piemonster – Member
Option 2: A drug fueled free-for-all. Let’s see what the human body can really do!

Football Rugby Cricket Athletics swimming Darts Snooker And Bodybuilding?

FTFY 😉

Just looked on the USADA site about sanctions. There appear to be several articles (rules) where a lifetime ban is to be considered. The sanctions also include provision for extending bans in the case of multiple cases and/or complicity and/or administering to others or encouraging others to cheat.

USADA have also (in the last week) issued a lifetime ban to Dr Leinders for multiple doping violations. So LA certainly isn’t a unique case.

If he gets a lifetime ban then really so should everyone else who have doped. You can’t have one standard for one and not the other.

Why not? It’s not a binary thing – taking drugs or not. There are aggravating factors such as how much, how long for, forcing others to do your bidding, not admitting to it, bullying and suing others for trying to tell the truth, etc, etc.

71mph on a motorway and 60 mph outside a school gate is the same offence, no?

This: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/30986137 was more interesting than the headline.

LA is, indeed, a complete boy-chicken however, UCI/USADA/WADA can’t actually ban him for that – it’s not against their rules.

I assume that he’s back in the public eye in view of the CIRC report out next month from which we’re supposed to find out the true extent of what went on in that era. I have a feeling many will end up wishing we didn’t know.

Maybe a more old fashioned style of justice would work.. like in the old days when the a despotic ruler could invent punishment for amusement..

I think he should be allowed back into international competition, but only unicycle racing.

No more wheels

Bog Snorkling gets my vote

I am with Ransos. All those calling for life bans for everyone who gets caught “doping” are just wrong.

Athlete buys cough medicine in foreign country day before race, banned ingredient inside, gets tested and is +ve for said substance. Hardly performance enhancing and simply a mistake by them.

several teams knowingly systematically dope for years, with several banned substances and get huge performance gains.

Both get a lifetime ban?

the reason he’s doing this is all about the money as usual

he wants the ban reduced so that he can take part in competitions/organised rides to raise money for cancer charity because he knows that no-one was able to ever criticise him for this, and he would get ‘expenses’ for raising this money

Here’s an article I wrote for Inertia on why we shouldn’t give drugs users in sport a hard time.

Armstrong and Pantani are the reason a lot of people started to watch stage racing, if it wasn’t for these “characters” the sport would not be where it is now.
It says a lot that the 7 TDF’s that he won have not been reassigned to the 2nd/3rd placed etc.- as non of them were clean.

Give him a break, he’s lost a lot but also given a lot.

Not bad in places, but;

“Therefore, if the athlete’s dilemma is taken to its logical conclusion, the only way that an athlete can have a fair chance of winning is to take performance enhancing drugs simply because the other athlete will be taking them for exactly the same reasons. Those who follow sport will be familiar with oft-cited mitigation from the accused that everyone else is also on drugs. While this excuse is little better than the playground drug pusher’s excuse that if he didn’t do it someone else would, it is somewhat ironic that this intra-sport ethic does actually make for a level playing field.”

is a load of bollocks, not only because not everybody is on drugs, but also because some people respond better to drugs than others. There is no drug taking level playing field.

some people respond better to drugs than others.

Some people respond to training, diet, supplements, pressure, competition, danger, and etc better than others. That’s what makes them better. There is no level playing field at all, a tremendous amount of genetic luck is the primary factor in being successful in the vast majority of sports.

Luck (not just genetic) is the most influential determinant in sport.

Option 1: Anyone who cheats and is caught should be banned – for life.

Nah, if we’ll happily try to rehabilitate real drug offenders in real life, then sports should be no different.

The public are fickle bunch, Hillary and Tenzing are lauded as heroes, yet they used bottled oxygen (artificially increasing the blood’s ability to carry oxygen) to improve their performance and summit Everest. And in doing so effectively robbed Messner of the (clean) first ascent. If a cyclist artificially increases his blood’s ability to carry oxygen the same public brandish him a cheat. Go figure.

Wait, are you really suggesting that increasing your chances of continued life is cheating. 😆

llary and Tenzing are lauded as heroes, yet they used bottled oxygen (artificially increasing the blood’s ability to carry oxygen) to improve their performance and summit Everest. And in doing so effectively robbed Messner of the (clean) first ascent. If a cyclist artificially increases his blood’s ability to carry oxygen the same public brandish him a cheat. Go figure.

Come off it – that’s hardly like for like is it??

A. Using 02 at 8000ms helps keep you alive.
B. It’s not against the rules.

The use of supplementary oxygen was premeditated.

It was also thought to be essential until later proven otherwise.

Nor was it hidden or denied.

Yes and it took Messner to prove otherwise.

Good article in today’s Times about the morals and ethics within professional sport and the rather startling admission from a very high percentage of people in surveys that given the choice between winning dirty and losing clean, they’d choose to win dirty.

Page 62.

You’ve lost me johnny met – I’ve no idea what point you’re trying to make.

Yes and it took Messner to prove otherwise.

Using O2 to climb isn’t against the rules – using EPO, Andriol, Cortisone, HGH, & Actovegin in pro-cycling is..

So, the question is: are you honestly trying to legitimise LA’s illegal drug use by comparing it to the 1953 ascent of Everest & it’s use of legal supplemental O2?

REALLY???

When my son was a newborn he had supplemental oxygen in an incubator, but yesterday came top in a spelling test. I should probably write to the school and ask them to expel him.

Johnny Met’s article saying that athletes who dope are just trying to win is a bit poorly founded imo.

Yes, they want to win, yes we had a spectacle, yes it might be better if everyone doped. But that’s not the point. The point is there are rules, and they were knowingly broken. Sport is nothing without rules.

How much slack would you cut someone who ducked under the tape at an MTB race to win?

Just using some thought experiments to highlight the dichotomy. I don’t think my comments/ article have been interpreted in context they were intended. No worries.

Fair dos, I’ll read your article when I get home. Maybe it’ll be clearer then 🙂

A 30-minute documentary, Lance Armstrong: The Road Ahead, will be broadcast on BBC News at 20:30 GMT on Thursday, 29 January, and again over the following days on that channel and BBC World News. An extended edit of Dan Roan’s interview will also be available on the BBC iPlayer.

It is begining to feel like the BBC are Armstrong’s promotion company, every time I look at the BBC website sports pages there is another article sympathising with him.

hes my hero.

How much slack would you cut someone who ducked under the tape at an MTB race to win?

The spirit of enduro init.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNWxNh7ur3Q[/video]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/31125348

Anyone else think it’d be really funny if LA went to jail for crashing a car but not for doping charges.

Bit like sending Capone down for tax evasion…