What exactly made Armstrong So Strong. 7 Tour titles in a row.
1- Use of performance enhancing drugs such as Epo.
2- Banned Recovery agents such as Synthetic Testosterone.
3- Autologous blood transfusion's.
4- Access to unclassified performance enhancing drugs.
5- Protection from the UCI. ( ALLEGED COVERUPS )
Evidence of 2010 coverups is provided at
2010 Tour WADA IO Report. Given that there actually were WADA observers present, what would it have been like without them - as in during the seven wins?:
there were a number of riders of significance who took part in the Tour who had either not been tested during the Pre-Tour period or who had only been tested once
During the Tour, a number of riders demonstrating suspicious profiles and/or showing significantly impressive performances at the Tour were tested on surprisingly few occasions and for three riders of interest did not provide a blood sample for the purposes of anti-doping in the whole Tour
...
A rider identified as having a priority index of eight (with ten being the highest and most at risk of doping) was tested only once
...
For a rider identified as having a priority index of ten, no blood samples were collected following the Laboratory recommendations after interpretation of blood passport data from the first week of the Tour, with only urine being collected and no blood as recommended by the Laboratory. Further, a recommendation to target test the rider for EPO took seven days to be executed.
...
A rider identified as having a priority index of ten was not tested for either urine or blood from 3 April to the start of the Tour
==> Highest priority and no testing for three months!!!
...
For a rider identified as having a priority index of eight, who was recommended to be target tested for EPO by the Laboratory, the UCI did not target test the rider and in addition a sample collected five days later was not analysed for EPO. Interestingly in this case collection of follow-up samples from this rider was initiated by the AFLD
...
It is noted however that only 70% of the UCI’s analysis were for EPO, and it was outlined that the budget was the main constraint for not doing more EPO testing. Moreover, only a reasonably small number of blood samples were collected for analysis for CERA, HBOC or HBT
...
There are also new substances and/or methods that can now be detected or suspected, yet the UCI only sent ten target test samples to the WADA-Accredited Laboratory of the German Sports University, Cologne, for additional analysis for new substances and/or methods
(i.e. How they actually caught Contador - an explicit WADA encouraged activity)
6- Well funded teams that had the money to hire the best doctors, coaches ect.
7- All the best Bikes and training equipment Money could buy.
The helmet and skin suit, yes. The rest of it, not so much. (I have the data)*
8- His association with the infamous Dr. Michele Ferrari.
9- His obsession with winning the Tour.
10- Basing his entire season around winning the Tour De France.
Was this to time the Tour, or to hide better?
11- The art of the peak.
Periodization has been around since at least the 1970s. Carmichael learned from my coach (and cited him in the book). Nothing new here for Lance.
12- Team's of talented rider's that participated in institutionalized doping programmes.
13-22, 24, 25. 27, 28 - Preparation, dedication, confidence, pain threshold, etc.
= Mythology
23- Luck.
An amazing factor with respect to the complete lack of serious crashes.
26- Extreme Egotism.
29- A burning desire to create a fallacious legendary sporting legacy.
30- But most of all a cocktail mix of illegal pharmaceutical performance enhancing drugs, recovery agents.
And superior Knowledge on how to mask potentially positive Drug Tests.
I think that says about it all really. But I am Sure some one else has something to add.