What would a clean Lance have been like

The indurain one is a bot of a red herring though – I suspect he did cheat though i have no evidence to prove it

MIGUEL INDURAIN, the four-times Tour De France winner, should not be punished for testing positive for a drug banned in France, according to Prince Alexandre de Merode, the head of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission.
De Merode said yesterday he had spoken to the International Cycling Union and supported their position that Indurain was taking a drug that both the IOC and UCI allowed asthma sufferers to use.

Indurain tested positive after the Tour de L’Oise on 15 May, for the drug Salbutamol, which is found in some inhalers used by asthma sufferers. It is on the IOC’s list of banned or controlled substances but sportsmen with asthma were allowed to use it.

However, Salbutamol is banned altogether by the French sports ministry. – Prince Alexandre de Merode, confirmed yesterday that documents detailing ‘five or six’ positive dope tests were taken from his hotel room after the 1984 Los Angeles Games and destroyed.

A swimming meet in Mulhouse, France, on 14 September has banned the Chinese women’s team because of their drugs-tarnished image

Pretty sure their is still a culture of exercise induced asthma amongst the peleton

Also tested positive

http://www.dopeology.org/people/Miguel_Indurain/

Yup, but my point was some people are just very fast naturaly/through training, and through the last 20 years we’ve just seen those very fast people go even faster on drugs. You could put an average STWer in Brailsfords hands for 4 years and they’d not win the olympics, you could give them Ferrari’s phone number and they’d still struggle.

so you dont know but you have guessed it would have made no change

Neither does anyone else, so the assumption that it was a fairly level playing field is a fairly good one. as evidenced by the freakishly chemicaly induced 50% heamocrit levels recoreded in almost everyone. Playing devils advocate that might be fairer than someone winning through being a genetic freak of nature.

The tour is 100 years old next year, if it were possible to prove one way or the other I’d bet that you’d need to go back way before anyone on here was born to find someone who won it clean! I’m in the ‘accept that drugs happened and move on’ camp. Lance won, he would probably have won on a level playing field too, it’s a shame he didn’t, but hey.

Should we strip recording artists of their number 1’s if they wee written/recorded whilst on drugs? Would Led Zepplin have been half as good if IV wasn’t recorded whilst locked in a welsh farmhosue with a load of mind bending pharmaceuticals? Surely that’s unfair on the likes of One-direction who can only record mediochre pop crap due to their clean cut immage?

so you dont know but you have guessed it would have made no change
Neither does anyone else, so the assumption that it was a fairly level playing field is a fairly good one.

whataloadofbolox – you dont know, so you dont know!

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

your assumption of a level playing field is a good one

Not given the evidence available it’s not. I remember being astonished by LA’s performance in the ’99 TdF – at the time I took in all the myths being propagated about how he’d improved so much. Interesting to look back at my reaction with hindsight – I was right to think it was unbelievable.

Then again there is also pretty good evidence to suggest that the previous 3 TdFs before LA’s first “win” were all “won” by riders on drugs programmes (I’ll not comment on the 5 before that).

so you dont know but you have guessed it would have made no change
Neither does anyone else, so the assumption that it was a fairly level playing field is a fairly good one

It is known though that this would be an incorrect assumption. It’s well known, for example, that those with naturally high hematocrit got much less of a boost by getting their level up to 50% than those who had lower natural levels. If you think this isn’t the case then read the Pantani book.

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.

Doesn’t seem impossible to me; it’s only taken about 20 years to crack, even less if you look at most of the people that are singing like canaries at the moment. The first moon landing was 43 years ago, and involved a heck of a lot more people, so not really comparable with a team of cheats working within a culture that tended to turn a blind eye and didn’t investigate doping aggressively.

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....now hes clean (supposedly), and hes just won the Vuelta has he not?

Jimmy Hill?

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.

I think that says more about what was already going on in Europe than the ability of LA!

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?

so what is to say he would have? – that is the point WE CANNOT POSSIBLY KNOW so to claim one way or the other is pointless and a leap of faith all we know is that when he cheated he won. As he [probably]always cheated [ in his tour wins] how can we say what he would have done clean?

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

He was someway below what he achieved afterwards and he was probably doping when he was “average”
He was a good one day or stage racer but he was nowhere in the GQ and that is quite a transformation.

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…..

and LA road those races very averagely pre drugs cheating [ or pre cancer if you think he cheated before]. I am not sure what your point is?LA was doing the training for those races, was in a team dedicated to winning these events and was not very good at it till he took drugs.

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.

except for the fact he was already riding the Tours, performing badly – dd he even finish as the results from Wiki dont have his name and I assume they have not removed them, and not actually racing at a pursuit sprint event on the track. Its not the same at all – think Cav becoming GC or Gilbert or Cancellera for example

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

so he was just there to make up the numbers but he could have been a contender but he decided not to even try
You are clutching at straws
Again no one knows what he would have achieved without drugs as he achieved everything with drugs

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 something 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.