Still Blindly Defending him Hora?

I can’t believe Lance is doing ironman.

Is this a gay porn flick?

Bobsleigh.

I can’t believe Lance is doing ironman.

He’s not. Banned.

That’s a pretty cool livestrong helmet.

Lance has already had his legacy tainted, in many peoples eyes he will never been seen as the greatest cyclist of all time (even though he is), surely for the anti Lance groups this is enough? Time to stop the witch hunt and move on FFS

Yeah right. drugs or no drugs the guy isn’t fit to clean Merckx or Hinault’s shoes.

The bottom line is what is the motivation for all the people people who have come forward to testify against him? Read into it, the UCI was/is rotten to the core and Armstrong was totally immersed in it. He had the most prolific performance enhancing durg doctor in the business working with him even after he was given a lifetime ban from cycling. He knew positive tests against him could be swept under the rug just like they were in the Tour of Switzerland. He was directly and indirectly worth a lot of money to the UCI.

If people like Landis and Hamilton can be thrown under the bus then Armstrong absolutely should be too.

Do you never get bored with this?

Followed by Hinault, de Vlaeminck, Coppi, and then Bartoli, Le Mond and then Kelly.

I’m faintly (that is, just a little bit) puzzled why these riders are placed on a pedestal when they won their tours in a time of widespread doping. Why is that? Is it that we don’t like to stick the boot into old men? Is it that we simply don’t like brash Yanks with “go get em” attitude? I’m genuinely puzzles by this.

My own heroes are Hinault & Indurain – absolute machines in my eyes. Was indurain a doper? He was/is a physical freak with a massively high lung and heart volume, but even then, did he dope?

Why is the focus on Armstrong so much? Why do we care? I just love watching the tour, and couldn’t give a flying **** if they’re all or none on dope – I still love the sport and spectacle.

Main reason is the others has some style or panache IMHO
LA was like a machine in the TdF but he rarely even competed in the other grand tours and never won any bar the TdF, never won and day races or classics etc …this does limit his legacy for those who follow cycling beyond the TdF. He is the greatest at the TdF but not even close to the greatest of all time

Re why do we forgive them the doping [ not all did on that post iirc] – is it because they have not built a legacy and multi billion industry around their image selling the dream of them and all that jazz whilst promoting cancer surviving by being paid 200 k a time to appear at events ?…LA built the pedestal he stands atop and many perceive it to be one built on utter BS rather than it being about the bike.
if he said I worked my arse of but I did what everyone else in the peleton did and I still beat them then fair enough …his message is nothing like that at all.

http://www.cyclesportmag.com/features/lance-armstrong-the-end/%5B/url%5D

UCI have confirmed that no one has currently been given a 6 month suspension. The leak appears to have come from Bruyneel as he writes for the paper that printed the story of Hincapie et al getting 6 month bans…..just further distraction tactics from the Lance camp.

Thats not to say that they wont be getting the bans at some point in the near future though. (I’d imagine that they will announce it after le Tour though)

Why is the focus on Armstrong so much? Why do we care? I just love watching the tour, and couldn’t give a flying **** if they’re all or none on dope – I still love the sport and spectacle.

It is a very good question. I can only answer for myself.

With regard to the historic riders, I think the difference was that the drugs of choice allowed them to overcome pain rather actually enhance the performance and there would be a payback for using them. What we have got to remember is that cycling was certainly then a poor man’s sport and the pay was very low. Half the time they took the drugs simply to stay awake when driving between events. It was a very tough life.

EPO changed all that and as it was performance enhancing, I came to love the tour during the Indurain era, my guess is that he took drugs but it is only a guess. However, he is a very reserved man who achieved what he did and then has gone on to live a relatively quiet life. Or to put it another way, he was arrogant on the bike but not off it.

I think that provides a huge contrast with Lance Armstrong, I could write for hours on this, but suffice to say people question miracles now more than they did before – witness the religious threads.

the article from that pic is very good

That an entire generation of cycling has turned out to be deeply tainted is beyond doubt. From the early 1990s through to really quite recently, you have to ask yourself how big race winners did it. Some have tested positive, or have confessed to doping (when trotting out the “never tested positive” line, it’s worth considering that David Millar, Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich and Bjarne Riis, to take a few examples, never tested positive).

Blood boosting, either by transfusions or ‘Edgar Allen Poe’ [peleton slang for EPO], give such an unfair advantage to some riders that what results from their usage is not sport. Apart from the fact that such high climbing speeds as were being achieved from the mid-1990s onwards effectively deaden any tactical interest or finesse, these doping techniques aren’t democratic. It’s not the case that the same hierarchy exists with doped riders and non-doped riders – we often hear that it doesn’t matter if everybody is cheating because the strongest riders win anyway. Some riders gain more of an advantage than others from blood manipulation, Bjarne Riis being just one striking example.

Michele Ferrari, Armstrong’s old coach and one of the six defendants in the USADA action, is on the record as talking about the Texan being able to express a sustained power output of 6.7 watts per kilogram of body weight when he was winning the Tour.

The late Aldo Sassi, who was respected as one of the best cycling coaches and whose reputation was spotless, concluded that a sustained 6.2 watts per kilo was probably the limit of human achievement under normal physiological conditions. Unpredictable and variables, such as length of effort, would skew the numbers a little, but figures above 6 are freakish – the absolute limit of human achievement. 6.0 would win a Grand Tour these days (Sassi was quoted in the New York Times as saying that in the 2009 Giro, only one rider – Denis Menchov – got above six). 6.7 is impossible. It’s over 11 per cent more than 6.0, in an elite area of performance where the margins between riders are impossibly thin. It would be the equivalent of a long jumper jumping 9.93 metres (Mike Powell’s world record is 8.95 metres, and that was a pretty freakish jump).

Armstrong rode up Alpe d’Huez in 37-36 in the 2004 Tour de France, one second behind Marco Pantani’s record (although there is debate about the measurements based on where the climb actually starts and finishes). The fastest time last year was 41-21, by Samuel Sanchez. That’s a difference of just under 10 per cent.

Sorry, USADA not UCI…

Or perhaps there were just more talented riders in the Tour back then ? It’s not impossible. I mean the standard of XC racing has dropped considerably since I retired. I could have kicked any of those girls racing today NO PROBLEM in my time (holds up sarcasm sign).

You can’t make a valid comparison.

Look; is he a wrong un’ or not? could we reach a consensus please. I am off on holiday on Sunday and need new Sunnies, as happens local shop,cycleworld, has livestrong Jawbones going cheap. Don’t want to buy them if it means customs are going to tar me with the same brush and rubber glove.

@duckman. you’re quackers 😀

What I hate is the duplicity and hypocrisy about it all, the trial by media.

Whether Armstrong doped or not is almost immaterial, it’s actually become a bit of a distraction to the main show of “lets destroy Armstrong by any means possible”.

No-one else has been subjected to the same witch-hunt. Known dopers, people who’ve tested positive and/or confessed are quietly left to get on with their lives. OK, you can argue that Armstrong is a bit more public with his LiveStrong stuff and a lot richer thanks to that and to his years as the highest profile cyclist in the world – was that all built on a lie? The investigation seemed to suggest otherwise when it was dropped but then of course you’ve got the conspiracy theorists saying it was dropped due to high level political interference.

I don’t think the full truth is ever going to be known and it’s become a real mess of accusation, counter claim and conspiracy from all sides. 🙁

I can’t believe everyone’s going on about lance!

You should be more pissed of that the USDA did this right as the tour started. I can’t believe so many of you are not more pissed about that.

He may be guilty he may not. But why now?

Don’t argue about something none of you know nothing about other than stuff you’ve read. Don’t be so niev.

binners – Member
Do you never get bored with this?

No they never get bored as it fills the gaps between winning their own bike races.

Don’t argue about something none of you know nothing about other than stuff you’ve read. Don’t be so niev.

quote of the day. possibly the week.

No-one else has been subjected to the same witch-hunt. Known dopers, people who’ve tested positive and/or confessed are quietly left to get on with their lives.

Your wakeboard may be on the wrong way round, but this is most lucid.

You should be more pissed of that the USDA did this right as the tour started. I can’t believe so many of you are not more pissed about that.

Oh that’s standard practice! USADA know full well that if they’d have done this back in January, everyone who did actually notice would have gone “oh that, again?!” and then forgotten about it. It’s Chapter 1 in “how to accuse someone of doping” – wait til the week preceding the Tour.

By doing it this way, they’re guaranteed the publicity: you can leave a bored journalist with just enough info to go searching and it can be threaded into most Tour stories somehow and you end up with the media doing your work for you.

Much like the 45-minute claim over Iraq. One line is a made-up dossier seized on by the media, next thing the entire world thinks that Saddam can nuke the world in 45 minutes. Trial by media.

What I hate is the duplicity and hypocrisy about it all, the trial by media.

If you choose to live your life in the media, it can come back to haunt you. Ullrich just walked away and kept quiet but his case went through this year and bizarrely he got a heavier sentence than Contador because his ban wasn’t back dated whereas AC’s was.

Maybe they want maximum publicity to prove that the system is bigger than anyone? Whatever happens if you go after him it will always be a big story.

next thing the entire world thinks that Saddam can nuke the world in 45 minutes.

Isn’t this just a little bit more important than yet another LA story? I mean what are we actually doing to protect ourselves? Surely the Govt should be providing some kind of shelters or something. I’m old enough to remember the films and publicity in the 70s. They’re barking on about Barclays when they should be protecting us. Typical politicians…

what will some of the experts on “lance is guilty” actually do with their lives once he is/if found guilty.
try looking at the system rather than pinning it all on one guy. lets get it changed so cheating in such a systematic way can’t happen again.

No-one else has been subjected to the same witch-hunt. Known dopers, people who’ve tested positive and/or confessed are quietly left to get on with their lives.

Wanting LA to be found guilty is not a huge issue in my life but as others note the fact he has chosen to live his life and use his achievements to generate publicity for him and/or livestrong means he will get much more attention than others. he has done this by [ possibly] misleading everyone that he did it clean when in fact he did not – is this not important when he continues to live off this legacy?

There is also the feeling that he is the one who got away – many of those found guilty also never tested positive – LA actually has at least once and probably more often. Look how hard it was to get Bertie done for example so lets call it progress as it was still quicker than getting LA.

pay attention at the back.

(at MT)

Did anyone notice he also WORE A HELMET!! idiot

(just trying to keep the interest going)

Does anyone think Emily Batty might dope?

Would anyone care?

Realman – do you think pictures would help with an answer to that?

I can’t see how they could hurt.

more reading, better than an insight from Hora.

http://fraudbytes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/lance-armstrong-investigation-what-do.html?

more reading, better than an insight from Hora.

TBH, has hora offered any insight into the case apart from innocent until proven guilty?
And judging by the title “Lance Armstrong investigation: What do his reactions suggest? I don’t think any new FACTS in the case are about to be revealed.

What a sport road racing shows itself to be to outsiders. What a cheerleader it is with such protagonists.

I remember stopping road riding at 17 hating club politics. Now its not ‘about the bike’ but about denigrating the sports highest achievers at every turn.

If Lance wasnt so abrasive in his defence/in general would he have attracted the accusations?

I was going to post, but I’m to drunk 😀

go on then, the problem I have is he’s so quick to try and discredit witnesses, authorities etc etc. There’s no discussion. it’s “they are all liars” first the cyclists who spoke up, and now that his friends have, he tries to discredit the way the USADA got their info ( the 6 month ban looks to be untrue, possibly from Bruneel, a regular contributor to the paper).

As that article says, where’s the disbelief and hurt that his best friends have lied about him? there’s none, which to me is very strange indeed. just more attempts to discredit the information they have. The longer this goes on, the more he is looking guilty, and desperately looking for a way out IMO…

Now its not ‘about the bike’ but about denigrating the sports highest achievers at every turn.

And thats bollocks. Cavendish, Wiggins, Boonen, Gilbert, Cancellara, where are the stories about these high achievers? nowhere, because there’s nothing to see.

If Lance wasnt so abrasive in his defence/in general would he have attracted the accusations?

If he had not cdoped and built and entire reputation around the falsehood then no he would be ignored like other great cheating champions.

What is hard to get, its not that he is abrasive, its not that I dont like him, its not that he is not awesome. The problem is , that to some, he cheated. He has then built a temple to all things LA on a lie – he did it all with will power and with a little yellow band you can achieve great things just like he did on a bike and with nothing else. To those who are not road cyclists, like Hora, they view him as some sort of super human demi god who can do no wrong. He built the pedestal that hora and RM look up to on this image and those that purport to know may wish to see him knocked off it.

If he does get found guilty, then of the five riders to win the tour five times (ie arguably the greatest ever), there would be what, one left who hasn’t been shown to dope at some point? Positive if people are eventually caught, but pretty sad for cycling in general, especially as most of them are still idolised despite the drugs.

it’s not sad for cycling, hopefully it will prove that manipulative egotistical cheaters can no longer use their money and fame to coerce those who run the sport into thinking that it’s better to maintain the charade for the good of the sport.
cycling needs dopers like Millar to set an example, it doesn’t need dopers like armstrong. every time i hear of some 30+ rider failing a test it doesn’t sadden me, i just think that’s another one caught, a young rider getting caught is a different matter it’s for their and cycling sake that armstrong needs to stop being a false idol and become a pariah.