Really? It was the scope of his legal/defence etc that they had to. Again Floyd Landis dragged everything through the courts to try and get away with his positive.

Have a scroll down and look through lots on here for people caught who ARENT readily famous:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling#2011

SSo we are pusuing all of these guys then?
It’s not all about lance, it’s a clever distraction to avoid more difficult issues such as USP supported doping…

Thats **** sad that he wasn’t awarded the yellow jersey. If Lance had raced clean the person robbed would be the Tour winner. How many $100,000’s has Joseba lost because of that ‘hounded’ cheat who should be let off (apparently).

So we are pusuing all of these guys then?

Yes. As your graph shows, they have been penalised for doping.

I disagree with your point as it is not a reasonable position to say that we cannot have an opinion on him [ or anyone else] just because we have not met them. FWIW it would apply to you as well as you have not met him so we can discount your view.
I am fairly sure my opinion is my own and you can read my views on LA pre USADA being involved as there are threads on here. Anyone who seriously followed the sport knew what was going on at the time. It was obvious.
I have agreed with you on the second point but LA got worse as he was the head of the snake and at no point , even after the report, did he admit it or help the investigation. Those who show the least remorse get the worst punishment. Even now he has refused to come clean unless he gets an amnesty and he still denies 2009-10 doping.

You are correct that plenty of cheats got no punishment and are still involved in the sport and I agree LA got an exceptional punishment ; personally, I think he earned it but yes we should turn our attention to other targets

Thinking of the likes of Joseba Beloki and has hinted in this topic- in other sports I wonder how much prestige and money racing drivers lost out on in the Schumacher years. Hill lost one additional crown and Senna should have had a fourth. This isn’t due to doping but performance enhancements or plain old steering-wheel thuggery.

I disagree with your point as it is not a reasonable position to say that we cannot have an opinion on him [ or anyone else] just because we have not met them. FWIW it would apply to you as well as you have not met him so we can discount your view.

It’s one of these things, I’ve met some pro bike riders, one who felt the need to prove he had no track marks, another world champion who was just bonkers and a few other really serious pro’s. thing I got was they were all just like most of us. To make assumptions about somebodies personalities is a jump, there is a lot of people trying to make sure that you think the right way (well with LA there are at least 2 lots of people trying to tell you how to think).
The point being you don’t actually know

When a criminal gang is prosecuted, I thought it was fairly normal for the ringleader to be punished the most severely.

The point being you don’t actually know

if this was true, and i dont think it is, the point would have to be we both dont know not just i dont know. I still dont think its reasonable to say one needs to know LA or the ripper ect personally to have an opinion on them.

He was a public figure and he showed his personality via his actions on and off the bike as did le mond and Boardman and Brad and all the others.
Off the bike he was different from most other winners in that he remained as ruthless as on the bike and some of the insults were very very low blows indeed.

His treatment* of Simeone in an actual race was shameful as well.
I cannot think of anyone else doing a comparable act.

* the peleton supported him and he ended up being spat at by others as well so your point is also true about how , some, ignore everything else

It was not all LA faults and you are on the ball with that point but he =was the gang master or leader so he got the worst treatment.

and the bosses who looked the other way? and the governing body who covered it up, and the testers who covered it up?

In the end a truth and reconciliation is more the way to go, get them out in the open and expose those who still don’t want to talk

Indeed and also a recognition that the sport has gone a long long way to change its image* whilst other sports are not even investigating things.

Tennis football , Russian and athletics, Jamaican sprinters etc

* i think we have had three clean winners with Brad, Froome and Cuddles

Nibali i would be surprised tbh given his team but who knows for certain

and the bosses who looked the other way? and the governing body who covered it up, and the testers who covered it up?

This is why I want Lance (if he really cared) to tell all, to help prosecute and clean up. But all he cares about is Lance.com. No one else figures. So hes firmly the author of his own downfall. Others co-operated whereas would he ever entertain the thought?

Hes gotten and will get all whats coming to him with this case.

No daffy I’m not implying death you berk. I’m implying justice.

Yes, we should go after those as well. Which doesn’t make any punishment of LA unfair or unreasonable. Nor does it preclude going after them – I don’t believe any lesser punishment for LA was likely to make going after them any easier. I do think some of them have got off lightly, but to argue that LA has been punished too harshly on that basis is whataboutery.

Of course the lawsuit which started this thread is a purely civil thing and nothing to do with his “punishment” or to do with anybody else. I can’t see any logical reason why anybody should be prevented from taking any legitimate legal action against LA, whether that is civil action, or charging him with perjury in relation to previous civil cases where he’s lied in court.

Keep going, both of you (not to sound like JHJ and the other one) are masking the real issue, cheating was part of the culture, part of the plan, part of the race. Those people need to be taken on. The plan (hell I hate conspiracy) is to keep the blame here.

Something which LA played a huge part in encouraging and perpetuating. Of course there are other big fish who are just as complicit and have avoided similar punishment, and I acknowledge your point that blaming LA for everything deflects attention, but that is a problem with people allowing attention to be deflected, not the punishment LA has got.

I am agreeing with you on that point [that we need to target the rest] and have been agreeing all thread on it.
To be clear
LA deserved what he got IMHO
Many others got away too lightly or without any punishment and we should target them as well.

So are we going after the rest or just the 1 fish in the pond?

I think what they are doing is going ok we cleared the table when we got LA [ still “unfair” for the reasons you note] now lets change the culture of the sport, the culture of the UCI and improve the sport NOW rather than look too much at the past and deal with that.

I can see why they did at some point we have to move on and on this issue I am moving on now

After the Festina affair there was an apparent new dawn in cycling – lots of people were very excited, once LALA returned that new dawn withered away.

100! 🙂

So are we going after the rest or just the 1 fish in the pond?

Has evidence of doping similar in scale to LA emerged?

101, what shots do i get?

Thats **** sad that he wasn’t awarded the yellow jersey. If Lance had raced clean the person robbed would be the Tour winner. How many $100,000’s has Joseba lost because of that ‘hounded’ cheat who should be let off (apparently).

We are talking about the same Joseba Beloki? The one who was implicated in Operacion Puerto and then subsequently cleared by the Spanish authorities. The same Spanish authorities who ordered that all the blood bags be destroyed because there were somehow a lot of Spanish footballers, tennis-ists and cyclists were (allegedly) in there too…

And that chart is out of date cos it shows Bobby Julich as clean but he admitted to doping – left Team Sky because of it.
And Denis Menchov (2010) was sanctioned for adverse bio-passport findings and had his 2009, 2010 and 2012 results annulled. So don’t believe everything you see on those charts, it would help if the info being presented was actually up to date…

Bottom line is, in spite of all the claims that “Lance denied clean riders a podium”, he actually didn’t. Neither did Ullrich, Riis, Pantani and they all behaved exactly the same.

Lie, deny, cheat, bully (OK, not through the courts but if you think USPS/Discovery was the only team forcing riders to toe a line, to comply with team instructions then you’re very much mistaken).

It’s the inconsistency that bugs me. Why are Riis & Vinokourov allowed to run cycling teams? Why is Richard Virenque hailed as a hero in France and commentating on TV? Why is Pantani somehow a “flawed hero” but Lance is the devil incarnate with a baying crowd of internet warriors wishing he’d burn in hell?

It’s the inconsistency that bugs me. Why are Riis & Vinokourov allowed to run cycling teams? Why is Richard Virenque hailed as a hero in France and commentating on TV? Why is Pantani somehow a “flawed hero” but Lance is the devil incarnate with a baying crowd of internet warriors wishing he’d burn in hell?

1 rule for all.

For me, the really guilty parties in cycling were those in control, not just the cyclists who were easy to blame and take the fall.

The UCI and team bosses/owners were the ones that profited and continued or at least allowed the continuation of the doping. They’re the ones who need to be dealt with harshly.

Armstrong is an exception. While ‘just’ a rider, he effectively played a similar part to the team bosses and manipulated and benefited financially in the same way. As such, he’s been punished in a similar way – lifetime ban based on having not co-operated with the inquiries.

For me, the Manolo Saizs, Bjarne Riis, et al (ie team managers) should all be punished similarly but I’m not sure there’s sufficient (legally robust) evidence to do so.

LA is working very hard to twist the story to make people believe he’s been unfairly treated by comparing his punishment with other riders. He misses out that his part was bigger than just doping as most riders did. He also likes to set the stall out that he only did what ‘everyone’ was doing. That’s also considered not to be true. Admittedly most of those who didn’t cheat were probably struggling to get into the top 10, maybe even top 20 at the big races but they were still there.

Why is Pantani somehow a “flawed hero” but Lance is the devil incarnate

I think its because he went much further that was necessary just to stamp his mark. It wasn’t enough to force SCA to pay the initial bonuses which is something he couldn’t have avoided without admitting some guilt. He then took out a full page ad in a sports newspaper to damage SCAs reputation which wasn’t necessary. At all points he appears not only to have acted without remorse but to take the opportunity to reinforce a message of don’t cross me. It’s difficult now too see him as just another doper like all the rest

They are all flawed heroes and that is the biggest problem, you can’t have Pantani and Armstrong

I couldn’t agree more. Though to be honest you’ve made a list there of cyclists most of whom I never liked much!

Which still doesn’t mean that LA doesn’t deserve everything he gets. It’s all a bit “waah, waah, they did stuff and got away with it, why can’t I?”

Fine and disqualify. Pay back rewards and sponsors unless they made profits.

Witch hunt? Leave that for little kids who are hurt Lance lied to them – their hero lol.

Get over it.

They are all flawed heroes and that is the biggest problem, you can’t have Pantani and Armstrong

Bianchi still have one of Pantani’s old bikes, one that he won a stage or a Tour/Giro or something on. I forget the actual history of it but it’s the actual bike as ridden to victory in [stage] by Pantani.

They take it to various Bianchi dealers and cycling cafes etc for a week at a time. Last time I saw it a year or so ago at a local cycling cafe, people were stroking it reverently!

As a bike it was nothing special now, maybe a normal punter selling it on ebay as a normal S/H bike would get £300 for it.
But this thing transcended all that and had become a priceless object of desire and reverence.

Somehow I can’t see Trek taking one of Lance’s actual Tour winning bikes on display… It’d be covered in spit within a couple of hours!

I’m not sure that’s true actually. No doubt a fair few would be that way inclined but LA’s revisionist drive is working IMO and there are plenty of people (particularly in the US who see it as USA against the world) who are going along with the idea that he only did what everyone was doing and that he was treated unfairly and he’s still a source of hope for many.

I fully expect him to be redeemed in a few years, if somewhat less well off.

Heroes?

Read Willy Voets book about doping in cycling and the Festina affair…its a good eye opener, the sport was rotten to the core long before LA came along.

DR Ferrari was working with (and doping) cycling teams long before LA got in contact with him, Ferrari’s mentor Professor Conconi was systematically doping Italian track and field athletes in the early 80s when LA was still in short trousers….but yeah, LA is the root cause of all cycling’s ills!….Conconi is credited with introducing EPO to the peleton and the boot full of steroids, growth hormone, amphetamines, EPO etc that Voets had in the Festina team car came before LA’s rise to the top….but again, LA is the easy high profile target…pats on the back all round lads.

The simplistic idea that by getting rid of Lance and you clean up cycling is flawed because it was all happening pre Armstrong.

When the Gewiss team (under Ferrari) took a clean sweep of the podium in 1994 eyebrows were raised…thats got to be a better starting point for investigations into the dirty past of the sport than LA’s late arrival in 1999….or the suspicious deaths of young Dutch and Belgian cyclists in the early 90s?

Fact is LA (and his American teams) were largely beaten by the European regulars whenever they came to play at the big Continental tours and races…the doping was already well established in Europe but dont let that get in the way of a good dig at USPS or LA….virtually every book by people involved in cycling at the time says that LA (and team mates) had to step up their doping game in order to compete with what was already happening in the European teams….

….now i’m no fan of conspiracy theories either but cycling is very much rooted in European sporting history, the three biggest races are all European tours, the biggest one day races are held on Continental Europe, the UCI is a Euopean based organisation, most of the top teams are based in Europe etc etc….LA and the nasty invading Americans are an easy target and the public wont question it as they dont know enough about the dodgy past of European cycling to point to the former heads of the UCI, the University of Ferrara, Prof Conconi, race organisers, the dead cyclists from ’90-’92 and ask some genuinely uncomfortable questions.

It suits all concerned with the upper echelons of cycling to have LA as the permanent fall guy.

People who want to see him talk and spill the beans are somewhat missing the point….i’m not sure it will shed any light on the actual organisation or recent history of doping in modern cycling as like i said before it was all going on way before LA and the USPS team started rocking up to races….looking to LA for the answers as to how and why cycling went bad is like shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted….direct your attention to the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) who were complicit in introducing EPO and blood doping to professional sport and you might get somewhere useful…but that would mean shining a spotlight on the IOC and well, good luck with that….they are as corrupt as anything else out there and wield a huge amount of power and political influence.

Talk to Dr Bjorn Ekblom (if he’s alive) or his associates about their blood doping on the ‘Flying Finn’ distance runner Lasse Viren in 1972….LA was one year old at the time, this was going on for decades before LA arrived!

The hype around this being the ‘most organised and sophisticated’ doping program of all time is laughable and typical American excess….is the USPS/LA affair bigger than East German, Italaian/CONI or Soviet state sponsored doping programs?….of course not, that would detract from the message that LA is the bogeyman and it will all be OK if he just disappears…we’ll all conveniently ignore the fact that international sport has been tainted by doping for decades and instead just focus on a single cyclist….it stinks nearly as badly as the nefarious goings on in LA’s teams.

hora – Member
Heroes?

Many stood behind, many see Pantani as a hero, many see most of them as their role models and heroes. I have no problem going after LA just go after the lot of it’s simply a diversion and an excuse for those like the UCI to walk away free and happy.The LA is evil kill LA is a diversion.

Hero:

noun
1.
a person, typically a man, who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.
“a war hero”
synonyms: brave man, champion, man of courage, great man, man of the hour, conquering hero, victor, winner, conqueror, lionheart, warrior, paladin, knight, white hat; More

Post events – you cant call either this.

This stuck in my mind- the house was well lit/father beaten back, child already badly burnt and but a stranger stopped and ran in without thinking

Who’s actually said that LA disappearing will fix everything? Or that doping/cheating didn’t happen before him?

Ferrari got a lifetime ban from cycling.

The Tailwind/USPS management got lifetime bans.

Lance got a lifetime ban.

Seems consistent there at least. Why would Lance have been let off when there was evidence to follow?

Now just need to get them for Riis and Vino and that’d be a good step forward. Needs evidence though, doesn’t it? And that really is the issue – I’d argue that the reason LA seems harshly treated compared to say Riis is that USADA did their job properly. Other countries’ AD organisations didn’t and at least until recently continued to fail to.

A while load of strawmen there, deviant. Nobody is suggesting that LA is the roort cause of cycling’s ills, that getting rid of him cleans up cycling etc. To suggest such things would be stupid – to suggest that others are saying such things is missing the point.

I want to go after the East German system, Ferrari, Conconi etc. Though it’s interesting to mention Ferrari, because he has actually received the same sanction as LA, so what are you complaining about?

edit. CBA

Im out. My Mum once told me ‘you made your bed now lie in it’.