Lance: The Official Lance Armstrong Thread

My understanding is that the Feds are involved because of potential illegal trafficking of controlled drugs and misuse of federal funds / fraud when the US Post Office was involved.

I think he is going down. The more I read, the more I think he is a class A d!ck.

 

Bought my first Sports Illustrated today. It's flying off the shelves, I got the last one at
my local newstand. It's sure to become a collector's item. It is by far the most damaging/detailed article I've seen on Lance.

Did you know that Lance was SI Sportsman of the Year in 2002? How times change!

 

here is a link to the article

http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ArmstrongThe-Case-Against-LASI-Jan-2011.pdf

 

Its unfortunate as always these days. Just when you think somebody is an awesome athlete..... I hate pro sports but I love them at the same time. I just feel bad for all athletes that have that level of pressure to perform. I tell ya, if Tinker turns out to be juiced, I'm gonna lose it.

 

Ahhh. That makes sense.

Also, I couldn't agree more about the dickishness, but I always figured that came with the territory.

 

Well it seems one of the allegations Sports Illustrated made is incorrect....

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/experts-call-armstrong-hemassist-connection-unlikely

Blood substitute ineffective, says new report
Following on the heels of the Sports Illustrated exposé which reported that US federal investigators had assembled evidence that Lance Armstrong had access to a blood substitute in clinical trials, a new report by the Associated Press claims the product, HemAssist, would have been ineffective as a performance enhancing drug.
SI reporters delved through hundreds of documents in an attempt to uncover the details of the investigation's evidence in the case, which is reportedly looking into claims made by Floyd Landis that there was organized doping within Armstrong's US Postal team during the 2002-2004 seasons.
The report states that the investigators have information that Armstrong gained access to HemAssist in the late 1990s. The drug, a "Diaspirin Cross-Linked Hemoglobin (DCLHb), was developed as an emergency blood substitute for trauma cases, and could, in theory, boost the blood's oxygen-carrying capabilities and provide a performance-enhancing benefit for aerobic sports.
While the SI report never alleges Armstrong actually used the drug, it quoted former Baxter researcher Robert Przybelski as saying a drug like HemAssist would be an ideal product to replace EPO - one that could have the same effect without the negative side-effects of blood thickening and strokes. He added that there may have been supplies of the drug remaining after the trial ended, but he was not aware of any missing quantities.
Speaking to the Associated Press today, Przybelski clarified that he didn't believe athletes ever used HemAssist.
"I could not imagine a cyclist using HemAssist or any HBOC day after day ... I would imagine that such a product would be used selectively for a most difficult mountain stage," he told AP. "But of course," he added, "I don't believe these products were ever used."
Armstrong's spokesman, Mark Fabiani, told Cyclingnews that because the product was in clinical trials and kept secure, and was discontinued by Baxter Healthcare, Inc, in late 1998 while still under trial, it was "impossible for Lance Armstrong to have obtained HemAssist during the period alleged by SI".
The AP story also cites several experts who agree that HemAssist was unlikely to have been responsible for Armstrong's winning performances.
Yorck Olaf Schumacher, a researcher at the Freiburg University in Germany who was part of the study of a drug similar to HemAssist called Hemopure, said that hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) showed no performance benefit. "There's nothing up to now that shows or proves that it improves performance," he told AP.
Michel Audran, a researcher at the University of Montpellier and one of the developers of the test to detect EPO, also participated in the Hemopure study and said that while it was "better than HemAssist and it didn't improve performance, so it would surprise me that he (Armstrong) took this for nothing."
Audran said that the experience of Spanish rider Jesus Manzano, who claims he was injected with an HBOC and then collapsed at the 2003 Tour de France, ended any experimentation with the drug in the professional peloton.
The World Anti-Doping Agency implemented a test for HBOCs in 2004, and there have never been any athletes who have been declared positive for its use.
The HemAssist allegation was only part of a 10-page report which collects a long list of anecdotes linking Armstrong to doping, all of which Fabiani called "the same tired old lies from the same old tired liars".

 

Lance brought this all on himself. What an ego! Every armchair cyclist in the world knew the wolves were going to start circling him with new blood lust!
As glad as I was that he returned, he was an idiot to do so!

 

I am intrigued by Jeff Novitzky. Rarely, I assume, are FDA agents described as "brilliant", "relentless", "phenomenon", "bloodhound", etc. He stands 6'6", shaved head, gaunt look... he is to federal agents what Lances equated to in the peloton. I can say with certainty that if I had done something wrong, I wouldn't want Novitzky trying to find me out. Yet another reason to love cycling... you couldn't make this stuff up!

 

His work in the Twilight Zone was great too!

As far as the article - meh.
It doesn't seem to be anything new. Conjecture.

 

I'm done with the willful ignorance/"everybody does it (so it's ok)" BS. The more you lift the underbelly of professional sports the more maddening it becomes. Landis has officially given up http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/news/story?id=6032431 and I don't blame him. After over a decade of "reform" since the Festina scandal, we don't seem to be much closer to seeing clean racing. At this point I'm more intersted in what is happeing at the back of the peloton rather than the unbelieveble attacks at the front.

I say thank you Novitzky! He seems serious enough for this immense task.

 

Everybody on the peleton was doped to the gills. If you take Lances victories away who are you going to give them to? Second place? Doped.Third place? Doped. Fourth place? Doped. You can't compete with that pack unless you are doping too...
I say drop the case. It's full of holes and based on nothing more than hear-say. Venturing down overgrown trails of evidence will lead nowhere and accomplish nothing. If you want to get serious about enforcing doping, good, do it now. Get serious about it with people who are racing now... If you go after Lance then you have to go after everyone who has ever one a classic... I won't name names but there are people who have won big races, dope-up and everyone knew it... On some level it's been accepted. Amphetamines have been in the TDF since the 1930's... gimme a break. If you bust Lance, you've got to go back a long, long way otherwise it's just a witch hunt.

 

It actually doesn't matter if it was effective or not. That's a misdirection from Lance's PR people.

 

Ugh, got my SI yesterday and started thumbing through this article and my heart quickly sank so I put it down until I could afford it my full attention. Not looking forward to it though. =(

 

My biggest question is: WHY NOW? If he was doping then the testing agency should be fired, period. If they can't catch the #1 cyclist in the act for 8 years then they suck and should be handed walking papers and return 100% of the salaries they garnered. Going after him now they all seem like a bunch of pu$$ies. What a load of crap. I don't care whether or not he did (ok, not true, I wish he was our superhero). Like a previous post said, they all do it, we know it, can't change it. Just watch the races and try to enjoy it. Then go out and ride your bike and feel the natural burn in your legs and lungs and how good that pain is. Then smile, attack another hill and celebrate life afterwards with a good meal and some exotic overpriced beer with another STR buddy. Life is still good for us!!!

 

The allegation is that they did catch him. Another allegation involves sizable donations to the UCI, which have the ability to make you positively negative.

 

Fixed it for ya...



- shud

 

Yah, I figured something like that. Money fixes everything. I didn't read the article and don't want to. Just depressing news once again. That's it, I'm going riding! And I hope they prosecute all bribe takers/makers and put THEM in a huge SI article.

 

The ends don't justify the means.
Just because everybody's doing it, doesn't make it right. These are just basic morals that we teach our kids. Are we supposed to abandon reason and embrace ignorance to enjoy sports?

Plus, the whole peloton is not doping. And yes, amphetimines have been around since the beginning. However, it wasn't until EPO came on the scene in the 1990's that real changes occured in racing. Bjarne Riis' Tour win in 1996 made me a cycling fan and inspired me to buy a road bike. Riis admitted 8yrs later that EPO enable him to go from so-so domestique to a Tour winner. This is maddness, we are no longer cheering for humans, but rather their access to the latest drugs!

I don't think it's so crazy to believe we can eventually have a paradigm shift in pro-cycling and we can actually start believing what we see. What we have now is a sport were you can't really get excited about a rider/team until the lab results are finished.

Since it seems unanimous that doping is everywhere in the top riders, then Lance is a grade-A wuss for not standing up and admitting he is like all the rest. Lance's grandstanding and massive ego will prove truly dispicable in the long run.

If cycling wasn't the most beautiful sport in the world, I'd have given up long ago.

BTW, Laurent Fignon's autobiography details the years leading up to the EPO years, it is a great read:

 

I think he was in Star Trek too...

 

I just saw this on Eben's blog. It is awesome

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