AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — With stunning swiftness, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said Thursday night it will strip Lance Armstrong of his unprecedented seven Tour de France titles after he dropped his fight against drug charges that threatened his legacy as one of the greatest cyclists of all time.
The allegations don’t surprise me. They are the same ones that have basically dogged Armstrong for at least a decade. The suddenness of the decision surprises me a bit, but what really, really does surprise me is Armstrong dropping his countersuit and basically “giving up” in the fight to protect his legacy.
His dauntless will and ruthless competitive spirit is the bedrock of his legendary status. He’s 40 years old. Not 80. Yeah it’s got to be a pain to deal with, but how hard can it be to fight this? If it’s like most legal challenges, Lance himself is not in court every day, his attorneys are. There is no indication the legal fight is draining his considerable financial resources, and there is little doubt that being stripped of his medals and tainted with the “official” brand of “cheater” will cost him more in the next decades than the legal bills would be.
Yet he throws in the towel.
I am sure that will disappoint his fans as much as any of the allegations ever did.
I have been honest here on this site that I have been concerned for years not so much by the “authorities” but by the open and public accusations made by his teammates about a history of calculated and deliberate doping being done by the entire team, a team which has had multiple members banned and stripped of titles due to proven doping. I have always struggled to remain totally convinced of Lance’s innocence when surrounded by so much cheating among his closest teammates. This sudden surrender, I’m afraid, does not help me maintain my optimism of Armstrong’s innocence.
A sad day for the sport.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackAs Armstrong said in his official statement, the only physical evidence in his case are the hundreds of clean blood and urine samples he submitted during his competition years. Do I have some doubts about Armstrong’s claims of innocence? Sure…some. But I have greater doubts about the motivations of those accusing him of doping and the USADA. I think there may be some truth to Armstrong’s assertion that what the USADA is doing is little more than a charade instigated by sore losers who failed the same tests Armstrong managed to pass with flying colors…over and over again, year after year…
Sorry. There’s too much evidence of his use of PED’s and transfusing blood to come to any other conclusion but that he, like most of the top cyclists, cheated. Here’s a good run-down of some of the evidence against him. http://www.bicycling.com/news/pro-cycling/you-jury
USADA says that it will br releasing its evidence against him even though Armstrong has decided not to continue fighting it.
I don’t know why he stopped fighting. It’s entirely possible that he is simply running out of money. It’s horridly expensive to pay lawyers (at this level) to fight these charges. I can no more blame him for giving up for that reason than I can Palin for resigning for the same reason.
But, he wasn’t fighting the “case” against him – he was fighting the “conviction” of him, i.e., he was seeking to either appeal it, overturn it, or have the jurisdiction over the case stripped from the USADA.
The lack of a “positive test” doesn’t mean that much to me (to the extent that there wasn’t – see link). We all know that there are ways (and drugs) which can mask, flush, or avoid detection. The other evidence is pretty dang strong.
Drax, according to the story I linked, Armstrong wasn’t even paying the majority of the legal bills for the fight, most of that was paid for by a cycling organization. Plus he has raised half a billion dollars for cancer and it is not uncommon for public figures to raise funds for legal cases and he could certainly do that if he wanted to.
I think he’s guilty as hell, but I also think you’d be hard pressed to find a single cyclist who’s made it to the level of Tour de France competition who is not doping.
The problem is not with Armstrong, but with the entire cycling culture and competition. They need to eliminate doping from the sport, then go after dopers… if everyone were pursued equally, not just the winners, there would hardly be anyone left in the race.
CC: Yeah. Maybe he just understands that he can’t win this fight, and “losing” this way makes him look better in his fans’ eyes. Dunno.
JSullins: I agree to an extent. However, it isn’t just the winners that they go after; it’s just that we hear about the winners because it’s news while a positive test for the 10th place guy simply isn’t.
ALL professional (and Olympic and World-Wide) sports are saturated with PED’s. The money is too big and the playing field, if you don’t use, is too uneven. I frankly don’t blame anyone for doing it – in any sport. If I had a stack of million dollar bills on the table in front of me, and all I had to do is take some drugs to put that pile into my pocket, I’d be hard pressed not to – especially if the consequence of NOT doing so might not only mean that I didn’t pocket that money – but actually could no longer even COMPETE in the sport which I’ve spent my life loving and playing.
But, they have to do what they can, with limited resources, to clean up each of the sports and those who do choose to use, if caught, need to own up to it and take their punishment.
I think at the age of 12 potential athletes should be kept in sealed mayonnaise jars and fed pure water and a protien/carbohydrate/vitamin sludge that satisfies their dietary needs and only let them out to train and compete, both under heavy supervision.
In related news: http://nymag.com/daily/sports/2012/08/roger-clemens-signs-with-minor-league-team.html
Now, how cool is that? The Skeeters!
I have ZERO understanding of the cycling culcha’, so I can’t even begin to address JSullins…nor anything else pertinent to the discussion.
But, it puzzles me as an outsider. How does a guy go through all of those years of drug tests, and not throw a positive…yet, he’s now certainly a doper? (Dadman did the heavy lifting on that).
I was talking about this with my beloved wife this morning, and she’s pretty smart about almost everything (except for her choice of a mate). She said that it sounded like pretty much like what Dadman said to her.
Who knows?
BTW…Lance is a regular around Shreveport. John Cobb (of the famous Bossier City Joe Cobb Bar-B-Q family) built Lance’s bicycles for years over in Shreve Island. Maybe he still does…not sure.
The whole thing stinks to high Heaven to me.
And, as a last note…I looked through ALL of my blog reads, looking for a post on this subject. I knew instinctively that I would find that Cosmic had brought it up.
Instinctively.
Not ONE other did.
Cosmic, you are the “go-to-guy” on athletes, and steroid pills!
I read through the evidence and I’m not convinced. Neither has anyone else until the USADA entered the picture. Explain to me how Armstrong passed every test he was subjected to FOR YEARS while his doping conspirators, and now accusers, got nailed. Armstrong is either serially lucky or he’s clean.
Yeah, I don’t get it, Dadman.
Dadman: First, it’s not at all clear that he DID “test clean” every time. (Again, see link. He tested positive on the first test but not positive on the second on one occasion. On another, it’s alleged that he bribed an official – It’s unquestioned that his foundation gave the official’s organization over a hundred thousand dollars – just no certainty as to WHY.)
Second, We know that athletes test all the time for years while churning out negative results. (And, understand that “negative results” in many cases is simply a result in which the athlete has merely three times the normal level of testosterone rather than four times. (Some of the tests simply test for levels of testosterone and, so long as your level remains under the threshhold – at the time of the test – then you’re “clean” even though your levels are 399% of “normal” levels.) Perhaps it’s just as simple as “Lance didn’t dope AS MUCH as some others.
Third: Lance is rich. RICH. He can afford better “trainers,” better drugs than could just about anyone else. He could afford to transfuse more often, perhaps.
Fourth: His teammates DID escape notice for YEARS before getting caught, and some would say that many of his former teammates STILL haven’t been caught even though they used as well.
Look. I don’t care if anyone wants to believe that he was “clean.” Or, if they choose to believe that all of these eye-witnesses to his use of PED’s and transfusions are all lying (due to – what – jealousy? hatred?) on Lance. All of them. And there’s a BUNCH of them.
I don’t believe he was anywhere NEAR “clean.” Nor do I believe that all these people have lied on him (subjecting themselves to charges of perjury – in exchange for what?).
But, ask yourself why did he give up the fight now? (Armstrong has said that he has enough money for him, his children, and his children’s children. As CC noted, the legal fees are mostly being paid by others.) Was it because in the “arbitration” the USADA would bring our all its evidence, including the sworn testimony of witness after witness after witness for his fans (and donors) to listen to without any real chance of altering the result?
But, if you’re innocent and it doesn’t cost you anything, why give up the fight?
Believe as you will – costs me nothing. I just can’t find the blinders necessary to completely ignore all the eye-witness testimony.
I am cursed or blessed with this ridiculous cognitive-dissonance inducing compulsion to try to understand the cogent points of each side of most issues before trying to reach any conclusion myself. I’m not perfect at it, but I really do my best to understand the points on both sides before reaching a conclusion.
The points on Armstrong’s side really boils down to exactly what Lance himself hammers every chance he gets. He has been tested and tested and tested and has never been proven to be a cheater. Cyclists are among the most thoroughly tested athletes on the planet. Armstrong has literally been tested thousands of times. Thus it is hard to believe that he has managed to dope and not be caught.
I get that. It’s a compelling argument.
The other side has compelling arguments too. Drax has done a good job of presenting them. In an attempt to boil them down to a few key points I’ll go with the following:
Testing for doping is not a binary situation. Most of the PEDs that are used are situations where existing chemicals are boosted, not a situation where wholly unnatural chemicals are introduced. Thus the testing is not whether or not a substance is present but instead whether a substance is above a specific threshold which is set by experts who believe that the threshold is in the “normal range”. That means an athlete whose “normal” amount of a substance is well below that threshold could boost their content to just below the threshold and not be caught. The question then is whether it is “cheating” to boost a substance but remain within the testing threshold. The rules of the sport say that it is, in fact, cheating to do so. However, taking just enough to remain below the threshold, while still cheating, will not result in a positive test.
Also one of the main techniques that is alleged to be used for cheating, blood transfusions, is extremely difficult to “test for” and leaves no trace for after-the-fact testing to prove a year or so later.
The charges against Armstrong really boil down to whether he cheated in ways that allowed him to pass the tests, which really means that he is accused simply of being the most proficient cheater.
After looking at this long and hard for years I am afraid that I am convinced that is exactly what Armstrong did, and what he coached his teammates to do. He very carefully chose PED techniques that left no trace (blood transfusion) and boosted substances in his own body so that they improved his performance, but did not trigger a failed test. In effect he calibrated his cheating very specifically to avoid being caught.
That is what I think the evidence says happened. And that is why so many of his peers and teammates routinely accuse him of cheating while Lance continues to say “I passed every test.”
The two are not mutually exclusive. It is an unfortunate fact that it is quite possible to BOTH routinely cheat AND pass every test. It is just very, very difficult to do so.
Where I work, we have a now-retired cyclist who competed at levels where some of these techniques come into play.
One thing he has related is that the wealthier teams and riders can afford to retain professional blood-donors specifically selected to be good matches and less detectable, whilst poorer riders must literally hire guys off the street.
He also told a few tales of guys who weren’t careful enough with this kind of thing, and did it too much / too often. It seems that in addition to failing tests, you can give yourself a stroke by thickening your blood too much (thicker blood means more oxygen, but too much means stroke risk).
Interesting insight into the ugly underbelly of the sport. It’s a shame it can’t be cleaned up. But, maybe a few high-profile examples like Lance are what are needed for the good of the sport? Maybe that’s why Lance quit — so that others would get the point?
One of the things that doping detector organizations are starting to do is to look at the long-term effects of the techniques that are hard to detect at the time they are employed. Those include health and blood chemistry effects which are detectable over the course of years of doping or blood transfusions.
The rumor that I am seeing on the sports boards is that it is those techniques that have been employed against Lance (and others) in cycling. I suppose we will see if the legal challenge that the USA Cycling body is preparing against the anti-doping body proceeds. The discovery process would end up with making those results evidence in court.
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