Not to mention those samples are so old, who the hell can guarantee 100% their authenticity or guarantee them 100% tampered free?
That`s very true Madhog.....I think its ludicrous to suggest that the tests at the time couldn't detect this or couldn't detect that so therefore he MUST have been doping... you might as well say we don't have proof that alien life exists so he`s obviously from Mars or some planet ... that's why he won so many races Show me the evidence of a positive test and i will agree with any sanction against him,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/aug/24/how-lance-armstrong-strongarmed-cycling The best discussion I've seen on this is in the comments under this article. I've come to the conclusion though I would love to think he was a clean athlete, the reality is he and his team manipulated the system for years. Interesting that there is a certain climbing area of the Tour where they( the cycling nerds) seem to think that anybody achieving a certain level of performance had to be a cheat and Armstrong was one of those. I think he has given up the fight through damage limitation and if he was actually a clean athlete there is no way he would not still be fighting this. Just hope Wiggo and Froome are clean would be gutting if they are cheats too.
Who on earth is saying that? It's quite simple: the tests at the time couldn't detect EPO - but more recent tests could, and did. There's no suggestion of deterioration of the samples either. Interesting comments - and a very interesting article, particularly its conclusion: "The moral of the story is that if a cyclist looks too good to be true, then he probably is. But if a cyclist looks too good to be true and has an entourage of lawyers, press flaks, doctors and bodyguards, then he definitely is."
Sorry Tuckin, I didn't mean to suggest that people on here have presumed his guilt, but in the press etc. there's a lot of people who have already judged him to be guilty. Personally i think he probably did dope but thats just the point its only what people `Think` as there is just no proof. He had in excess of 500 dope tests during his career, would you agree that these were a total waste of time and money as he didn't fail a single one, yet he is still to be stripped of his TDF titles and banned from any future sporting events.
It's a very sorry situation - they were ahead of the testers (more so than at any other time in recent history, it seems) and it resulted in very widespread endemic doping throughout the top end of the sport, overseen by the team doctors. There is proof with Armstrong, though.
Good article here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/aug/25/lance-armstrong-cycling-richard-williams Find this bit interesting "Only a naif would imagine that doping has been eradicated from the sport, but the good news is to be found in the statistics indicating a significant reduction in the speeds achieved in recent years. No one climbs the 21 hairpins of the Alpe d'Huez at the speed achieved by Armstrong or Marco Pantani during the EPO years. There are no epic breaks by riders suddenly displaying extraterrestrial powers. The sport may be less consistently dramatic as a result, but that is a price worth paying.
That is spot-on - the slower speeds on the climbs these days pretty much show that the sport is cleaner now.
Yeah - there was a bloke on the radio this morning, saying that the riders have changed in bulk and are no longer able to chug up vertical hills like they used to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/sep/14/tyler-hamilton-doping-lance-armstrong Any residual feeling I might have felt for a man who fouled up his life as Hamilton did evaporates on page 19, after his account of that stage win in Bayonne, where he writes: "You can call me a cheater and doper until the cows come home. But the fact remains that in a race where everybody had equal opportunity, I played the game and I played it well." The ultimate drug taker's argument: they all did it, so I had to do it. Not everyone in that race had access to Fuentes or Motoman. Hamilton did not have to do it. They do not have to do it. Shocking extract from Hamiltons autobiography.
Pretty sad about Armstrong but the information about the Alpe d'Huez that we flagged up from that article is quite telling.
Chazz didn't make it very clear in his post - that entire first paragraph was a quote from the Fotheringham Guardian article, not his own views.
Bad news for those of you who are still clinging to denial (and presumably believe Santa is real, Jimmy Savile didn't kiddy-fiddle and Sonny Bradley is a responsible social networker)... http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/usada-report-proves-armstrong-used-drugs-153938186.html
The whole doping thing is that.....it isn't detectable until it's detectable. What I mean is this: You get a new drug/method of doping; until the detection methods have caught up - it isn't detectable. Think of it like a computer virus.....until there's a virus killer (same with human viruses like H1N1 Flu, etc).
Unfortunately with Saville the evidence is spoken testimonies whereas with Armstrong it can be clearly proven with scientific analysis.
Spoken testimonies, the odd audio clip and remarkably revealing and incriminating extracts from his very own book!
Saville probably was a perv, am tired of making the same points on here over and over so will leave it at that.
Interesting to hear Tyler Hamilton (of the same U.S.Postal team as Armstrong) talking of how they all did it - that it was no good Lance having the power of 3 men, if his co-riders only had the power of 2 men. Also - that the team's doctors changed just what doping methods they used, as detection caught up with their methods....e.g: EPO in 1999, blood-doping in 2000 (as EPO detection was then possible). They were always aiming to stay one step ahead of the detection process.
