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Lance Armstrong and the Science of Drug Testing
Hugh Pickens writes "As the media reports that seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong says he will no longer fight doping charges from the US Anti-Doping Agency, which will strip him of his titles and ban him from competitive cycling for life, Tracee Hamilton writes that the Lance Armstrong vs. USADA fight is a tough one in which to take a side, because to believe USADA means suspending belief in the science of drug testing. 'If you take personalities out of the equation, you're left with pee in a cup and blood in a syringe,' writes Hamilton. 'Armstrong never failed a drug test. He was tested in competition, out of competition. He was tested at the Olympics, at the Tour de France, at dozens if not hundreds of other events. And he never failed a test.' Instead Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of the USADA, gathered a group of people who swear they saw Armstrong doping. 'If the results can be discarded in favor of testimony, then let's go right to the testimony phase and quit horsing around with blood and urine.' There has been no trial, no due process, but in the minds of many, that testimony outweighs the results of hundreds of drug tests. 'I don't know if Armstrong did the things he's accused of doing, and neither do you,' concludes Hamilton adding that it can't work both ways. 'Either a drug test is the standard, or it isn't.'"
are awesome
I don't think anyone has ever believed that passing a drug test mean the person was clean for sure. Why do they store samples for X number of years in order to re-test them in the future, with better technology? It's because if it's found out later that somebody was doping, then his results are invalid.
If we find out some other way besides a drug test that somebody was doping, then his results are invalid.
The sworn statements of people caught doping is of virtually no value at all. Once caught they'll swear to any thing you want them to. They are allready proven liars so why even bother with them?
For fuck's sake. You're the Washington Post. Can we not talk like we're five years old? Surely there's some other phrase -- if you think super hard -- than "pee in a cup" that a professional journalist for a big-time publication can use?
From what I've read, this has all the hallmarks of a witch hunt from a bunch of out-of-control bureaucrats. I can't blame Armstrong for giving up. He's been through the grinder.
Suppose after you have been to the bar you are pulled over and pass a breathalyser test and the cop sends you on your way. A week later one of your friends gets busted for dui and testifies that you drank too much the previous week causing the loss of your license.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Lance has claimed consistently that he has not doped. Every drug test he's ever taken has come back clean.
Beyond that the people who are testifying against him, were caught doping and were given the deal of "If rat out Lance, you get 6 months, otherwise it's a lifetime suspension."
I agree with the last sentiment of the article. If we're just going to ignore the science and go with what people have said, why even drug test.
I say he's innocent until proven guilty in a court of clear cut science. When one of his many numerous samples finally tests positive for a banned substance, then hang him by his own petard.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The USADA doesn't actually have the authority to strip Lance Armstrong of anything. The UCI is the only organization which can strip his titles from him and according to them the USADA hasn't even come close to meeting the burden of proof they require. So this is all just a giant smoke and mirrors act by the USADA. Armstrong has stopped fighting them because their accusations are irrelevant to him.
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There has been no trial, no due process,
By giving up, Lance Armstron has ensured we will never get a trial and never be presented with the facts, evidence and witness testimonies - and the myth(?) of Lance Armstrong as a clean cyclist will live on.
Why the hell did he do that ?! (To keep the myth alive?)
99 tour de france
That was corticosteroid ass-cream for saddle sores that was cleared with TDF before he used it then he tested "positive" for using the cream. Yeah, wow, shocker!
01 tour de suiss
He said, he said, he said? Need some evidence except "whisperings"
USADA is claiming Lance's blood looked to have EPO/blood transfusions in 2009 & 2010
And the evidence is where?? Oh yes, secret, to be revealed. I'll wait for evidence before I would start accusing someone of anything.
Right now this all looks like that JFK assassination conspiracy theory with a grassy knoll and the military industrial complex. Just because someone keeps repeating it, does not make it true.
If UCI and TDF look at the USADA evidence and deem it credible, that would be one thing. But for now, it is USADA vs. UCI. USADA has no jurisdiction to strip him of anything related to TDF. Not without evidence and hand waving jailhouse snitches ain't it.
Frankly, whom are the so called accusers? The dopers like Landis. Reminds me of witch trials.
Anyway, some people like Brunei (Lance's former team coach?) will attempt to go through the "process" and so USADA will need to provide some proof. But if this process is where circumstantial testimony is enough, then sorry, it is stacked.
There exists no urine test that could detect transfusions. Why take witnesses over tests? Because the tests don't detect all, and the goal is to find cheats. Why lock your doors if you have an alarm? You use both and the most strict wins. Same with tests. I don't know whether he did anything. He's smart enough to know what can and can't be detected. And he may have cheated in an undetectable manner. Or maybe he is so good because he has naturally high platelet counts (most uber athletes got there because of "natural gifts" that the rest of us don't have).
Who cares, it's all about a sport anyway. If it's such an issue, they should shut down all cycling events until they can detect whatever doping he is accused of.
Learn to love Alaska
Of all the cyclists and team mates Lance Armstrong has had on all those teams covered by the USADA's letter and "testimony" that it was rampant on each of those cycling teams surely there must dozen several, or even dozens, of other riders similarly being sanctioned?
Nope, just Armstrong.
Says Wikipedia: USADA is "is taxpayer-funded non-profit organization."
So, just like Congress spending time on baseball persecutions, this is tax money being spent on enforcing the rules in non-essential, voluntary, recreational activities -- even it's not an official government bureaucracy, funding means control, so this is essentially a gov't body.
Personally, I have no problem with any given organization (for Scrabble, for competitive waiting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op39GUkQhmc, for concrete canoes -- http://concretecanoe.org/, for particular religious beliefs http://www.lds.org/?lang=eng ...) setting whatever rules they want, so long as the people involved choose to accept it, or choose to challenge it, etc, so long as there's no coercion. If you don't like the big chili competition in Terlingua (as some didn't), you can break off and start *another* big chili competition in Terlingua (and some people did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terlingua,_Texas). If the govt's going to get involved, it should be a matter of public safety, preventing fraud, etc. .
By contrast, I'm offended that so much as a single penny of taxpayer money went toward this.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Wait a minute. So, let's say for a moment that he did some stuff like his own blood transfusion and such.
1) If everyone does this, and when done professionally it is not dangerous, and it's not detectable by any real means, then why is that exactly wrong?
You make very valid points about where training/equipment crosses the line into cheating, but the part about "when done professionally it is not dangerous" is incorrect. A number of pro cyclists have died from heart issues, and there is at least some belief that EPO use is implicated. I don't know how credible the allegations are regarding EPO, but certainly overuse of steroids comes with very serious side effects.
My argument is that why is taking 'extra' Human Growth Hormone banned, yet NFL kick returns can suck on pure oxygen right on the sidelines after a long run so they can play again sooner?
Both are exactly the same thing...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
USADA is a pain in the ass! For the past 6 years I have been competing in sailing trying to qualify for the Paralympics. For the past 6 years, I had to tell USADA where I was going to be every day. They would randomly show up an any time of any day and if you were not where they could find you within an hour, you got a missed test. They won't try to locate you via phone. A couple missed tests equals a doping violation.
When they show up, it doesn't what you are doing, you have to stop everything and they supervise you giving your urine sample into a pair of specially designed tamper proof and labeled jars. They have also started taking blood, but I have not had that experience yet.
When an athlete you have to be paranoid about everything you eat. Many juices and energy drinks contain stimulants that are prohibited. That means no red bull, monster, some of the vitamin waters, some mixed juices, etc. If you have a cold you can't take pseudoephed. Vitamins and dietary supplements are extremely risky because something as trivial as vitamin c could be contaminated with a prohibited substance if it was made in the same factory.
Anyone that has put up with USADA/WADA for years, not missed tests, and passed all tests is clean and that should be the final word. Fuck these witnesses, USADA, WADA, and leave the man alone.
Occam's Razor is so dull these days, using it makes hair grow back...
The problem with drugging in sport is that the teams with the most money hire the pharmacists and doctors (like Fuentes and Ferrari) who develop cutting edge drug regimes which are beyond the current limits of drug testing. Drug testing inevitably develops behind the science of doping - testing for some new substance can only be initiated once it becomes known that that substance is being used for doping, and inevitably there is a lag time during which a reliable and safe test is developed.
Consequently the drug tests cannot be the 'gold standard' for evaluating whether or not someone has doped. Witness testimony is what we rely on in far more serious cases, like murder for example, and it seems perfectly reasonable to assert that if enough credible people are prepared to testify on oath that they personally witnessed Armstrong doping, then he was doping, whatever the drug tests say.
There's circumstantial evidence, too. One thing which had me convinced Armstrong was doping back as early as 2004 were his rages - he was aggressive and prone to anger far outside the normal range of human behaviour. But since then we've seen so many of his team mates and ex-team mates implicated - Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis and several others have been convicted, while George Hincapie agreed to give evidence against Armstrong in return for not being prosecuted. It simply isn't credible that everyone on the team was doping except the strongest, fastest man in the team.
There's some good news in all this. This years leading riders were about 4% down on power output - Lance Armstrong in 2005 was outputting 6.8 watts per kilogram, whereas Bradley Wiggins, this year's winner, was capable of just 6.57. Of course, the fact that power is down - across the whole peloton, not just the leaders - doesn't prove that today's riders are not doping, but clearly something has changed, and dope is one thing that may have changed.
Of course you can argue, and some people have, that if you can't reliably test for dope then the sensible thing to do is to allow all athletes to take whatever drugs they want, because if they're all doping then that's fair. But many of these drugs are dangerous - there were a rash of deaths from heart attacks of very young cyclists in Holland and Belgium in the early 2000s associated with apparent use of EPO, for example - and many athletes are young and under great pressure to succeed. We do have to clean up cycling (and other sports, too, of course, but I'm no expert on other sports) or else we will see a lot more kids with great potential killed to no purpose. I believe that we are succeeding.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Sports agencies are often full of a LOT more than urine. Like BS. There was the case of a gymnast who lost her gold medal in 2000 because she took some cold pills (as instructed by her coach), and the agency in charge said that was not allowed. Then 2 years later they said the pills are a legal substance because they have zero affect on athletic performance.
So if the pills have zero affect on performance, shouldn't this young woman get her gold medal back? That means she won the medal through her own great skills, but the Gymanastic Agency steadfastly refuses. That would mean admitting they were wrong, and they'd rather hold up the view that they are flawless godlike people & the athlete deserves to be punished!!! (Because we say so.)
It seems that USADA has the same "godlike" view of themselves. They accused Armstrong of guilt, and rather than admit they can't prove it, they will cover their asses and do whatever it takes to destroy the man, even if it takes years-and-years of darkroom interrogations. The athlete deserves to be punished!!! (Because we say so.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
On television tonight, they showed a picture about the 2000 Tour de France (IIRC) with the first ten cyclists.
All of them (if we count Armstong) had been tested positive to one thing or another, so the title would go to the eleventh guy. He's not positive because he probably hasn't been tested as much.
Add to that that if I were to take the same drugs they did, I'd still not be able to compete with them (without doping) by a huge margin.
So regardless of whether he took drugs or not, he still arguably was the best at that time.
The Lance rats that we know of were all caught by failing drug tests.
They then claimed they saw Lance cheat (which benefits them by selling their stories, getting lighter sentences) or even that he told them how to do it and encouraged them.
Now the confusing part is if they were so intimate with details of Lances cheating, how come he was so much better at it, that despite being tested more than any of them, he was never caught by a drug test like they were.
Either way this is sad story. Either Lance cheated, or a bunch of known cheaters were pulled together by a power tripping bureaucrat on a witch hunt.
Sucks either way.
What next, are they having a similar witch hunt for Indurain and his 5 wins. Similar allegations swirled around him.
The statute of limitations on sport should be the season. If you cannot determine by the end of the season who is the legitimate champion of the season, then don't give an award. If you cannot determine, by the end of a game, if all the rules of the game were followed, then declare the competition null and void. You cannot have a referee that has infinite time to make a judgment, this is the very opposite of what qualifies a competent judge.
I am convinced that Armstrong is being unfairly persecuted, and furthermore that every sport that has doping rules should ensure that they are immediately enforceable. If Armstrong or anyone else outsmarted the USADA, then too bad. My bias is that this agency is doing to its sport what boxing governing bodies did to theirs which is to draw into profound relief its inability to hold the respect and admiration of its chartered participants. Any certification that is not consistently and immediately verifiable loses its credibility.
My guess is that there is some squirrelly language in the contract that allows what is essentially no statute of limitations on allegations and does other stuff that wouldn't stand in a court of law.
fault-tolerant
First, most cyclists ride in several races during the year. By the time they get to the Tour de France, they've already ridden in the Giro and have had only a few weeks to rest ahead of the Tour. And, they may have ridden in some events in between.
Lance rides the Tour de France. That's it. So he's fresh in a way the rest of the field isn't, and probably financially can't afford to be.
Second, Lance Armstrong is a notorious trainer. You don't have to look far to find stories of how Lance pushed his teammates to train when they thought they didn't have to, or to find Lance training when others were taking time off for little things like Christmas morning.
Third, and maybe most importantly, Lance Armstrong is an arrogant asshole. No, really. He taunts other riders to try to keep up - and they can't. He rubs in every victory, calls out every weakness, and talks trash mercilessly. On top of all that, he's rich from endorsements and gets to be the face of Cycling, for the huge achievement of riding in just one damn race per year.
There are plenty of guys who'd stick it to Lance just because they can.
To put this all in Slashdot terms, let's say you were pretty good at Starcraft. You can beat everyone in your school without too much trouble.
Then, one day, you get to play Starcraft against a professional from Korea. Of course, he rips you up like kleenex and just laughs at you. So you find a hack to start out with extra resources and units so you can teach him a lesson. The Korean still dominates you. So, since you're cheating and you know you're good, he's got to be hacking. He just has to be. Right?
So you get someone to watch the computer screen over his shoulder. You monitor network traffic. You upgrade your computer for an extra few FPS. But nothing says he's doing anything fishy. Still, you stick by calling him a hacker - there's just no way he could beat you so easily without cheating too, right?
Right?
I don't think you quite understand the A/B testing system. You produce two samples at the same time, an A sample and a B sample. The A sample is put through a quick and crude test that should have a high false positive rate and a low false negative rate. If the A sample comes up positive then the B sample is put through a much more thorough (expensive) test that should have both a low false positive and false negative rate. Only if the B sample fails is it considered a "failed" test because the B sample is the only one that "proves" (within an accuracy threshold) you were doping. The A sample only narrows the field.
'Blood doping', that is, transfusing stored blood during a multi-day race such as leTour, is indeed cheating. It is usually packed cells, and is intended to boost hemoglobin and therefore oxygen carrying capacity. It overcomes your physiology, training, exertion, and recovery characteristics.
Armstrong is reputed to be an exceptional physical specimem. with extraordinary capacity for work. This is what bicyclists train for, to both be able to do the maximum amount of work without injury and with good recovery, to be able to do so on a regular basis, and to recover consistently so they can, in the case of leTour, do it for almost a month.
Over exertion results in damage from lactic acid, which takes more time to recover from than the mere exertion of racing. One of the reasons you will see a rider win a stage, and the next day fall to the back. And Amrstrong is reputed to be able to do more, more consistently, than virtually all other riders.
So other riders, not just because they are competing with Armstrong but also others, will try and gain an advantage in work output and recovery, as those are key to winning leTour. Among the strategies currently in vogue are doping to improve blood characteristics, testosterone enhancements to promote muscle growth and performance, and respiratory enhancements to improve oxygen intake.
I quit racing in the 70s due to my asthma. I would be fighting a constant battle with the testers if I ever got to the level of competition where that was an issue, and i had aspirations to do so. A middle-of-the-pack rider warned me I would be in trouble, and having been diagnosed as an adult would make it worse. today, up to 80% of the riders in UCI events have doctors' notes diagnosign them as asthmatics, and they skirt the dosage limits for Albuterol among other things with a keen eye. Pathetic to think that successful bicycle racers are predisposed to be asthmatics. This sort of manipulation also affects other sports, such as biathalon and other shooting events. Sad, but here we are. ps - I know know I would never have made it in racing, I was young and stupid, but to this day I love climbing a mountain on a bike. The mountain cannot win. It just cannot. If you don't have to rind another 40 miles after, it is just the will to do it.
Armstrong has been accused virtually all of his career of doping, and at this pojtn all we have are other guilty riders testifying that they saw him do so. Not a few of whom think they could be winners if not for Armstrong. And most of which are coerced into testimony.
Bicycling is rife with doping, but the USADA has lost all credibility with this pursuit of Armstrong. They can, with the standards they are usign now, disqualify any rider. They don't need results, only questionable accusations and secret results. A sad end to a brilliant career. You would not want your dog treated like this.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That reminds me of the time they kicked me out of church for political reasons. I knew that if I was given a fair hearing I'd be fine, but I also knew I would never get one.
You need to be clear on what he was charged with. The agency is saying he got transfusions of oxygen-doped blood before races. Since oxygen is not a "drug" there isn't a specific test that can say whether it's present in abnormally high levels. The ADA will tell you this frankly. But if that's what Armstrong did, it was real genius. Oxygen-enriched blood will supercharge any athlete. And oxygen is not a foreign substance.
1) Assume Lance cheated
- How wasn't he caught in the act for so long?
- How can all the technological innovation that went into his cycling be ignored? The wind-tunnel testing, the water-tank-in-frame, the unique bike designs, those all were serious efforts that AFAIK were unique, why spend that effort if you're already doping?
- How were others not able to cheat as well as he did?
- How was he not caught cheating in 2009 when he placed 3rd after not racing for 2 years? Wouldn't he be expected to be a total doper taking a standing that high after being retired for so long?
- How can the fact that he trained for only 1 race each year, the Tour de France, be ignored as explaining his stellar performance? Most other competition would do more racing per year, Lance focused like a laser beam on the Tour de France. How can this not help explain his insane performances?
- Lance packed his team with certifiably world-class climbers to set pace for him and run strategy on the large parts of big climbs. Other squads did not. Can't this help explain it?
2) Assume lance did not cheat
- Why are so many people out to discredit him? How big of an a-hole must Lance be to have this many people willing to take him down by lying?
- Why not fight these charges to the last?
- Why wasn't Lance more open in his Tours? The technology existed during his run to simply put Lance on camera 24-hours-a-day for the world to see he wasn't cheating. Why not do this, especially in 2009 when he took 3rd?
- How was Lance so good at simply laying the hammer down at the ends of big climbing stages? Is he just a freak of nature? Were his teammates really capable of simply relieving all the stress of keeping in the pack long enough for him to go balls out at the end?
- Why were later tests on his samples so dodgy? What was the motivation in even testing them?
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Perhaps Armstrong never did fail a 'drug test' but that does not address what he was doing. The USADA says he was doing blood doping which is basically injecting your own red blood cells back into your body to increase the oxygen carrying capacity of your blood. If you have skilled medical professionals helping you with this, as Armstrong allegedly did, it can be undetectable. The USADA also says Armstrong was using the drug EPO but avoided its detection by using smaller amounts administered intravenously, rather than ingested, so that it did not appear in urine samples. The USADA also says that Armstrong was using testosterone injections. Since testosterone is a naturally-occurring hormone, it is expected to be present in the body. The bottom line is that if you have a sleazy medical team that knows how to beat the tests helping you beat those tests, then to say 'I never failed a test' is...disingenous. Armstrong was busted cold because all of those people helping him were forced to turn against him...and he knew it. That's why he stopped fighting the USADA. If he had not, there would have been hearings and they would have been public and the testimony would have destroyed whatever tiny shred of credibility and respect that Armstrong has remaining to him. Finally, Armstrong DID fail a drug test. According to the USADA website: "Additionally, scientific data showed Mr. Armstrong’s use of blood manipulation including EPO or blood transfusions during Mr. Armstrong’s comeback to cycling in the 2009 Tour de France." By 2009, they had finally figured out what Armstrong was doing and what to test for and they had the deadwood on Armstrong. Armstrong was busted...cold.
Some people claim that all the top cyclists were doping, and if Lance won the Tour de France at all, he must have been doping as well.
That's possible, but if anyone could have won the tour without cheating, it was Lance Armstrong. He had all the legal advantages he could have: his team always had a bunch of the world's top cyclists, riding for him; his team always had enough money that they could just ride whatever training rides they thought would best help Lance win (many teams have to win races during the season to get the prize money; Lance's team had plenty of money and didn't need to do that). Manufacturers gave him their best new technology to use. Heck, he would go ride the toughest mountain climbs multiple times, trying different angles through the turns and seeing what numbers he got on his power meter. In short, he had every legal edge.
On the other hand, the Tour de France is possibly the toughest athletic competition in the world, without hyperbole. How many competitions take 21 days to complete, with the athletes working hard for hours and only two rest days? And all that in the July heat in France? My bike mechanic says that he believes all the top riders are cheating, just because with that level of effort, the cheating would give an edge that non-cheaters couldn't touch.
Also, I'm deeply suspicious of the anti-cheating lab work. When Floyd Landis was accused of doping with synthetic testosterone, all sorts of details came out: the lab knew which sample was his, the lab engaged in shoddy lab work and flawed chain-of-custody procedures, and (worst of all, in my opinion) the same lab tested both the "A" and "B" samples. (Never mind whether a French lab is "out to get" an American athlete... it would be highly embarrassing if the "B" result was negative after all the hoopla over the "A" result. I would have much rather seen that B sample sent to a different lab in Switzerland or something.)
I'm also troubled by the question of fairness. There is an old saying, "military justice bears the same relationship to justice that military music bears to music." The anti-doping system is stacked against the athlete; once an athlete is accused, bad things happen to the athlete, and there is no hope. Even in the case of Floyd Landis, where a bunch of people worked to help him and submitted all sorts of testimony that (IMHO) invalidated all the evidence against him, he was still found guilty and stripped of his Tour win. (Later he confessed, so maybe he was guilty after all... but I still am not convinced that the evidence used against him should have been used.)
The USADA proceedings are not legal proceedings in a courtroom environment, and the protections that the accused receive in a courtroom are not there. The head of USADA gets to act as prosecutor, judge, and gets to hand-pick the jury: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/sports/other-sports/usada-s-travis-tygart-plays-prosecutor-jury-and-judge-lance-armstrong-case
Now for one moment assume that Lance Armstrong is completely innocent. What possible recourse does he have within the USADA system? How can you prove a negative? He was the most-tested man in all of sports and he never failed a test... USADA doesn't care. The witnesses against him have something to gain from denouncing him... USADA doesn't care. How can he prove that he wasn't doping 17 years ago? He doesn't have a witness who was with him 24/7 and can say he never doped. He doesn't have lab results of his own, and if he did he wouldn't be allowed to present them. So if he participates, all he can do is stand there and say "it's not true".
Some people think that Lance Armstrong is implicitly admitting guilt by not contesting this ruling. But his public statement explicitly says he n
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It is a fact that people do lie. So in fact, if nothing else. The testimonies in question are dubious if not just plain out lie if they are not supported by any real data. In this case they do not seems to be here.
It is my opinion that Travis Tygart needs to be investigated for corruption, illegal activity as a CEO of USADA. He also should be suspended at this moment.
This has also happened before. Strangely enough. The circumstances are similar as they where in the case of Lance Armstrong. Wiki has an small article on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Landis
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence though, and barring said evidence, the simplest solution still tends to be more likely.
I mean, which is more likely to be possible?
A ten-plus year coverup effort assisted by who knows how many people, being able to fool labs in how many different places at how many different times, your life being put under the microscope for years on end
OR
Lance Armstrong is a very talented, able cyclist.
I read a story about the 1992 USA Olympic basketball Dream Team, and one bit I remember was none of them wanted to be the top scorer for a game, because that meant a mandatory drug test (they hated the inconvenience). The more you win, the tighter the scrutiny becomes, and to keep it up for so long in Armstrong's case, I cannot imagine it *not* being leaked earlier (considering it appears practically anyone who's ever been a part of USA cycling was in on it...they're *all* that altruistic?) and to bring it up now reeks of being a witch hunt and farming for publicity.
But everyone seems to accept the conspiracy, so why not?
It is not scientific because it is a lie. USADA refuses to release the actual test results, or substantiate their claim. And, their statement, if you parse it correctly, is fully consistent with a statement of opinion, and not scientific fact.
Lance Armstrong has never failed a drug test. That is a fact.
Had Armstrong contested the charges, USADA would have had to make the results and all of the other allegations against him public. Makes me wonder why he didn't - could it be that it would have placed all of the evidence in the public domain? The federal court of appeals even told him (his lawyers) that he would be have a case after the arbitration if it proved to be flawed, but they could not take action on the assumption that the arbitration process "would be" flawed. Given the fact that Armstrong is known to be such a fighter, it seems strange that he didn't fight through the USADA arbitration. Keep in mind that the World Anti-Doping Agency also agreed with the USADA's actions. And for those point to UCI, keep in mind that the UCI is as guilty as MLB in turning a blind eye to doping in the sport, until it became a complete mess and a whole generation of players is tainted. They both needed to act sooner and harder, instead they helped foster this culture of doping that is still proving hard to eradicate.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
You can absolutely detect blood transfusions. You can notice that the blood cells are different ages by more than the normal amount, and you can see that the density of them (per unit of blood) is way out of whack. If you inject soon enough that that doesn't work, you haven't done yourself any good anyway since you don't produce many new blood cells.
AFAIK you can't ingest EPO, it has to be injected. And either way, it'd come out the kidneys. There are tests for recombinant (non-natural) EPO, and he's passed them.
He's down a testicle, and he has approval for testosterone injections to bring him back to baseline.
This seems like a big hatchet-job against him. I don't care much one way or the other for him, but if they're going to negate years of wins and accomplishment because of the word of some people who've been bribed to testify, with reduced-length bans, then drug testing is a waste of time. Which is the point of the article.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
People lie. drug tests don't lie they can be fooled but then that would make the test useless and its only useful on honest people. That means DNA testing is totally useless too if someone lies they are an eyewitness. The french hate Lance schooled there best racers and got someone to lie since he keeps passing tests.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Which makes much of this "tired of fighting, not going to fight anymore" understandable.
Actually that is the one part that I cannot understand. His name is going to be dragged through the mud and, assuming he is innocent, his is going to be wrongfully accused and convicted in the court of public opinion. I can understand that he feels the USADA is being unjust and not giving him a fair "trial" but, if that is the case, sue them for defamation in court. Then he and they will both have to compete by the legal standard and not by their own made-up rules and those testifying will be doing so under threat of perjury not whatever penalty the USADA can deal out.
Its the same standard puritans have used for 400 years. Lance is a witch! We saw him do magic nd cast evil spells that made him fly on that abroomstick he calls a bicycle. Drug tests never found any results because he bewitched the testers with frog blood and bat urine.
People can lie, (hundreds of) tests cannot. It's really that simple.
First, most cyclists ride in several races during the year. By the time they get to the Tour de France, they've already ridden in the Giro and have had only a few weeks to rest ahead of the Tour. And, they may have ridden in some events in between.Lance rides the Tour de France. That's it. So he's fresh in a way the rest of the field isn't, and probably financially can't afford to be.
Plenty of riders do not ride the Giro and do ride the Tour. Lance is not unusual in riding only one or the other grand tours. In fact only a minority of riders ride both the Tour and Giro and most of the ones that do aren't racing to win but merely to train. Racing is an extremely effective form of training and most of the peleton races to get into shape.
Second, Lance Armstrong is a notorious trainer. You don't have to look far to find stories of how Lance pushed his teammates to train when they thought they didn't have to, or to find Lance training when others were taking time off for little things like Christmas morning.
Everybody in the pro peleton trains hard. Lance is nothing unusual in this regard. Lance is not such an unusual physical specimen by the standards of the pro peleton. Even if he could train slightly harder, many of the athletes he was beating were known dopers. If you seriously are going to argue that hard training beats a doping program at that level of the sport than you have no idea what you are talking about. I have competed at top tier college levels (my coach was a 2 time Olympic champion) which in my sport is only one step below the Olympics and the differences in physical ability at the very top are extremely minor. The winner of the Tour will win by a few minutes in a race that lasts for over 80 hours of riding. Doping easily can boost performance by enough to erase that gain. Literally the majority of the guys who stood on the podium with Lance were at some point busted for doping. (Ricard Virenque, Jan Ulrich, Ivan Basso, etc) All of these guys were extremely talented riders, every bit the match for Lance. Furthermore a huge percentage of Lance's own team has been busted for or admitted to doping while they were riding with or against him. It doesn't matter how hard a trainer you are when everyone else is doping.
Third, and maybe most importantly, Lance Armstrong is an arrogant asshole. No, really. He taunts other riders to try to keep up - and they can't. He rubs in every victory, calls out every weakness, and talks trash mercilessly. On top of all that, he's rich from endorsements and gets to be the face of Cycling, for the huge achievement of riding in just one damn race per year.
Nobody, including Lance, rides just one race per year. Armstrong rode in numerous races leading up to the Tour each year including the Amstel Gold, the Dauphine Libere, and many more. Lance was unusual in that he focused on just one race but he was hardly the only guy who did that either. The Tour is the biggest and most prestigious race in cycling. There are about a dozen guys every year for whom the Tour is primary focus of their season every year. Pro riders at that level are paid quite well and while Lance may have done exceptionally well, guys like Jan Ulrich were hardly hurting for cash.