This line that Lance “just trained harder” is so absurd it makes me cringe.

Lance certainly trained *smarter* in that he and Ferrari were all over the team’s numbers, as part of a structured doping programme. The USADA report, the statements, and in particular Tyler’s book, make that all very clear.

Chris Carmichael was always stated to be Lance’s professional coach, yet Tyler’s book quotes various riders as laughing out loud at this statement. (Floyd: “Are you kidding me? Chris was just a beard”). They talked about how it was “Michele says this” and “Michele says that”. Read the stories about Ferrari’s old camper van turning up in laybys and being used as a mobile clinic.

The “trained harder” myth was put out there by Armstrong’s camp, just like all the other myths. It’s all part of the scam.

I think most top athletes take drugs.

I do too. But how many of them control a huge system of distribution, coercion, obfuscation, corruption, and witness intimidation, on the scale of the USPS setup? That’s why he’s banned for life when others get 6 months or a year or two years. Have you read the reasoned decision?

Lance trained harder for the tour than any other rider

Evidence please?

Added to the list. Gosh, they make it easy, don’t they? Forget retrospective testing, just wait for them to open their mouths

There’s a big difference between the doping of the pre-EPO era and the stuff that happened post-EPO, especially once the likes of Armstrong and Bruyneel industrialised the process. Both are wrong, but the former made riders feel much better, whereas the latter made riders much better.

This is about the sports persecution of one person and is wrong.

Simeoni?

I think the constant line from the peloton that the sport has changed is one of the most depressing (and predictable) things about all this. It’s the same thing we heard in 1999, among other occasions.

Remind me who won the Vuelta? And who’s hot favourite for the TdF next year? Oh, and who won the Olympic road race?

“I hope that people remember that the events being uncovered mostly occurred seven or more years ago, amongst a minority of those involved in a sport which has already changed and moved on”

Oh, what a shame, I had high hopes for Cadel. I’ll add him to the list.

Why don’t the UCI/WADA/ASO/etc also go after the following for their race titles and/or winnings?

In the UCI’s case, because they’re incompetent and worse.

But a bunch of s**t is about to hit the fan with the Ferrari case in Italy.

i’m not for one moment trying to say Lance didnt dope, what i’m uncomfortable with is procedure not being followed and yet a conviction is still secured.

…
With the Armstrong case rules seem to have been made up as USADA went along…..it just doesnt feel right to me.

You’ve been listening to the briefings from Team Armstrong too much, in my opinion.

USADA set out in great detail

– their justification for results management authority
– their justification for denial of Statue of Limitation
– their reasonings for the UCI having a conflict of interest in this case

In each case they set out case law/history, relevant licensing/doping codes, etc.

“Omerta” …ha!…bunch of drama queens

You know it’s been peloton slang for many years, right?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/opinion-michael-ashenden-on-omerta-101
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/interview-cycling-omerta-broken-says-hamilton-222352101–spt.html
http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticleALD.jsp?id=1202574851052&USADA_Lawyers_Speak_Out_About_Armstrong_Probe_Pro_Cyclings_Omert&slreturn=20120923123651
etc etc

When cyclists who were never picked up in a dope test start saying that the only evidence that they’d ever accept is having been caught by a dope test, you wonder if they’re worried about something.

Some good suggestions… but I guess there’s not just somewhere I can go and get half-decent chain off the roll is there? (Thinking about it, how would they cut it?)

Can someone please tell Indurain that fans would really like Omerta to be over now? Thanks

Yes, he has. In a nutshell, it was “I’m just paid to drive the car, guv. I didn’t see nuffink”

Kjærgaard is now doing a press conference, and basically admitting that when he got to USPS he no longer had to sort out his own doping logistics, because the team had it covered. But of course he never failed a test, so he must be telling fibs.

Have you read the USADA reasoned decision document?

It’s all just a matter of what some official body says is ok. To me adding anything in tablet form is artificial eg vitamins. After all they can be got from real food. If they can’t then its wrong.

There are inevitably shades of grey just as there are in medicine (where some chemicals are deemed to be safe for public retail distribution and uncontrolled consumption, and others are controlled by prescription). A handful of riders vocally refuse to take even vitamins

But I think it’s easy to see a difference between training in an idealised air-pressure and injecting a chemical blood booster

No. I could point you to a failed cortizone test in 1999, and evidence of a covered up test in 2001, but there is no test-based “smoking gun”.

But I can point you to a large number of witnesses who have testified as to how the team systematically beat those tests.

Would you always want DNA evidence if someone robbed a bank, or would 20-or-so eyewitnesses, who saw the robber doing it, suffice?

EDIT: And I could point you to a reknowned anti-doping doctor who says the chances of his 2009/10 blood value range being normal is less than a million to one.

Chemical enhancement is different to controlling atmospheric factors.

There, that was easy

Let’s not forget some of the positive things Lance has done for sport

If it wasn’t for him, Average Joes would not have beaten GloboGym

The other day I drove past a wind farm in California with 3200 turbines. It was one of the most striking and spectacular things I’ve ever seen. Goes on for ever in every direction.

No, I’m comparing races dominated by doped up teams to single team domination in F1. It’s not a one-to-one comparison and I don’t want to be bogged down in semantics. I’m not saying the TdF encapsulates professional cycling.

The point was about how interesting racing will be if it’s ever clean. My contention is that it’d be much more interesting watching a uniformly clean field. No 1-2-3s in classics, no groups of 3 or 4 riders from a single team dominating mountain stages, with their domestiques happily dropping specialist climbers.

Do the authorities go after them, or do they sit back and bask in the glory of taking out the top man?

Which authorities?
USADA have blown apart a team-wide conspiracy… not just the “top man” (no matter what Team Armstrong have been briefing about it being a ‘witch hunt’). They’ve unmasked multiple riders, doctors, and a big name team manager. But there aren’t many significant US targets to go after.

Ferrari is under increasing pressure from Italian authorities and might well go to jail.

The Spanish police didn’t get major convictions out of the Fuentes investigation but at least it blew apart that particular network.

And the UCI… er… ok. As you were.

No, it’ll be like watching a race.
Right now, because the richest teams can afford the richest programmes, it’s more like watching a F1 season where a single team dominates and leads each race from start to finish.

It probably won’t happen. This is probably the best chance for it to happen that we’ve had in a long time, but the fact that it’s still odds-against is depressing.

More likely is that cycling manages to set the agenda that “we’ve drawn a line under those days, it’s not the same as it used to be” and we all go along for a few more years, and suddenly the next scandal breaks and it turns out it has been JUST the same as it used to be.

Seriously, that statement about Wiggins and Sky definitely being clean…. it really sums up the whole problem for me, and shows that cycling once again risks getting itself a free pass.

They might be clean. But I just don’t understand how anyone can say they’re “undoubtedly” clean. Why are they undoubtedly clean? Because they say so?

One problem that Armstrong will have is that the media hate knowing they’ve been fooled, and like to go after people who’ve deliberately fooled them.

A mate reframed this whole nasty episode for me the other day when I commented what a sad time for cycling this is. H replied….

“This is a time for celebration. Without eliminating drugs from the sport there’s no way a British cyclist like Brad Wiggins, who is undoubtedly clean, would have won the Tour de France”.

Why is Wiggins “undoubtedly” clean?

There have been too many false dawns. Cycling can’t define the agenda now as “draw a line under it and move on”. Nor do I have ANY confidence that things are clean.

There’s still no effective blood doping test. The bio passport is coming under scrutiny from influential people including some of the people involved in creating it. McQuaid as good as admitted yesterday that they still need a blood transfusion detection test.

We have a team like Sky dominating just like USPS used to, while working with doctors like Leinders who have been intimately involved with some of the most dirty teams of the past.

And would anyone like to remind me who just won the Vuelta?

Sorry, but the “we shouldn’t dwell on the past” line suits those who were neck deep in it for the last decade-and-a-half, and are still running cycling today. The only thing that will change it is a revolution: truth and reconciliation, new team funding structure, a complete change in the UCI, new transparency.

I think cycling is doing more damage to itself by focusing far more on the past and not thinking of the future. The obsession with hanging up the dirty laundry of the past, rather than drawing a line and going forwards, will mean greater damage overall.

I think that was wrong in 1999 and it’s wrong now.

Pat McQuaid, 16th August 2012:

It is clear that USADA has no jurisdiction in this case and also that USA Cycling has no jurisdiction: USA Cycling and USADA can/could only do what UCI requested them to do. Such request was limited to an investigation into the case and did not comprise the decision on whether proceedings should be opened or not.

It is clear also that USADA cannot not rely on any delegation by USA Cycling as USA Cycling can delegate no more than what was delegated by UCI to USA Cycling and such delegation was limited to an investigation.

This should be clear to USADA and USADA should act or refrain to act accordingly.

Yet to the extent that USADA still would try to rely on any delegation by USA Cycling and insofar as necessary, we request USA Cycling to promptly instruct USADA that it has no authority to act or proceed on the basis of ADR or any other rule of the UCI or otherwise on behalf of UCI and/or USA Cycling, cannot act under a delegation from USA Cycling and must hand over the case to the UCI

d3epuodzu3wuis.cloudfront.net/2012-08-16+McQuaid+UCI+to+Johnson+USAC+re.+UCI+Jurisdiction.pdf

I can’t BELIEVE he wasn’t challenged on this today.

That was an appalling performance by the journalists in the room there. So many things they could and should have asked McQuaid about. Why did nobody ask him why he fought so hard to block USADA’s jurisdiction in this whole business?

The base has a kind of frame nailed underneath anyway, so the floorboards wouldn’t be resting on the ground.

A couple of comments on recent posts:

There was nothing, pre-cancer, to suggest he was going to be anything other than a domestique with the occasional one-day or short stage-race win.

That’s a bit of a dangerous assertion, easy to shoot down, because very few occasional winning domestiques get one of these…

Of course, if we’re to believe various witnesses, e.g. those from the hospital treatment room (and I do) then we get a pretty good idea of how he got it.

Anyway, the_hustler, I think your friends are very very wrong about the effects of doping, particular oxygen vector doping.

If it doesn’t work, how come the average speeds got so high under it? How come teams like USPS arrived in the midst of EPO-fuelled Europe and were blasted off the back for a year until they got themselves a stash?

Sorry to your mates but I’d much rather listen to the reasoned scientific thinking of Ashenden et all than their “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” confident but misplaced assertions

Which video? Is it this one? It’s been around for weeks, hasn’t it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Samphire Hoe is indeed a very artificial bit of new coastline, but to be fair it adjoins the bit of cliff nearer Folkestone which was mass-dynamited to allow the railway line to be built, back in the dim and distant past. It’s already a pretty artificial few miles of coast, as a result.

When I was a kid and the tunnel was being built, the trains used to stop at a little tiny platform at the bottom of Shakespeare Cliff, to let workers off from the one carriage that lined up with it.

Naah, I’m with you. What’s the point of getting that Autoglym gleam every time I ride, when I could just spend the time doing some extra riding? I’m reasonably good at cleaning the drivetrain (less so on the singlespeed, where there’s REALLY not much point in worrying too much). But other than that I buy dependable stuff, use full-length outers, and generally don’t worry too much about seeing my reflection in it.

The reality is that people who have achieved a lot in life are not particularly likeable.

I’m just looking at his sporting achievements…

Hmmm, zero Tours de France, that’s not a good start.