USADA - Armstrong

[Cal_Joe]

Jeremiah's not obnoxious enough to be buckwheat

Give it week or so - things tend to accelerate.

 

[ChewbaccaD]

Nobody is suggesting that he would have been just a bottle fetcher?

Suggest you should read post #1919, where Race Radio suggested EXACTLY THAT.

Well then talk to RR. I am not him, and since I have been in this discussion, I (nor anyone but him) has suggested that. If he wants to concentrate on the single instance of someone who isn't engaging him in much if any direct conversation and paint the rest of us with that, he would be like you.

My suggestion is that you let him fight his battle Jr. Matlock.

EDIT: I went to 1919 and read...Maybe you could learn to read. RR was talking about RIIS in that post. If you are going to start playing General Custer and the cavalry, get your facts straight before charging in; you'll suffer fewer losses. (you suffer many, I'd figure you leave me alone at some point because I clean your clock each and every time.)

 

[Race Radio]

Nobody is suggesting that he would have been just a bottle fetcher?

Suggest you should read post #1919, where Race Radio suggested EXACTLY THAT.

I said Riis was a bottle fetcher....which is what he was

 

[Race Radio]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/s...strong-case.html?pagewanted=1&ref=julietmacur

The agency, which started operations in 2000, was a result of a recommendation made by the United States Olympic Committee, which developed how the agency would work and what rules it would follow. The committee, its athletes advisory council — of which Armstrong’s agent, Bill Stapleton, was the chair — and the national governing bodies of the Olympic sports in the United States worked together to design and eventually approve the protocol the antidoping agency uses now.

How great is it that the rules Wonderboy is pretending are unconstitutional were written by his best buddy?

 

[MarkvW]

Well then talk to RR. I am not him, and since I have been in this discussion, I (nor anyone but him) has suggested that. If he wants to concentrate on the single instance of someone who isn't engaging him in much if any direct conversation and paint the rest of us with that, he would be like you.

My suggestion is that you let him fight his battle Jr. Matlock.

EDIT: I went to 1919 and read...Maybe you could learn to read. RR was talking about RIIS in that post. If you are going to start playing General Custer and the cavalry, get your facts straight before charging in; you'll suffer fewer losses. (you suffer many, I'd figure you leave me alone at some point because I clean your clock each and every time.)

You are a very bad clock cleaner.

 

[ChewbaccaD]

You are a very bad clock cleaner.

And yet you're 0'fer against me...

 

[MarkvW]

And yet you're 0'fer against me...

I remember your posts before you changed your name.

 

[ChewbaccaD]

I remember your posts before you changed your name.

0'fer against him too...

 

[Merckx index]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/s...strong-case.html?pagewanted=1&ref=julietmacur



How great is it that the rules Wonderboy is pretending are unconstitutional were written by his best buddy?

It could get even better. I was thinking, weren't LA's suspicious blood values recorded with the help of the Sysmex machine he donated?

 

[Kicker661]

not sure about that. epo=54% gain in time to exhaustion. not much recover needed if you are rarely exhausted.

EPO is key for recovery as Oxygen is what makes things work.

That's why EPO is the common drug throughout all sports as you get the benefit of extra capacity and also wicked recovery.

 

[lean mean &green]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that many people are suggesting that wrt to GTs, LA would have been a complete nobody if it weren't for PEDs. What I am saying is that in a pro-peloton where PEDs are almost ubiquitous that would be true. However, if you take away PEDs from everyone, then LA had the genetics and determination to be a top 10 finisher, and maybe even a winner.

i'm mostly picking up what your putting down.

it seems to me armstrong/motorola was a little slow catch onto the use of EPO. not sure why, maybe the americans were out of the loop culturally. they would eventually catch on but were probably delayed by a few seasons. i'm inferring this mostly from Swart's comments. in the early 90's they were using AAS's and as you rightly point out getting a little boost to red blood. it was good enough to break through in some one day races, maybe even good enough to win a WC.

armstrong's poor performances in early tours are often thought of as evidence of potential but i believe them to be very misleading. he was entering a highly charged peloton with nothing more than his basic doping techniques. indurain was flying by armstrong in TT's because he was both enormously gifted and fully doped. armstrong was still doping like a novice and probably wasn't using EPO yet or wasn't using it properly.

where we disagree... doping obscures so many of the data points i would need to make a prediction that i have almost no confidence to make one. if forced, i'm less optimistic about armstrong's actual potential in a fair and completely dope free peloton - top ten maybe, who the hell knows? i'm kind of shocked that with your background you're ready to go out on this limb but it's your funeral.

 

[Hugh Januss]

You are being toyed with. Some previously banned posters just love to cause mischief (those rascals!) and post in an antipodal fashion.

I nominate Jeremiah, previously known as Buckwheat/LarryBudMelman/possibly other sockpuppets.

Hah, I think you lose again.

 

[Krebs cycle]

No idea where you get that I am forgetting that people in the 80s were not doping - of course they were.
However the methods and products were quite different to those of the 90's - which is why we are discussing EPO.

Well some people are saying that EPO isn't the only thing, and other people are saying EPO enhances recovery without really understanding much if anything about the physiology of recovery.

Again, you are fixated that anyone who is not a GC contender is a "bottle fetcher".

No, everyone else is fixated on the domestique quote which is a trivial insignificant point, the true meaning of which is that genetics, training and determination plays a far greater role on RELATIVE performances in a GT than PEDs do if you have a level playing field, ie: if everyone IS doping or nobody is doping.

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.

Of course he showed no ability at stage racing at that point, for starters he had much less experience, and secondly everyone else was doping. I am creating a hypothetical situation here in which nobody is doping, therefore you cannot use that as evidence to support your opinion that LA could never have made the leap from good classics rider to GT contender.

You seem to be suggesting that it isn't possible for a good classics rider to become a GT winner. I disagree. Nearly all of the great cycling champions prior to 1980 were both classics and GT winners. Cadel Evans began as a mtb biker and he showed zero ability as a stage racer until his mid-20s. Bradley Wiggins was a track rider who raced in events lasting 4min and now he has become a TdF favorite. Cadel Evans holds the lab record for VO2max at the Australian Institute of Sport. Bradley Wiggins I have heard also has a similarly high VO2max. The point is that, you simply do not become a GT contender without being physiologically superior to begin with.

Anyway, you said that LA probably would have been top 10. That is actually what I have been suggesting all along. He would not have ended up being a domestique only in GTs.

 

[Hugh Januss]

And again you are forgetting that is it likely not just the top riders from the 1980s until at least 2005 were doping, but many of the domestiques too, and many of them were using the same doctors and the same methods. What I am suggesting is that all of the top riders who were doping, probably had fairly similar enhancements in BOTH performance and recovery. If you take that away from ALL of them, then they all go a bit slower and recover a bit more poorly, which makes them go a bit slower in the last week of a GT. The TdF is 100yrs old. We know from history that it is humanly possible to complete such a feat of endurance without the use of EPO..... you just go slower.

In actual fact, some people probably do respond better to PEDs than others and some riders probably did have a bigger PED budget. So if you take the PEDs away, then maybe some riders have a bigger performance drop than others. However, the performance drop (which is analogous to performance gain) will not be so great that a 7 time consecutive TdF winner, suddenly becomes a rank and file rider that cannot ever rise beyond water bottle fetcher. If you take away the PEDs from him and nobody else, then sure, but not if you keep the playing field level.

So how did Lance go from someone who could barely finish a tour to winning 7 in a row? There was no natural progression like other young future contenders who could blame working for a leader for their mid 30s finish. Lance was always being "groomed for success", but until he got cancer and the most focused drug regimen in cycling he had not come close to showing promise in that way, kind of like Wigans. No heroic day long breaks on mountain stages, more of the occasional flat stage classics style stage hunter escapade. What do you think changed him? Cadence? Working harder? Previewing the stages? Losing weight (a demonstrated 2-3 pounds)? Maybe it was that patented "Lazer Like Focus" grrr.

 

[Krebs cycle]

No, nobody is saying that. You are making that up.

He would have been an excellent Classics rider. I don't think there is some big mystery about that.

What about GTs?

 

[BotanyBay]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/s...strong-case.html?pagewanted=1&ref=julietmacur



How great is it that the rules Wonderboy is pretending are unconstitutional were written by his best buddy?

How sad that Ms Macur (the writer), didn't make that tidbit a much bigger focus of the article. She could have made it the ENTIRE focus.

 

[Hugh Januss]

What about GTs?

Nope, not a climber for the big mountains. Think Gilbert or Sagan, punchy classics style climbers, good for a succession of short to medium length steep climbs, not so good at two or three cat. 1 and 2 climbs in a row. Until he "changed". Do you think that he didn't start doping until post cancer and that he was way behind the curve at that time? Or did he just come up with something better than the rest after that point?

 

[BotanyBay]

armstrong's poor performances in early tours are often thought of as evidence of potential but i believe them to be very misleading. he was entering a highly charged peloton with nothing more than his basic doping techniques. indurain was flying by armstrong in TT's because he was both enormously gifted and fully doped. armstrong was still doping like a novice and probably wasn't using EPO yet or wasn't using it properly.

Armstrong didn't idoilize Indurain. He idolized Indurain's mastery of doping, and he wanted to beat it. His illness was 2 years of research and study time.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Anyway, you said that LA probably would have been top 10. That is actually what I have been suggesting all along. He would not have ended up being a domestique only in GTs.

Reread that top-10 remark. After mentioning it, there was the equivalent of a "I don't know. no one knows." statement. Which is about right.

Remember Wonderboy was very, very, VERY likely to have been doped by Carmichael and Wenzel as an under-23/Junior. So, it's IMPOSSIBLE to know one way or another based on distant history.

In recent history, he did some top-10 results for some multi-sport events and got beat pretty well given his supposed biological gifts. My estimation is those results were about as light on PED's as Wonderboy has gone in a really long time. So, based on recent results, I place him as nationally competitive, but no grand tour podium competitor. No way.

My estimation is he came up with something better than the rest. Either something completly novel and therefore completely uncontrolled human experimentation, or some cocktail that worked crazy well, AKA limited uncontrolled human experimentation. Remember, the whole team was dragging the peloton along those cols too, so everyone got it.

 

[fatsprintking]

Your ****ting me arent you - "showed zero ability as a stage racer until his mid 20's". He did not turn to the road seriously until 2000 and won the tour of Austria in 2001 and almost won his first grand tour the following year. Its hard to show your ability in a stage race if you are not doing any stage races.

Evans won the bronze in the world junior tt as a skinny mountain biker on a borrowed bike. Most people would say that this demonstrated plenty of stage racing ability. Being one of the 2 or 3 best mountain bikers in the world until he made the change is the reason his first major road results came in 2001, not any lack of stage racing ability.

His attributes always marked him out as someone who would do well in stage races which is why he has concentrated on these for almost his whole career since moving to the road. The fact that he is consistent and generally willing to have a crack has meant that he has some good one day results, but the vast majority of his racing days have been in stage races where he has generally been at the pointy end.

 

[Krebs cycle]

So how did Lance go from someone who could barely finish a tour to winning 7 in a row? There was no natural progression like other young future contenders who could blame working for a leader for their mid 30s finish. Lance was always being "groomed for success", but until he got cancer and the most focused drug regimen in cycling he had not come close to showing promise in that way, kind of like Wigans. No heroic day long breaks on mountain stages, more of the occasional flat stage classics style stage hunter escapade. What do you think changed him? Cadence? Working harder? Previewing the stages? Losing weight (a demonstrated 2-3 pounds)? Maybe it was that patented "Lazer Like Focus" grrr.

You haven't read anything that I've posted have you?

Armstrong went from being being US national sprint course triathlon champion at 18, to the the youngest UCI road race champion at 23yrs to a 7 time TdF winner by using a systematic program of PEDs for many years in combination with dedicated training.

Contador won the junior national championships in cycling. Wiggins won gold medals as a junior in track endurance. Evans won the national mtb championship as a junior. Ullrich was national champion as a junior. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any GT champion that was not a junior national champion or a good single day racer in their early career. You do not become a 7 time TdF winner by having inferior physiology and then just using PEDs to make up the shortfall. In the EPO era you become a TdF winner only if you have both.

 

[Katy in the Keys]

So how did Lance go from someone who could barely finish a tour to winning 7 in a row? There was no natural progression like other young future contenders who could blame working for a leader for their mid 30s finish. Lance was always being "groomed for success", but until he got cancer and the most focused drug regimen in cycling he had not come close to showing promise in that way, kind of like Wigans. No heroic day long breaks on mountain stages, more of the occasional flat stage classics style stage hunter escapade. What do you think changed him? Cadence? Working harder? Previewing the stages? Losing weight (a demonstrated 2-3 pounds)? Maybe it was that patented "Lazer Like Focus" grrr.

This is a good post and sums up Lance's renewed focus when he came back as opposed to his lost ways before. Thank you for your summary of Lance's path to superstardom in your last sentence. People can change and on top of that he is soo cute.

 

[Krebs cycle]

Your ****ting me arent you - "showed zero ability as a stage racer until his mid 20's". He did not turn to the road seriously until 2000 and won the tour of Austria in 2001 and almost won his first grand tour the following year. Its hard to show your ability in a stage race if you are not doing any stage races.

Evans won the bronze in the world junior tt as a skinny mountain biker on a borrowed bike. Most people would say that this demonstrated plenty of stage racing ability. Being one of the 2 or 3 best mountain bikers in the world until he made the change is the reason his first major road results came in 2001, not any lack of stage racing ability.

His attributes always marked him out as someone who would do well in stage races which is why he has concentrated on these for almost his whole career since moving to the road. The fact that he is consistent and generally willing to have a crack has meant that he has some good one day results, but the vast majority of his racing days have been in stage races where he has generally been at the pointy end.

Thank you. This has been my point all along. People seem to forget that Armstrong was a junior national champion in both triathlon and cycling. He had the genetics.

 

[JRTinMA]

You haven't read anything that I've posted have you?

Armstrong went from being being US national sprint course triathlon champion at 18, to the the youngest UCI road race champion at 23yrs to a 7 time TdF winner by using a systematic program of PEDs for many years in combination with dedicated training.

Contador won the junior national championships in cycling. Wiggins won gold medals as a junior in track endurance. Evans won the national mtb championship as a junior. Ullrich was national champion as a junior. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any GT champion that was not a junior national champion or a good single day racer in their early career. You do not become a 7 time TdF winner by having inferior physiology and then just using PEDs to make up the shortfall. In the EPO era you become a TdF winner only if you have both.

Now you've done it, get ready for the clinic police. Perpetuating the myth...blah blah blah. Not the youngest UCI champ, not even the second youngest.

 

[mikkemus23]

Who cares what LA could have achieved in a clean era. That is something for another thread. The fact is that he doped.