[Closed] What would a clean Lance have been like

IF my natural hamecrit level is say 48 and yours 43 then boosting us both to 50 [ the point at which they considered you to have cheated] helps you more than me.
the same applies to testosterone - i will let you have more than me in this example as I may be getting a bigger boost from it than you.
We just dont know as no reliable tests have been done.

You cannot just go using drugs make it all equal and the best person wins. It could be
1. the person with the best cheating regime/best drugs/best doctors
2. the person with the biggest physiological gain from said drugs combination

Anyway as you admit you dont know I have no idea why you then think your assumption is a good one
FWIW I dont know either so I would assume nothing- perhaps he was the best perhaps he was not
All we know is that of the cheats he was the best cheat but ths does not mean we know whether he would also have been the best clean

Also, it seems impossible to me that with all the people that would have had to have been involved in this conspiracy that it has taken all this time for it to come out.

what people seem to forget is contador has been done for doping, stripped of tours amongst other things....now hes clean (supposedly), and hes just won the Vuelta has he not?!

so whats to say even if Armstrong wasnt cheating/doping (how ever you want to word it), he wouldnt have won anyways?

to just write him off as a 'average' rider when clean is ludicrous TBH...

he may have been exceptional and doping gave him an edge, as i said take the very recent contador scenario and hes clearly (if hes not cheating now) an exceptional rider, doping or not doping!

Interesting comments by Ulrich's mentor saying that the details of Armstrongs doping operation made their efforts seem amateurish. (Though I suppose he would say that!) Money and commitment to the task would also seem to have an influence over how much of an enhancement you could achieve by doping, and Armstrong seems to have had more of both than anyone else.

what people seem to forget is contador has been done for doping, stripped of tours amongst other things..[b]..now hes clean (supposedly),[/b] and hes just won the Vuelta has he not?

Jimmy Hill?

[img] [/img]

the team (including Lance) were way off the pace when they first came to Europe to race. Wasn't until they started to dope that they got competitive.

That poster is class, bigG! Where did that come from?

What would a clean Lance have been like

the only rider on the tour not doping?

Hearsay & presumptions galore

They were all at it (cheating), he was the best, hense the fall guy.

See what i've done there 😈

whataloadofbolox - you dont know, so you dont know!

Not, you dont know, so your assumption of a level playing field is a good one

3 options:

1) he had less of an advantage
2) he had more of an advantage
3) he had the same advantage.

Lets assume there's minimal dopeing at a club/regional level, you need to be very good at that level to attract some sponsorship attention and race points to get onto a national level, then lets asusme there might be some, but not much dopeing at that level. You need to be better than everyone else to get into the international teams. So it;s a fair assumtion everyone was already wayyyy above average before they even reached a level where they had a need for and coaches giving them accesses to drugs.

What I don't get is USADA's statement that it was the biggest, most systematic, best funded etc that they'd ever seen. In a country with Ammerican Football, where there are no dope tests? Really?

he was the best

The best at cheating. Nothing more. The published evidence makes that quite clear.

Not to mention that as has been pointed out multiple times on these threads they weren't all at it - and there was actually starting to be a move away from the drug culture when he came on the scene.

National triathlon champion in '89 and '90 at 18/19 years old, World Cycling Champion in '93 at 21, first stage win in the TdF in '93 also, Classics win in '95 and another couple of TdF stages that season too....and winning a junior race in Europe circa 1990 (forget which one) which had Pantani in it....he was either doping from his teens (not unheard of in eastern bloc countries)....or he was an exceptional athlete regardless of drugs....in which case i'm sure he'd have made a decent living as a clean pro....probably not have won 7 TdF titles against a field of dopers though.

An interesting question is how much of a negative impact the cancer had on his performances before the diagnosis in '96?....was it brewing for a year or two pre diagnosis?....what i'm getting at is could his results have been better through '94 and '95 than they were?....in which case would there have been any surprise or suspicion when he came back into cycling and started winning again?

Also why did the team choose to get behind Lance?....why not any of the other decent American pros at the time?....some on this thread are ludicrously proposing that he would've been rubbish without the drugs....those in the know must have had an inkling about just how good Armstrong was if they were willing to sink time and money into building a team around him?....you wouldnt do that for an average rider and just cross your fingers and hope the drugs work!....as i said, his early results in both Triathlon and Cycling mark him out as being one of the best for his age at the time.

I suspect if he'd won a couple of tours and retired then none of this would've come out, however like most fraudsters he got greedy....by breaking all those records and making himself a high profile media personality he effectively put a target on his back.

I still think what he did was incredible.

Winning a single TdF is a supreme accomplishment, winning seven of them post cancer treatment is just ridiculous whichever way you look at it....for that he will always get my respect.

aracer - Member
That poster is class, bigG! Where did that come from?

Have to be honest (unlike Lance). This was a shameless steal from a facebook friend.

World Cycling Champion in '93 at 21, first stage win in the TdF in '93 also, Classics win in '95 and another couple of TdF stages that season too....and winning a junior race in Europe circa 1990 (forget which one) which had Pantani in it....he was either doping from his teens

Well the testimony suggests he was certainly doping by the time he won the World Champs.

This was a shameless steal from a facebook friend.

Ah OK - I've just reposted on FB and wondering who I should credit!

with Ammerican Football, where there are no dope tests

Really? With 300 pound guys who can run 60m in a decent track sprinters time?

In order to succeed at the highest level in the grand tours you need the following, very high vo2, very high watts per kilo, determination, strong (natural) recovery, resistance to illness and the strongest team.

From what has been published Lance did have an exceptional vo2, and was a lot leaner post-cancer. Irrespective of doping, I believe he would have been up there. He could not have beaten talented riders on EPO clean though.

As the above natural differences probably make 5% difference at the top level and EPO 10%.

Lance was gifted, determined and brought a strong team. Contrast his approach to Ulrich's (also gifted)...who arrived at the Tour, fat, injured, with poor tactics, a weak team, and a losers mentality.

Read the Asheden article. There was nothing particularly physiologically impressive about Armstrong that would set him appart from any other rider. Quite average I believe.

Asheden has one view, Dan Coyle has another.....Lance was winning races when he was 16. He must of had some talent and physiological advantage or was he doping then as well?

Really? With 300 pound guys who can run 60m in a decent track sprinters time?

Exactly, they're an integral part of the sport. So it's a bit odd that they say it's the most systematic performance enhanceing drug use they've ever seen. either they're blinkered or I've only seen selective quotes that miss out the word illegal.

Just waiting for the day I find out Eddie Van Halen actually never took drugs and was teetotal and just pretended to be drunk and a drug addict....and instead of parting hard while on tour in the 80's he was actually helping out at the local soup kitchen....I can't lose another hero

kimbers - Member

the only rider on the tour not doping?

QFT

MussEd - Member

Still a prick?

Also QFT

so whats to say even if Armstrong wasnt cheating/doping (how ever you want to word it), he wouldnt have won anyways?

to just write him off as a 'average' rider when clean is ludicrous TBH

He was a good one day or stage racer but he was nowhere in the GQ and that is quite a transformation.

IIRC Bradley Wiggins was a track rider doing 1K or 4K sprints and he changed! Specific training, lost fat, got a dedicated team, now he is a GC contender.....

Cheating has a lot of grey areas.

Consider the advantage a cheater gets through doping in this case. He can dope in the off-season and train better than anyone else when not being tested. He now carries that strength into the competitive races but he is no longer doping and never tests positive. Is he a cheat?

Now consider someone in the juniors in a sport who fakes their age to give them a physical advantage in their age group. If they win, sponsorship deals become easier to get and it frees up money their parents/support organisation would spend on kit to spend on other things. Perhaps more coaching, training, better access to higher level kit and so on. This transfers into more experience at higher levels and helps them win more than say some talented kid who didn't cheat, but could have matured into a better athlete given a level playing field. He doesn't dope, but is he a cheat?

Whether he was clean all the time, or not, or how good he was if he was clean is not the question. The question is how he will atone for his teammates whom he's ruined (Hamilton looks like a flipping zombie when he's interviewed about drug taking) and the clean riders who will now never know how good they were?

You're a cheat, and worse, a coward Lance.

Exactly, these are dishonourable people.

We should just respect the people who did it clean, knowing they were on a hiding to nothing.

IIRC Bradley Wiggins was a track rider doing 1K or 4K sprints and he changed! Specific training, lost fat, got a dedicated team, now he is a GC contender.....

Could you remind us how he did in the GQ prior to when we know he took drugs?

Wiggo was a world class track athlete who became a world class Tour rider by altering his training- is your claim LA success was down to his change in training rather than drugs?

the point is we still wont know and hs results were without drugs post cancer pur pre cancer , in GQ terms, not even average
In one day races very good indeed

But the analogy of Wiggo going from a world-class track rider to GC contender by changing his training/strategy can equally be applied to LA. He was a world-class (world-champion!) one-day rider who changed training/tactics to target the GC.

He didn't mount any serious GC attempts pre-cancer, so discussions of his GC results at that time is largely meaningless.

I think it was Ed Coyle rather than Dan Coyle (author) who did the stuff on the physiology of LA - but that study is supposed to be a sham. He had a pretty mediocre VO2 max (by the standards of the top riders) and he didn't lose that much weight either.

There is a partially interesting thread in the cyclingnews clinic forum (if you ignore the usual in-fighting on there) titled "From Donkey to Racehorse" - basically, someone was challenging the widely held view on there that LA was just a donkey (I think the broad consensus that he was naturally a talented one day racer, but would have been lucky to win a single TdF).

Essential reading includes Tyler's book and "From Lance to Landis" by David Walsh. The latter covers Lance's early years and the system he came from - which alledgedly involved Chris Carmichael and other coaches giving the young US riders injections that were described as "extract of cortisone", but were actually cortisone (there's a case about Greg Strock who rode with Lance in those years).

EPO use became common around 1994 and Lance started using Ferrari in 1996 (he didn't like losing apparently...) The world champs win was before EPO became widespread and was in nasty weather conditions - so winning that says more about the fact he was a strong competitor and could deal with foul weather (rather than being the most physically gifted).

Ashendon debunked the myth about the weight loss Armstrong himself admitted he never raced at the weight claimed when pushed on it, and the supposed science around his v02 (testing was never controlled and was done on different equipment).

But the analogy of Wiggo going from a world-class track rider to GC contender by changing his training/strategy can equally be applied to LA. He was a world-class (world-champion!) one-day rider who changed training/tactics to target the GC.

He didn't mount any serious GC attempts pre-cancer, so discussions of his GC results at that time is largely meaningless.

There has been talk of lance being the wrong shape to be a tdf winner but for me lemond was a similar build/shape, listening to a guy on talksport yesterday he reckons what he took increased his riding by about 20% which in a sport where tiny percentages make huge gains that is scary

I'm in the 'yeah he doped, most did, he was still out there smashing out 6 hour rides on snowy Cols in the winter day after day whilst Ullrich got fat and took ecstacy, and I still respect him for that alone' camp, and I find some of the anti-LA folk concerningly aggressive!

For me the big point, and it's one I've not seen answered although it's been raised (most eloquently by Deviant) is that if he was nothing but mediocre how on earth did he get that backing?

I'm very mediocre, why aren't people smashing down my door to give me fistfuls of EPO and turn me into a global sports star? Why don't I have a team built around me for the Tour next year, with some of the biggest athletes in the world?

There must have been [i]something [/i]there to elevate him above the rest. To say that without drugs he'd be nothing but a club cyclist is nothing short of laughable, and is significantly more blinkered than those who think he rode clean!

Lance is not an average athlete. We don't know what he would achieved clean. But when he won the tour 7 times, he beat everyone else who was doped as well.His team-mates had access to all his resources and none were close to matching him. He could not have beaten doped riders whilst racing clean, but he was an exceptional athlete and maybe not a supreme number 1 but must have been in the top 20?

what people seem to forget is contador has been done for doping, stripped of tours amongst other things....now hes clean (supposedly), and hes just won the Vuelta has he not?!

so whats to say even if Armstrong wasnt cheating/doping (how ever you want to word it), he wouldnt have won anyways?

Contador hasn't even admitted to the doping he was caught for. If you choose to believe he's clean, that's your decision. I personally think doping has still been rampant in 2012.

if he was nothing but mediocre how on earth did he get that backing?

His cancer story created an incredible legend, just to associate with his comeback made good business sense for any organisation that backed him.

Still the best.

Contador hasn't even admitted to the doping he was caught for. If you choose to believe he's clean, that's your decision. I personally think doping has still been rampant in 2012.

I think drug control's are much tighter now, the gains to be made from doping while not getting caught are much smaller. I do think that Contador's punishment was far too lenient, he should have been stripped of his titles and banned for 2 years from the date of the decision.

One of the current problems is the national organisations always seeming to back their own. Jamaican athletics for example will not sign up to the Caribbean drugs testing accord.

Just waiting for the day I find out Eddie Van Halen actually never took drugs and was teetotal and just pretended to be drunk and a drug addict....and instead of parting hard while on tour in the 80's he was actually helping out at the local soup kitchen....I can't lose another hero

) Or if Angus Young was miming.

That would be way worse than all this.

Who cares what Armstrong would have done as a clean rider, the only thing we really know is that he's been full of it for a long time.

His cancer story created an incredible legend, just to associate with his comeback made good business sense for any organisation that backed him.

Plenty of other athletes have harrowing backgrounds, are you honestly suggesting that they basically took a punt on a totally normal guy and decided one day they'd invest millions and make him a global star?

That's one of the most naive things I've read on here.

Lance was the best in an era of cheaters. So he was the best cheater.

Everything else doesn't matter. If the cycling world wants to cry about the 'lost years' then why did they all keep quiet about it for so long. Draw a line, stop giving them press time and move on. That would punish them way more.

A man that decides to cheat at sport , regardless of his commitment to train ideserves no sympathy because he put effort in to train.

All the best professional sports people are the best cheaters, with a very few noble exceptions.

That's one of the most naive things I've read on here.

You need to buy a dictionary.

Big Mig was a freak of nature though. Cycling Weekly put him throiugh a lab test recently and veen after many years of unstructured training and not riding over the winters he had VO2 numbers that would put him at the front of a national race purely down to his freaky rib cage.

Also tested positive
http://www.dopeology.org/people/Miguel_Indurain/

This was Salbutamol. Interesting (anorak) fact about this 'dope' is that fairly extensive independent testing has shown that there are no significant performance gains from this drug whatsoever. These tests have been published in respected peer assessed academic journals, yet most sports governing bodies insist on banning it or placing it on a restricted list; France ban it outright, even if you're asthmatic. Indeed, I seem to recall that certain studies demonstrated far higher instances of muscle cramps reported from their salbutamol group, thus undermining performance.

I recall having a debate during a university Phys Ed lecture why this is so, without any supporting evidence. The best we could come up with that [i]someone[/i] one day decided that if a healthy person dilates their bronchial passages, then they would allow even more oxygen in, thus enhancing performance. This opinion was likely passed on as fact, and adopted from here. Amazing (again, for an anorak).

In other words, the only people it can help are those who actually need it - asthmatics & COPD sufferers; those with a lot to gain. In a normal healthy population the effect is minimal, and in elite athletes non existent. However, it could be suggested that due to cyclists being more prone to upper respiratory tract infection, it's not hard to see its place as a treatment to allow an athlete to train through some infections. I personally don't see this as any more performance enhancing as a course of antibiotics.

What this boils down to is that Indurain remains the only professional cyclist to allow full access to his training records and lab test results (which I believe was the basis of the CW article) and showed a unique physique that enabled him to win.

has anyone watched the youtube vids of the armstrong win at the world championships, there was a fair amount of streakypiss luck about it

there was a couple of selections i.e. groups of strong riders that get away, thus thinning the numbers of available winners

then Armstrong breaks out of the front group with quite a way to go, and the rest of the group let him go because it's way too far, they let him dangle. then the chase group start playing cat and mouse amongst themselves as to who will start the chasing, they leave it for too long and the chasers are about 10sec away when Lance crosses the line.

Incidentally one of the main chasers is Indurain, the group want him to chase so that they can sit on his wheel and then sprint when LA is caught, Indurain calls their bluff, cos he's won bigger races than the worlds

the Worlds is a strange race really, only in the last few years have riders started taking it seriously again - it's a one day race that isn't in the middle of the one-day racing season, but it's straight after the Vuelta, when a lot of the riders are beaten from riding Spain and the TdF, bear in mind that it's over different courses each time so if you are having a good year but the course doesn't suit your style then you're stuffed....