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.'"

Comments

drugs

[kiep]

are awesome

Re:drugs

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

My grandmother relied exclusively on anecdotal sources of evidence, and she lived to be 104!

Re:drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe whatever you want. Amphetamines are magic and I hope they don't work for you or anybody else I come in contact with. Believe for every brilliant person that is drug free, there's someone equally as brilliant that is hopped up on Adderal and he will stomp you in the ground intellectually. I didn't believe it either until I gave it a shot one day and suddenly figured out why some of the people around me seem to have the magical ability of putting their brains on overdrive auto-pilot from the moment they walk in the door until the moment they leave. Incidentally, those were also the people that had the best insights, the easiest time dealing with clients, and just plain did the best work. Now I'm one of those people and I like it.

Drug test the final standard?

[XanC]

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.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[idontgno]

So, for a sufficiently large value of "X", X liars can trump science?

I hope this standard never propagates into criminal law.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[Macthorpe]

No, that's not what's being said at all.

What the USADA is saying is that the kind of doping that Lance Armstrong was allegedly going through with (example, blood doping) is very hard to detect, and as such tests at the time and even now have problems picking it up. What they do have is more than a dozen people willing to testify that they saw him do it.

He already tried to block the decision via the US courts and failed. He still had plenty of options left to fight the charge, including actually turning up to discussions they invited him to and also involving independent bodies like the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but instead of that he's given up and said he can't be bothered. Whether that shows that he's just weary of being persecuted or he realised he can't win, or whether it's a tacit admission of guilt, will probably be debated for years to come.

As it is, he won't dispute the charge so he's guilty, and it's a sad ending regardless.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[cc1984_]

This page is very informative and, if it is to be believed, implies that there was some scientific basis for calling him out as a cheat

http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2009/michael-ashenden

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[cpu6502]

>>> If we had video of Armstrong shooting up some kind of drug, or some kind of personal statement to that effect on tape or on paper, I think we'd all agree that trumped the test, wouldn't we?

No.
He could be shooting a legal drug that's not banned. And a personal statement does not mean much. To add to my other post (below) I once had a security manager swear he saw me stealing. Turns-out he saw me handing brown packages to the postman. The security dope assumed I was stealing from the company (because that's what it looked like), but in reality the packages had been removed from my house, placed in my car, driven to work, and handed to the postman at 10am.

They had PS2 games inside them. Completely innocent of any crime but the manager's statement was "I saw him stealing packages from work". LIKEWISE just because a video or person claims to see Mr. Armstrong shooting-up does not prove a crime. We have no idea what he is shooting up. It could just be cancer medicine or insulin or sugar water (all legal per the rules).

Presume innocence until you can PROVE guilt. A video or statement does not prove anything.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's not what's being said at all.

What the USADA is saying is that the kind of doping that Lance Armstrong was allegedly going through with (example, blood doping) is very hard to detect, and as such tests at the time and even now have problems picking it up. What they do have is more than a dozen people willing to testify that they saw him do it.

He already tried to block the decision via the US courts and failed. He still had plenty of options left to fight the charge, including actually turning up to discussions they invited him to and also involving independent bodies like the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but instead of that he's given up and said he can't be bothered. Whether that shows that he's just weary of being persecuted or he realised he can't win, or whether it's a tacit admission of guilt, will probably be debated for years to come.

As it is, he won't dispute the charge so he's guilty, and it's a sad ending regardless.

The way I understand it, USADA can't strip Armstrong of anything.

UCI would have to do that, and UCI doesn't seem too inclined to do USADA's bidding here:

The sport's governing body said Friday it expects USADA to submit documents "to the parties concerned," as the case threatens to wipe a cycling icon almost out of the record books.

"The UCI recognizes that USADA is reported as saying that it will strip Mr. Armstrong of all results from 1998 onwards in addition to imposing a lifetime ban from participating in any sport which recognizes the World Anti-Doping Code," the Switzerland-based organization said in a statement.

"As USADA has claimed jurisdiction in the case the UCI expects that it will issue a reasoned decision" explaining the action taken, the UCI said, adding that legal procedures obliged USADA to fulfill this demand in cases "where no hearing occurs."

In other words, USADA has to put all the evidence it has out, and it has to be a "reasoned decision".

The question is, what is a "reasoned decision"? A group of cyclists who WERE caught doping testifying they saw Armstrong doping - but only making that testimony when threatened with a lifetime ban if they didn't?

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[DutchUncle]

Yes, he said liars, and I agree. Birthers wanted a long-form certificate, got one, and decided it must be fake. How many people must have colluded to cheat vs. how many people are claiming that they *think* something is wrong? Isaac Asimov has a character in "The Evitable Conflict" say, in response to accusations that a person is secretly a robot, "Instead of saying "I've never caught him eating or sleeping", you claim "He never eats! He never sleeps!"" (paraphrased).

Personally I've always figured that something about going through chemotherapy had given Armstrong an advantage - mental certainly, in that anything he went through afterwards couldn't be worse, but physically as well in that he had been stripped down to skin and bone and built himself back up very deliberately. And maybe something about the allowable medical treatment that he continued to need that was supposedly calculated to be fair was miscalculated. I'm suggesting that maybe he was skating just right up to the margins of legality, without quite stepping over it.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[ackthpt]

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 great irony here is Lance Armstrong donated funds for the most sophisticated drug testing machines which are used in labs for testing bicycle athletes as well as others. I've spent years reading the science of testing and the amatuer science dopers used to beat the system, many of the biggest cheats were caught with the doping substances and/or equipment. But some have been caught thanks to advances in scients which now establish baselines and profile racers, where certain blood blood hormones decrease over a 3 week race and a spike or leveling off at a higher than expected level will get a rider pulled. Microdosing may provide a tiny (some studies suggest negligible boost) assist, which are hard to measure, particularly if a the substance is consumed during the event and no marker remains at the end.

Taking the personalities out of it .. Lance was either astoundingly good at managing it or he didn't dope. Putting the personalities into it, you have to ask, what Lance does - what's in it for these people to testify against him, other than being rewarded with reduced or suspended bans? USADA clearly muddied the water and it probably wouldn't hold up in a court of law with out solid evidence.

I'm of the opinion he's innocent until actually proven guilty, not just on the word of a lot of people who have various reasons to disparage him (word from inside his own teams is he's demanding and a tough gut to get along with.)

I wouldn't take anything Landis says as fact, after his attempt to blackmail Greg Lemond (by telling what he knew of what Greg suffered as a child.) He's a pretty low creature. The rest I can't really say one way or the other, though Hincapie I might find most believable.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[Em Adespoton]

Anyone else ever been in a situation where you knew you were right, had the evidence mostly on your side, and give up?

Yup. I've been in that situation many times myself, as have most other married men.

There's more to winning than being right and being able to prove it. You still have to live with everyone else afterwards.

In this case, Lance decided that dragging this fight on wasn't worth it for him going forward -- that could be because he was guilty, it could be because he'd rather do something else with his life and the stigma of doping doesn't weigh as heavily on his life as having to constantly fight these people and be in the negative limelight. Or, more likely, he was doping with something that isn't yet illegal, but would be as soon as they found out what he was doing. Under this argument, there are probably lots of others using similar techniques who are still considered "clean", and he'd be taking one for the team.

But any of these arguments are possible. Condemning him because he doesn't behave the same way as you is a slippery slope to fascism.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[NatasRevol]

Very good call.

Pertinent quote.

I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one. That USADA ignores this fundamental distinction and charges me instead of the admitted dopers says far more about USADA, its lack of fairness and this vendetta than it does about my guilt or innocence.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[firewrought]

Whether that shows that he's just weary of being persecuted or he realised he can't win, or whether it's a tacit admission of guilt, will probably be debated for years to come.

Or maybe going what he went through to fight cancer has made him realize that life is too short to worry about the USADA's shit.

Or maybe we should view Lance as an "heroic cheat" who overcame cancer, built his body/team into a better cheating machine than all the other cheaters in the Tour, beat them "fairly" in this larger pharma/athletics game, and donated tons of money and time to cancer research to benefit all humankind.

Maybe USADA/WADA are an obsolete organization that--while started with noble intentions--are now just trying to whitewash a field that has moved onto a place that the world isn't quite ready to accept yet.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[Chas]

Lance won and kept winning even against younger, superior talent. Something isn't right there.

Ah. Bullshit ageism rears its ugly head.

Younger means fuck-all.

And if they didn't win (and he wasn't doping) they were NOT "superior".

You have a guy who's been a professional athlete all his life. Isn't it safe to assume that, though some quirky confluence of genetics and training regimen that he simply might be even fractionally better suited for a certain type of activity than the next random person in the sport? Even at an advanced age, meaning he had more experience in some of these races and was, thus, more familiar with the courses, granting him an edge?

At his age, response time, peripheral vision and quickness just arent what they were 15-20 years ago.

That'd probably mean something...for a boxer...or an MMA fighter, etc. Lance was a CYCLIST.

Response time isn't the biggest determinant here.
Flat out quickness isn't either.

Staying power and control over one's cycle and body are. And even someone his age, who's been training most of his adult life, should have that in spades.

Also, his age isn't so advanced that reduction in peripheral vision should be a problem. He's only about to turn 41.

Plus when you throw in the towel, it means you don't care or the allegations are correct. I doubt that he doesn't care.

Thing is. You take enough ass-chewing, sooner or later, all they're getting is scar tissue. Which is damn low on nerve endings. He's been fighting allegations for what? 17 YEARS? Is he supposed to just go on and on and on with this until he falls over dead in an arbitration room and the other side declares victory?

Sorry, but there are more important things in life than wasting it trying to shut up a bunch of abusive, power-hungry jackasses who just won't leave you alone no matter how hard you try to make them do so. Lance pretty much knows this, and he's reached the point where he either has to commit the rest of his life to facing down these assholes on a daily basis or he can just walk away and live his life.

Anyone else ever been in a situation where you knew you were right, had the evidence mostly on your side, and give up? Yeah, me neither.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[msauve]

Well, then. This unequivocal statement wasn't particularly hard to find. Satisfied?

I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.

- Lance Armstrong, June 13, 2012

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[Thomas Miconi]

What are the 3 common points between Jan Ullrich, David Millar, Bjarne Riis and Richard Virenque?

- All of them wore the Tour de France yellow jersey at some point (Riis and Ullrich won the tour outright, Virenque won the mountains classification several times).

- All of them eventually admitted to doping.

- None of them were ever caught by the so-called "drug tests". They were found out through other evidence (drug transport interception, raid on clinic, etc.)

The simple fact is that the drug tests in the 90s were a joke. They got a bit better in the 2000s, and that's how many of the later crop of dopers were caught (Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, etc.) They're still nowhere near 100%. Extraneous evidence is still a major factor in catching dopers.

Is Lance Armstrong one of the greatest cyclists of all times ? Yes he is - he won 7 Tours while all his competitors were loaded with drugs too!

Did he do it without doping? If you believe that, either you don't follow cycling much or you're 12.

Re:Drug test the final standard?

[RazorSharp]

The problem, as I understand it, is that the witnesses had compelling reasons to make their testimonies whether they were true or not. They themselves had been caught through the drug tests and were offered leniency for testifying against Armstrong.

Faced with threats of perjury, former teammates caved. Tyler Hamilton (who had passed many doping tests before failing one at the end of his career), Floyd Landis and others reportedly testified. They admitted they’d been doping all along. The U.S. attorney ultimately declined to press charges, but USADA took the evidence and issued its own charges. Because the standard in these cases is merely “comfortable satisfaction,” not “beyond reasonable doubt,” there was no reasonable doubt that Armstrong was doomed.

http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/08/lance-armstrong-doping-allegations/

To me, it doesn't matter if they're telling the truth or not. The fact that the investigative process can compel them to lie makes their testimony worthless. A human witness is hardly a reliable thing. Neither are drug tests, but at least they're objective (whether there's a false positive/negative or not). The method of this investigation is all too similar to McCarthy's witch hunt. I'm not saying Armstrong is innocent, but I think he's owed the assumption until there's concrete evidence. I wouldn't call his accusers liars, but I do recognize their obvious conflict of interests.

As a sports fan, it saddens me to say this, but advancements in medical science may ruin sports. It's getting harder and harder to figure out where to draw the line between what type of physical enhancements are legitimate and which one's aren't. Which ones should be and shouldn't be. This is probably why I like collegiate sports so much better than professional ones. With college teams, one gets the sense that they're watching actual people.

Lies

[amiga3D]

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?

Time for a car anology

[avandesande]

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.

Re:If we're not for science, what are we for.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about asking the doctor he paid over $400,000 to what he did to earn that payment? The doctor is synonymous with doping and blood transfusions to hide cheats, mainly from the old eastern bloc.

When 9 (or more) of Armstrong's team and support staff turn against him giving evidence, there's clearly something to what's going on.

All the evidence is against him. 9 people have given testimony against him. He has a very costly arrangement with the world's most renowned doping doctor cheat. Armstrong isn't fighting this, he's given up knowing he's finally be trapped in a web of evidence.

Re:If we're not for science, what are we for.

[An Ominous Coward]

That doesn't appear to be true. While the first test result for any given sample has come back clean, that potentially just means that he's been ahead of the curve on using doping methods that avoid detection. The USADA reports indicate that some of the re-tests on samples have come back as indicating doping. We'll probably find out more as they take their case to the ICU.

Of course this whole thing from cycling to baseball to the Olympics is ridiculous. With shades of Futurama, it'll be a relief when we can put all these stories behind us after performance enhancing drugs in all sports are mandatory.

Re:Overlooking something important...

[Vegan Cyclist]

Not quite. WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) is standing behind USADA's decision, and they do have much more authority. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) is one such body that will be influenced, and any body under the IOC will likely have to play along - and thus i believe the UCI (International Cycling Union).

Also, USADA's case *is* being continued - next up is Lance's long-time team manager Johan Bruyneel, who will likely make a similar decision (although will be surprising to see him leave the cycling world.) Then, i believe the USADA will provide the IOC and UCI with their findings, and THEN we'll see Lance's titles stripped from him. Given that these bodies all have to play nice, i would be very surprised if the UCI challenged the findings. Yes, it will implicate themselves, but they're pretty much damned either way as i see it..if their real goal is to eliminate doping from cycling, then they'll have to shape up. I think the evidence is pretty strong that there has been corruption, and they won't be able to hide it much longer...

That's my two cents. =)