doping as a crime laws.

Do you think we’ll get a teary confession from Lance at the USADA trials?

__

"In making this confession, you have grown in stature," Delegove told Virenque.

"You have dropped a defence that was bound to fail. You can now look at yourself in the mirror," the judge said.

Virenque, who now rides for Italy's Polti team, is the only cyclist on trial. He is charged with "complicity in facilitating and inciting the use of doping," but not with taking drugs. Virenque risks up to two years in prison.

Among the other nine are former Festina team trainer Bruno Roussel and Willy Voet, the Belgian physiotherapist caught just before the Tour started with a load of the performance-enhancing erythropoietin (EPO), in a team car.

The nine defendants risk up to 10 years in prison for "infraction of drug laws and doping legislation and importing medication as contraband."

Virenque fell into Voet's arms after leaving the courtroom, bursting into tears.
"The first step, the toughest, has been made," Voet said later on the French LCI television channel. Voet reiterated the bitterness he felt at having been isolated by team members after confessing to police.

Virenque's lawyer, Eric Hemmerdinger, commended his client's "great courage."

Could we get a link, please? And could you start providing links? Thanks.

 

[TourOfSardinia]

Could we get a link, please? And could you start providing links? Thanks.

Google is still your friend http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/story?id=100025&page=1

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/virenque-i-took-drugs-i-had-no-choice-637089.html

 

[thehog]

Could we get a link, please? And could you start providing links? Thanks.

I am the link.


http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2000/10/24/richard001024.html

 

[thehog]

Google is still your friend http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/story?id=100025&page=1

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/virenque-i-took-drugs-i-had-no-choice-637089.html

Later in the day the trial took another turn when the former Festina trainer Antoine Vayer cast doubt over the current Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, who celebrated his second victory in succession this year. Vayer testified under oath: "Armstrong rides at an average speed of 54kph. I find this scandalous. It's a nonsense." Then Frenchman Christophe Bassons, known as the only Festina rider to refuse doping, said Armstrong had forced him to leave the 1999 Tour. "Last year during a stage, Armstrong came to me and told me I was doing a lot of harm to cycling," Bassons said. "He [Armstrong] told me I had better go home." Bassons withdrew and did not take part in the event this year.

 

[DirtyWorks]

...he is making very little contribution to the thread apart from deflection, off-topic rants, bringing up new unfounded points and then ditching them and just generally derailing the discussion.

Hence, the ignore list in my sig. It makes checking threads sooo much more pleasant with their comments collapsed. Some of you still reply to those numbskulls though... Click on "User CP">"Edit Ignore List" on the left side of the page.

 

[MarkvW]

What a load of hogwash. Nobody is bending it like Armstrong and Bruyneel invented doping. Just look at any goven topic in the Clinic. That is strawmen!

It is well known and well accepted that doping is nothing new in cycling. However in the '90's it was no longer just a few pills but donkey were transformed into race horses (or one day specialists into GT contenders) overnight. It made a mockery out of talent. Pre 90's clean riders could compete with riders using PED's, in the '90's you either were on EPO or you lost. Period.

What sets Armstrong aside from others in the '90's and the beginning of this century was the scale of his fraud and the fact that he knew he could get away with it. In that respect it was new. Never before did anyone manage to cheat themselves to a string of TdF-wins. If you chose to deny those facts, you are so blinded by fanboi-ism and basically any discussion with you is useless.

Regards
GJ

I'm not at all sure Indurain was clean, and I know Anquetil wasn't (and Anquetil made the point that doping was necessary for the Tour). Anquetil thus , by his own admission, did dope his way to multiple Tour wins.

And your argument that Armstrong is alone at the top of organized dopers is only valid if you talk about riders. Saiz and Pevenage are at least as bad as Armstrong, and IMO Saiz is worse.

And before you go accusing, in advance, those who disagree with you of being fanboys, what's this with your "just a few pills" statement? Is 'pot belge' just a few pills? Is amphetamine abuse insignificant? You are minimizing the seriousness of past doping abuse. It was a huge problem back then, both with riders' health and with getting broader public acceptance for such a filthy sport.

There are a lot of aggravators, and Lance deserves a lifetime ban for them.

But ask yourself this: How in the world is Lance going to compete and win against Saiz and Pevenage unless he has a more effective doping organization? The answer is obvious.

Anybody who thinks Lance is an aberration is an [fill in the blank--you apparently like that style of argument]. Take out Lance's multiple doped TdF wins, and what do you get? You get Ullrich's multiple doped TdF wins. You get Ivan Basso.

Lance is a weed. He was one of the biggest weeds. He thrived because nobody tends the garden. Now, belatedly, that weed may be pulled out by the roots. But there are lots more weeds, and the garden still isn't being tended adequately.

Gag me with all this talk of how Lance ruined pro cycling. The sport was a going brothel long before Lance and it will be a going brothel long after Lance.

 

[mewmewmew13]

I'm not wading back 10 pages or so to see if it's elsewhere but this was in my morning paper...

http://www.dailycamera.com/editorials/ci_20884319/chasing-lance-armstrong

from the LA Times

Nice to see that the tide is shifting.

 

[sniper]

Explain to the naive how exactly we know Garmin is doping ? Surely that would take an admission, or super human times that are not physically possible up mountains. Because I cant see it at the moment. All I can see for what they have done is ride well so that a rider capable of winning the Giro...well he won it as one of the favourites. So please explain yourself as I must be dumb.

Lance won the Tour 6 times being the favorite... so what's your point?

Yeah I don't get it either when people just accuse any good team/rider of doping. You have to wonder why they bother watching/commenting.

(provided you were referring to me
I'm not accusing, and not in the position to accuse, anybody.
I'm just saying what strikes me as common sense.

umm... because that's where most of the riders live? Why do most of them live around Girona? because there's a large infrastructure of American riders there and it makes it easy to do some basic things, like have a roof over your head. You're being a bit ridiculous. Where is an appropriate place to live and train that one won't have availability to drugs or seem suspicious? Is Levi less suspicious because he has the NorCal exemption and his team doesn't make him live in Europe?

Fuentes? Del Moral? Marti? Celaya?
Spain? Dodgy? Suspicious? Naaa. ridiculous.

Where is an appropriate place for a rider to move to "appear clean"?

Unfortunately, the state of the art of cycling is this: you're suspicious if you start winning. That's not being pessimistic, that's being realistic.
if Garmin win the Giro, they're suspicious by definition.
The sad state is that a rider is dirty until proven clean. (Not legally, just common-sensically).

We don't know Garmin is doping.

see above and below

Bleow, GBJ is making my point very clear. The state he describes for the 90s is of course still in force.

(...) Pre 90's clean riders could compete with riders using PED's, in the '90's you either were on EPO or you lost. Period.

If you agree with this premisse (and I clearly do), then how is Garmin going to be clean? (Not accusing, just talking common-sense)

 

[sniper]

(...)
If you want to claim that Girona became a hub for doping after 99 with riders trying to escape France, then that is totally realistic but the original reason that US Postal were based in Girona was not related to doping as you are claiming and they were there before Armstrong arrived.
(...)

How do you know?
Being a pro, in the nineties particularly, was about knowing how to prepare.
So smart would have been to move close to where the infrastructure allows you to prepare (e.g. close to dealers, etc.).

 

[Dr. Maserati]

I'm not at all sure Indurain was clean, and I know Anquetil wasn't (and Anquetil made the point that doping was necessary for the Tour). Anquetil thus , by his own admission, did dope his way to multiple Tour wins.

And your argument that Armstrong is alone at the top of organized dopers is only valid if you talk about riders. Saiz and Pevenage are at least as bad as Armstrong, and IMO Saiz is worse.

This is more like the Mark I remember.

Firstly, GJB123 never said Amstrongs "is alone at the top" - he quite rightly pointed out what sets him aside, the scale of the fraud and that he knew he could get away with it.

And before you go accusing, in advance, those who disagree with you of being fanboys, what's this with your "just a few pills" statement? Is 'pot belge' just a few pills? Is amphetamine abuse insignificant? You are minimizing the seriousness of past doping abuse. It was a huge problem back then, both with riders' health and with getting broader public acceptance for such a filthy sport.

There are a lot of aggravators, and Lance deserves a lifetime ban for them.

But ask yourself this: How in the world is Lance going to compete and win against Saiz and Pevenage unless he has a more effective doping organization? The answer is obvious.

Anybody who thinks Lance is an aberration is an [fill in the blank--you apparently like that style of argument]. Take out Lance's multiple doped TdF wins, and what do you get? You get Ullrich's multiple doped TdF wins. You get Ivan Basso.

Lance is a weed. He was one of the biggest weeds. He thrived because nobody tends the garden. Now, belatedly, that weed may be pulled out by the roots. But there are lots more weeds, and the garden still isn't being tended adequately.

Gag me with all this talk of how Lance ruined pro cycling. The sport was a going brothel long before Lance and it will be a going brothel long after Lance.

Answer - pay Dr Ferrari a huge portion of your salary.
What do I win?

To the blue - like Billy you might show where someone said Lance ruined cycling. He didn't but if you can show another rider who paid off the UCI I would be very impressed.