Seeing as new research has found that there is no scientific evidence that it (EPO) does enhance performance, can Lance have his tour wins re-instated?

Without reading all 13 studies, I’m wondering where they found all the elite athletes prepared to take a banned substance openly so that the marginal gains which mean so much at the top end of a sport could be assessed…

Banned substances are banned substances, performance enhancing or not. That’s all I have to say on the matter. LA has has enough thread space as it is.

lol exactly, its the intention to cheat that’s important

Is it really cheating if everyone is doing it?

Would be nice if UCI did give him back his titles if only to see the internet explode.

Also i’d be able to wear my mellow johnnys tee again without getting grief.

I’m with Nobber on this.
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Also, if it doesn’t work can one have a ‘cheating placebo’? You think it will make you fatser so it does.

Is it really cheating if everyone is doing it?

Yes.
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What if they all ridden straight to the finish line in Paris rather than doing a lap of the country first? ‘Everyone else did it.’ Makes a mockery of the whole event.

Is it really cheating if everyone is doing it?

Ask your Wife if you have one, if not ask a friends.

intention to cheat

Did the researchers do an intention to cheat analysis?

Dear god – shoot me for making health research jokes. Do a proper painful job of it too – I deserve it.

The lack of evidence to support EPO boosting performance in elite athletes may serve as a better prevention measure than current anti-doping methods, Cohen said.

“If you assume that Mr. X. was actually a mediocre cyclist and became very good just by injecting stuff, that seems premature,” Cohen said. “Once you start explaining that to people, and they believe you on the basis of data, they are probably less willing to do these sorts of things. So in the prevention, it is better than trying to chase these people to their homes, extract urine at unexpected moments and hope that you find something. It costs an enormous amount of money.”

The timing of this story is interesting and the quote above would explain it to me…

The main conclusion people will come to is that all those who took it were gullible victims of con artist doctors. All that risk for no known benefit. 😯

A bunch of blithering idiots my Dad would say…

I’m with Nobber on this.

😆
Damn you autocorrect.

I really don’t follow your logic andrewh.

The riding ‘straight to Paris’ suggestion really doesn’t stand up as, even in the earliest tours the riders had to pass certain ‘controls’ around the country before heading to Paris.

I do however accept your point that ‘cheating’ in sport should not be allowed. What I am trying to say is that in cycling there is so much technology involved that it is apparently an arbitrarily defined ‘line’ between cheating and not cheating.

Oh dear, drawn in again… 😯

I believe that there was a major 10-12 year study in the effects of EPO – recently published…?

The results were quite convincing 😉

OK, so you want to discount the effects of EPO, he still gets done for the blood transfusions though

misleading thread title – i was wondering how a major city in the State of calafornia coudl be convicted and of what?

I really don’t follow your logic andrewh.

The riding ‘straight to Paris’ suggestion really doesn’t stand up as, even in the earliest tours the riders had to pass certain ‘controls’ around the country before heading to Paris.

At the risk of being drawn into yet another thread:
Example: I ran a marathon where the start and finish were at the same place. If I started, then went down a side street, looped around and came out at the finish I could have won in a new World Record time of about 4m20s, taking nearly 2hrs off the previous record. How is that different from taking EPO and then running the whole route? It’s just more obvious.

What I am trying to say is that in cycling there is so much technology involved that it is apparently an arbitrarily defined ‘line’ between cheating and not cheating.

I dont think the line is arbitrary as you think however for the purposes of this point that does not matter.

What matters is that everyone knows where the line is and they dont cross it or they are a cheat.
They all knew EPO was cheating whether it worked or not.

No one cheats to make it harder for themselves to win

Groundhog Day!

The line is arbitary in so much as the people who set limits say ‘if you have more the x amount of y in your system then you have cheated.’
However, everyone knows what x and y are and if they cross that line they have cheated, no ifs, no buts.
(I’m thinking of things like testosterone here, obviously there will be some in your body but more than x is cheating. Maybe x is 0 for some drugs)
The weight limit of 620kg for a GP car is arbitary, there is no reason for 620kg other than the rule makers decided that’s where it should be. Driving a 619.9kg car is cheating though.

If you want to change the world you don’t read the rules. Why is it that in sport we want to people to follow the rules but that in all other aspects of life we recognise it’s those that throw away the rule book that change the world?

I funkin told all you forum LA haters that!

If you want to change the world you don’t read the rules. Why is it that in sport we want to people to follow the rules

Mr Eliis threw away the rules. He was no longer playing football, but something else entirely.
I return to my example about GP cars. Push the rules by all means, double-diffusers, hot-blown diffusers, X-wings even, or for really radical the Tyrell 6 wheeler or Brabham fan car. All out of the norm but within the rules at the time.
Building a car with a rocket on the back isn’t within the rules.
The whole point of a competitive sport is to find out who is best at it. Doing the TDF on a motorbike doesn’t really count. It is just a game, if you can’t play fair don’t bother.
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What about tax laws? Thee is usually a bit of whinging there if people don’t follow the rules. Telling HMRC “I was just being creative, thinking outside the box” won’t help!

Why is it that in sport we want to people to follow the rules

Its a game with rules. For example I can beat anyone at chess all I do is take the king first move as I dont follow the rules.

Only with a common set of rules followed by all do you have a sport.

There are some very salient points being raised above and I do find myself agreeing with many of them, although I do think that there are some rather over-simplified views being expressed.

What I was getting at when I asked ‘Is it really cheating if everyone is doing it’ is the fact that if we get away from the specifics of this individual case, we all know that cycling has a massive doping problem, so to vilify one individual and to blame him for the doping practices of other athletes seems peculiar to say the least.

“Doing the TDF on a motorbike”

The funny thing is people do that every year but they never win.
that yellow one that rides for Mavic, he could have won it easy last year, he wasn’t even out of breath on the climbs! and he had his missus on the back with the lunch menu!

‘Is it really cheating if everyone is doing it’

Not everyone was cheating though so it a hypothetical question

is the fact that if we get away from the specifics of this individual case, we all know that cycling has a massive doping problem,

Agreed and it seems to be at least addressing them or pretending to

so to vilify one individual

Wow who could you mean?
Is it Floyd Landis perhaps Contador? – I mean you suggest one person was singled out but I can name a number of drug cheats who have had their titles stripped etc. Its false to claim this and its not hard to see why they “went after” LA – its because he was guilty.

and to blame him for the doping practices of other athletes seems peculiar to say the least.

Well the report is interesting in his attitude to team mates but no one is claiming LA made everyone dope

there are some rather over-simplified views being expressed.

Indeed there are 😕

if we get away from the specifics of this individual case, we all know that cycling has a massive doping problem, so to vilify one individual and to blame him for the doping practices of other athletes seems peculiar to say the least.

Either –

you haven’t been following this,

or,

your a roadie in denial…

The one individual is:

– the last to be caught?
– the main perpetrator?
– the one who conspired to cover up doping on a team-wide scale?
– the one who aggressively prevented others from coming clean
– used every legal tool in the box, incl on his closest friends and family???
– made a huge amount of money and reputation from said cheating & conspiracy

Vilification seems entirely justified to me

Not quite scientific – but there does seem to have been a decrease in Tour Winner average speeds since the improved testing came in ?????????

The number of cyclists in the published meta analysis is very low (typically about 8/study), no single study managed to recruit an elite cyclist, in fact most were in the VO2 range below “well-trained”, let alone elite and world class. So I wouldn’t draw any hard conclusions from this analysis.

Mind you 11/15 studies showed an increase in VO2 max post EPO. None showed a decline. That’s translational pharmacology in my business 😉

Since this is STW, surely the most appropriate response if this is correct is…

….Oh the ironing!

Junkyard I was being a bit frivolous but without rule breakers in sport we’d have no rugby.

The whole business makes me rather sad so I’ll admit to not following it as closely as I might, however I did read this article in which Tyler Hamilton and the Journalist appear to be saying ‘it was all Lance’. An attitude which seems somewhat disingenuous.

I can’t help but compare this so called scandal with the rather torrid Festina Affair of 1998. In particular one Richard Virenque, who was riding for Festina at the time. Despite being thrown off that year’s tour, ‘tricky dicky’ continued to compete and protest his innocence right up until the court case in Lille in October 2000. He then served a suspension and then won Paris-Tours in October 2001 and continued to compete, even riding in the Tour de France again.

So my point is…sure Lance did all those things listed by rkk01. But it’s nothing cycling hasn’t seen before. Hence my using the term ‘villification’.

When was Lance Armstrong “convicted”?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kt7d3

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18921784

Home

http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2012/08/28/the-kafkaesque-trial-of-lance-armstrong-a-former-federal-prosecutor-on-the-us-anti-doping-agencys-disregard-for-due-process/

http://www.sportsscientists.com/2012/08/the-armstrong-fallout-thoughts-and.html

http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/03/biological-passport-effective-fight-or.html

Not quite scientific – but there does seem to have been a decrease in Tour Winner average speeds since the improved testing came in ?????????

It wasn’t just epo and all the evidence is that Bradley Wiggins is regarded as the first tour winner for years whose performnce was credable.

So I think that undermines the whole doesn’t epo help thing

There hasn’t been any conviction. He’s been stripped of his titles on the results of a USADA inquiry. Federal prosecutors closed their investigation in early 2012 without bringing any criminal charges.

all the evidence is that Bradley Wiggins is regarded as the first tour winner for years whose performnce was credable

Cadel Evans?