Lance Armstrong: Guilty until proven, um, guilty?

[draggar]

Seriously? How many drug tests has be passed? How much evidence is there of him doping?

Yet for many years accusation after accusation comes out making him defend himself and his honor.

Now he's giving up the fight (well, it seems like it's never ending anyway) so he can concentrate on his family.

Never convicted but now he's considered guilty and is banned from professional cycling and all of his Tour de France wins are stripped away.

All for what? No conviction, no evidence, no failed tests.

At least some of his sponsors are sticking by him.

And as for doping at the Tour:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_...2C_1998_-_2012

..a lot of them were sanctioned for doping WITHOUT tests showing that they doped.

[siead_lietrathua]

the guys that banned him can put his name on their lists.
everyone will still consider him a champ.
they only "won" because he gave up and got sick of their shit.

[mikoyan29]

It sounds like this is a little more complicated than all of that.

[Rapscallion]

A colleague of mine is a huge cycling fan - does a lot of amateur gear himself, whippet thing, thinks nothing of a forty-mile detour on his way to work on his bike sort of thing.

His view is that the sport is riddled with drug cheats and that the only way to avoid it is to use micro-doses instead of the usual doses, and that's not at a level that's detectable. He says it's the only way to stay at the top of that sport, which is why he's done that.

He reckons that's what's happened here - microdoses. I'm not convinced in either direction.

Rapscallion

[bara]

What I find interesting is the UCI, the body that actually has the authority to strip Armstrong of his titles, say they require the proof the USADA says they have but are unwilling to give.

[Rapscallion]

Given that sort of circumstance, I'd consider giving up in his position as well. He's made his money by now, or should have done. He should be able to retire, though with far fewer lucrative sponsorship deals available.

If they're coming out with bullshit then the only response is to get out from underneath it.

Rapscallion

[BlaqueKatt]

His view is that the sport is riddled with drug cheats and that the only way to avoid it is to use micro-doses instead of the usual doses, and that's not at a level that's detectable. He says it's the only way to stay at the top of that sport, which is why he's done that.

Problem is the most common form of "doping" in cycling, is storing and re infusing your own blood, not any kind of pharmaceutical assistance, and the type of pharmaceutical assistance are EPO, which increases the amount of red blood cells(usually used in cancer patients during/following chemotherapy, hmm wasn't Armstrong treated for cancer?), and testosterone(given to patients with testicular cancer), which causes the body to produce more natural EPO.

And what he's accused of is using either EPO or Testosterone, both of which he would have required due to his illness.

[lordlundar]

most common form of "doping" in cycling, is storing and re infusing your own blood, not any kind of pharmaceutical assistance, and the type of pharmaceutical assistance are EPO, which increases the amount of red blood cells(usually used in cancer patients during/following chemotherapy, hmm wasn't Armstrong treated for cancer?), and testosterone(given to patients with testicular cancer), which causes the body to produce more natural EPO.

Yup, The Tour de France officials were accusing him of doping because he was being treated for cancer. Robin Williams even put it in his Broadway performance.

[crashhelmet]

The common methods for doping are still traceable though. Like baseball players getting caught for elevated levels of testosterone.

But the thing that gets me here is everything is circumstantial evidence. It's all hearsay and his accusers are all people that have been caught doping themselves, and have plea bargained their way out of trouble by naming him as a doper. They have no actual evidence against him. No pictures, no needles, no drugs, nothing.

Armstrong won all of his Tour de France victories in the mountain stages. Going into them, he would conserve his energy and stay back in the pack. Then he pushed himself through the mountains to take the lead by huge margins where everyone else struggled. His lead would be enough to cushion his way through the rest of the race.

And those mountains? He rode them every day for 6 months out of the year. He lived in Texas half the year and France the other half, where he trained on the very course he'd be riding.

[Titi]

And Crash Helmet, he TOLD everyone about it the second or third time he won. Someone took his advice once and he struggled to win that one by mere seconds.

They brought it back up because he ended having a child naturally. They questioned if he faked his cancer to get around the rules. I wouldn't want to fight to prove if I had cancer or not when I went through it.