Lance Armstrong

[OneMoSalah 8,615]

Alright, here I am. First post after my 1 week sojourn in the TalkChelsea State Correctional Facility. For anyone who's interested, I was careful to never drop the soap

I would like to remind you all to keep an open mind when you read the below paragraphs. Bear in mind the old adage, 'There are none as blind as those who do not see'. I have no personal agenda here. I'm not out to discredit Wonder Lance for my own personal gain. I've wasted 45 minutes of my life writing this up with nothing personal to gain whatsoever, so don't accuse me of being a witch hunter. To spare you from reading the 1300 word essay, inside the ‘spoiler’, I will post quick list of evidence against him after this:

We begin with a quick history lesson. In 1998, the cycling team Festina was caught by French border police in the possession of PED's and materials used to administrate them, during the 1998 Tour de France. They were all booted off the event, the team was disbanded, and France passed legislation that made it illegal on the pain of imprisonment, for any athlete or sports doctor/what have you to possess performance enhancing drugs or materials that can be used to design or deliver PED's into an athlete's system. At the start of the 1999 Tour de France, there was a feel good factor about the professional peloton- riders had had enough with the doping, and with the new legislation, those that were less morally scrupulous were too afraid to chance it. All but one man and the members of his team, Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service cycling team. He proceeded to absolutely bollock that Tour- winning 4 stages and beating his closest rival by a whopping 7 minutes. It was obvious to the rest of the riders that he was on dope- and even more obvious that the authorities had decided to turn a blind eye to it, regardless of the outcome of the Festina affair that I mentioned earlier. This plunged the sport into a decade long doping arms race. 1999, the year that started with such promise, of a new, dope free era in cycling, instead marked a watershed moment- the start of the most doped up generation in the history of the sport. The ramifications of the Lance era are still felt today. Corrupt governing bodies. Riders still doping. A code of silence amongst riders to not snitch a rival who may be doping. He ended the careers of several whistle-blowers/anti dopers within the pro peloton, hounding 2 young, promising riders out of the sport because they spoke out against doping. I realise that I'm pretty much the only hardcore cycling fan on these forums, so most of this will be new and hard to believe for most of you but as a whole- cycling fans agree this man is not just one bad egg, the catalogue of his crimes make him a dozen bad eggs and more. His entire empire was built almost exactly like a Mafia empire- it was built on a web of drugs, lies, secret payoffs, intimidation, corruption and all sorts of other nefarious activities.

First and foremost, Lance never took 500 tests. He took 92 tests in his Tour de France career. He took 236 tests overall (he skipped one, so 237 times is the possible maximum). Lance Armstrong tested positive 13 times in total, for the following drugs:

EPO- 6 times

Glucosteroids- Once

Corticosteroids- Twice

Epitestosterone- 3 times

Synthetic testosterone- Once

He tested positive 6 times in 1999, and twice in 2001 and 2002 respectively. 6 times over a 3 week period. Most dopers today, such as Contador, are only ever busted once in their career and that's enough for a 2 year ban, if they are ever caught subsequently it’s a life ban. This is no witch hunt, this man is pure unadulterated scum, and not just because he had a penchant for giving himself an extra 2 litres of blood than humanly possible. As I said earlier, his entire empire was built almost exactly like a Mafia empire- it was built on a web of drugs, lies, secret payoffs, intimidation, corruption and all sorts of other nefarious activities.

Lance was responsible for all of that. He intimidated and bullied potential whistle-blowers with legal threats- that intimidation is still felt today, which is why you still have pro riders with nothing to say on the matter or saying things in support of convicted dopers. I can't tell you how much I admire dopers like Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton- who testified against Armstrong. Even though they only did it after they got caught, they took a huge risk by agreeing to testify. He intimidated riders on his team who were morally opposed to taking drugs- and forced them to ride for him, doped. He took out a super-injunction to stop journalists from publishing facts. He bribed the governing body of cycling, Union Cyclist International, to quash positive reports from 1999. Shockingly he went as far as sending anti-doping officials warnings that other riders were geared up. Pointing the finger at everyone but himself. Most galling of all, he knew what he was doing was wrong- but he still built up a cult of personality focused on himself. Lance 'Livestrong' Armstrong, the great cancer survivor, the great American, the greatest athlete of all time across any sport. Other dopers- as Danelka mentioned- did none of that. They knew what they were doing was wrong and they had the shame to not carry on like that. Danelka also mentioned that the Tour was 'full of dopers'- again, I must stress that we were on the verge of a breakthrough following the Festina affair. The likes of Ullrich and Kloden, Lance's rivals in the early years of his dominance, were off the dope in 1999 because they were afraid. His later rivals- Basso, Vinokourov, and Contador- would not have been doping if they didn't feel they had to in order to stand a chance. And guess what? Contador aside, he blew them all away. A man recovering from testicular cancer winning 7 Tour's on the trot and coming third in his comeback to the sport 4 years later, beating known dopers by margins of 6 to 7 minutes (an absolutely enormous gap in modern pro cycling- akin to winning a league in football by 25 points, and doing it 7 years on the trot) and winning 3-4 stages to boot every single time; hardly believable that he did it without pharmacological assistance. Assistance isn't enough to describe just what a huge impact drugs had on him- he was an average cyclist until 1998. Never looked like he could win any race that went for a week, let alone the most hotly contested 3 week race of them all. Can you imagine QPR rising out of the shit to suddenly win 7 PL's in a row and wrapping them up by Christmas?

You must also understand how loathed he is for the way he killed the Tour and cycling in general over 1999-2005. There was so little excitement. His super-doped team controlled the race from wire to wire. Other riders could not get close. It was a no contest, 7 years in a row. He took a once great race- renowned for its attacking nature, renowned for the incredible levels of competitiveness it produced, for the joy it gave millions around the world- and turned it into a sickening, clinical in more ways than one, single horse race that was over before it even started. He created a cancer in the sport that is still growing.

Just look at how well he has conned the world with his witch hunt shit. It's not a witch hunt. Ask yourself, in a world where sporting bodies are fixated on maximising profits, why would they bump off their most marketable name? Would FIFA have dumped Messi? The ITF with Nadal? No, they would not- it would cause them to lose a huge amount of sponsorship money and public interest. Why would cycling, a niche sport, therefore even more dependent on star power than other sports to raise awareness and sponsorship, get rid of its biggest star? There is no witch hunt. People say its jealous rivals that are out to get him discredited. That could not be further from the truth. The people who have testified against him have all been on his team. Floyd Landis rode with Lance, as did Tyler Hamilton. Emma O'Reilly was the team masseuse. Dr. Michele Ferrari and Dr. Luis del Moral were the doctors that administered him with drugs and they were part of the same team. No rider from another team- no individual with anything personal to gain- has testified against him.

It is a joyous day for justice. It is a joyous day for cycling. It is a joyous day for all sport. The greatest fraud, the greatest crime, the greatest ever lie told in sport, has finally ended. I can't tell you how delighted I am.

And now to answer to some of the questions raised, to save you from reading through that essay up there:

@BluesChick: Yes, there is a statute of limitations, 8 years. But because it was systematic and the process was clearly started way before 2004, that has been rendered void and everything up until 1998 is fair game.

@Danelka: Yes and no. No, people were not doping to absurd levels during the early part of 1999 when Lance triggered cycling's second drug war. Yes, no one should be awarded the titles over those years- records should just be annulled totally. Also the 'everyone doped' argument is just so fundamentally wrong. Yes, his competitors were not riding au naturale- but there's no restriction to how much dope you can take. Lance pushed himself further down the line of the body's ability to absorb PEDs than anybody else. Also not all dopers are the same. At one end of the scale you have Armstrong with multi million dollar facilities and top notch doctors and access to the highest quality PEDs; at the other, you have Riccardo Riccò performing his own blood transfusions in a hotel room.

@milan.cech: I've mostly covered that above, but once again to repeat: He failed 13 tests over a 3 year period- and that's all that's known. Wait for the USADA to release all of their evidence, I can guarantee he would have failed about 25 tests in his career. Furthermore, sport in general, especially cycling, is full of people who doped for years and never got caught with a positive test. Lance's own contemporaries in the sport, such as Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Alexandre Vinokourov, Alejandro Valverde, George Hincapie- all serve as examples. Moving beyond the world of cycling you have the likes of Marion Jones, Dwayne Chambers, Justin Gatlin, etc.

@Justin_3d: Thank you for your support. I was not the instigator. Kojo had been undermining my posts for quite a while before I snapped at him, and even in that thread, he attacked me first. I've put him on my ignore list now, I cannot deal with people like that.

@: Lol you should be able to get through this. It isn't science based like my arguments on Wiggins/Froome/Team Sky doping, I'm not using any power data here to support my argument, just what is known commonly. We still haven't seen the full extent of the mountains of evidence against him- the USADA should be releasing that in the near future, and also, Armstrong's former teammate and convicted doper/whistle-blower, Tyler Hamilton, is going to be realising his autobiography soon and given that he denounced Lance in court and publicly, we should see some more juicy stuff in there.

Couldn't you just said he cheated.... instead of all of that

[capriccioso 2,545]

If anyone still (or ever) cares, new evidence has come to light:

He tested positive for CERA, an advanced prototype of EPO for which there was no test for until 2007, in 2004 and 2005.

So that's 99-02 and 04-05 where he has tested positive. 2003 is the only year where we still don't know for sure whether or not he tested positive.