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What is a 'bad day?'

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Jul 13, 2009
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burritogirl said:
Did you read all three parts? Just interesting about the bad day...
I read (all?) three parts, but the first was just awful.

What do you think? Do "The French" hate Armstrong, and was that the motivation to give Landis an "unfair trial"?

Landis piled procedure on procedure. I had not noticed that the outcome of these had already been given before he started them. The USADA comittee and CAS both listened to his case and came to a conclusion. Tell me - where is the proof that Landis was found guilty by these comittees before the first session started? How did they assume Landis' guilt?

That is what the author is saying, and it's a mighty serious accusation. So what are his arguments? They don't appear in any of the blog articles, just something about Greg Lemond being an ***. I doubt if the author is aware of all the facts, or he would have known why Lemond's testimony was relevant - Landis had admitted using doping to Lemond.

"Even before independent analysis of the results...Floyd was pretty much tried, convicted and branded “cheater”." This is simply false. It was an independent analysis of the results that found the testosterone in the first place. "Floyd" was, when those results became public, not yet tried. He has never been convicted as a criminal, just sacked by his employer and stripped of his Tour title. And as far as the stigma of "cheater" goes: riders who had far less damning evidence against them have had to live with that. Will there be a blog about all of them, too?

"Floyd was...skewered by many of his competitors". Actually, I can't remember a single one, although I can imagine the likes of McGee, Gilbert or perhaps Moncoutié suggesting the sport is better off without him. "Many"? Spare me your weasel words; this could be anything, but what else can be expected from an author willing to write such drivel as "cycling is arguably one of the most difficult sports". It took months before Pereiro Sio got impatient.

Thanks for letting us know that "being considered innocent of the crime until proven guilty is arguably the most important" of a suspected criminal's rights. "Arguably", as if he ever debates the subject, or could mention anything meaningful about it. We are considered innocent before the law, not before individuals. I can think damn well what I please about Floyd Landis. If I think he doped, I will say so, and no thought police thumping on legal standards is going to make me change my mind. He can complain about the press having giving a lot of attention to doping accusations, but to state that he was convicted before being found guilty that way requires a lot more. At the time I did a small study on Dutch news reports about Landis and found that he was not treated unfairly at all; the most negative terms were reserved for his attitude at a criterium where he didn't show up. Generally, a positive test was brought as exactly that: a positive test, not a irrefutable fact that Landis was to be considered a cheater forevermore. And you know, I suspect that that was typical of news reports: they inevitably made Landis look like a cheater because most of the evidence pointed towards him being a cheater, not because of "The French", not because of a WADA/UCI hate campaign and not because journalists wanted to see blood.
 
Aug 4, 2009
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I've had a fair number of bad days. In most cases I think it was due to bad hydration (mostly) or bad nutrition. Sometimes something like forgetting to put on sun screen can really destroy my form. In the few tours I've ridden, I've always had a day when my digestive system wasn't working properly. There have also been days when travel get messed up - sitting in a vehicle for a couple of hours and then not getting to warm up leaves my legs feeling heavy.

I think that even the top pros are more likely to get these things wrong than have a bad day due to a messed up PED programme.

Possibly there are fewer bad days now than in the past because the teams are far better organized in terms of logistics and nutrition and hydration are better understood. Simple as that.
 
Mar 18, 2009
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burritogirl said:
Here's a better link to all three parts of the story...
http://owstarr.com/tag/cycling/

It's an interesting read, but if you look through the comments after the third part you see that Oliver somewhat changes his conclusion. In the story he presents an argument that, based on his interpretation of what happened during stages 16 and 17, Floyd didn't need to dope to win and therefore didn't dope. In the comments, however, he recognizes that Floyd's guilt with respect to doping has almost nothing to do with those stages and their effect on the outcome.

He presents a decent argument about what happened on those two stages (if you accept his assumptions) but it's fairly worthless in the whole "Floyd doped/Floyd was clean" argument. The whole thing is definitely a little on the apologist side of things, especially the venom toward LeMond.
 
Aug 22, 2009
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I didn't think this was a thread about whether or not Floyd doped, just about the bad day thing...
Just thought it was an interesting account of a "bad day"