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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?
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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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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.