Landis comes clean on PED use

lance tweet..

"Just spoke to the press here in Visalia. The transcription of my comments will be on www.teamradioshack.com soon. Thanks. "

 

This week's energy drink is next week's banned substance. I take SportLegs when racing. What if they were all of a sudden made an illegal substance? Maybe they should be? Maybe everything but real food (as defined in the food pyramid, below) and water should be banned?



I think it's interesting that Landis experimented with insulin. Is insulin illegal? If so, then ban all of Team Type 1, even the non-diabetics (they undoubtedly have 'seen' their teammates jukin' the 'lin -- I just made that phrase up!).

I live in a glass house.

- shud

 

I'm more surprise that this is even getting any traction by y'all. The only reputation that exists for these guys when it comes to doping is DISrepute.

Landis doped?

NOOOO!!!!

And other riders in the TdF did too?

SHOCKING!!!!!





What's next...you're going to tell me Liberace was gay?

 

As someone that has ridden with Floyd a few times I can honestly say that he isn't the devil people are making him out to be. Think about it from his perspective, you win the tour over all of the other riders who you know are using the same stuff and get your title stripped. Was he doping? Yes, but would it have struck him as fair to be the only one singled out after that incredible ride to get back in the tour? He comes back and fights the charges not because he is a bastard liar, but because it is what he thinks is fair. He loses one of the most important people in his life to suicide and then his marriage as well. He spends all of his money and ends up broke while the team managers just roll on with new dopers. To top it all off he is effectively barred from making a living because of the things said against key people in cycling and now he is the worst guy ever for feeling a little vindictive. Something has to change in the sport of cycling so that it isn't the individual riders always paying the price for the culture promoted with a wink by the teams and a nod by the sponsors.

 

He cheated, got caught and then insulted all of us by lying.
Even wrote a book about it I think.

I couldn't care less about anything that he says or does.

 

No one likes a snitch...

 

glattime has it right. Floyd was singled out by USAcycling to take the fall as the French were getting really close the the USAcycling golden child Lance Armstrong. Floyd took the "I'm innocent" route because he was advised to by that same Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel, with the gurantee they would take care of him later. There is so much that's going to come out of this all the Floyd haters are going to sing a different tune when they see how he was minipulated and screwed over by people who are still benefiting from their doping histories while he struggles to live.

 

I am not casting any stone here, but I am glad he came clean! There are others up there still insulting us...that need to come clean!

 

The real casualty here is not Floyd or Lance oe anyone else. The real casualty is cycling in the US.

To make these accusations in the middle of the ToC could practically kill the race. To accuse David Z, Levi and Lance, at a time when David Z is leading the GC really slaps the Toc right in the face. Any current or future sponsors of this or other races in the US are now going to think twice before they commit to signing off the millions needed for a race of this magnitude. First the piss poor coverage of the race on VS. Now this. Is anyone actually watching or caring about the race anymore?

The fact is that even though we have rejects like Landis, the US has really great cyclists, most of whom are most likely not dopers.

Whether you believe lance is a doper or not (I personally believe he is not) Lance's comments on velonews about the timing of this release and the alleged extortion to get Landis' team in the ToC seem to be spot on from a timing perspective. Shame Shame Landis.... You're taking alot of innocents with you.....

 

It's all about the mighty dollar be it an athlete or a broker Goldman. And just as in banking or sports or government, if the reward is big enough than there will always be someone willing to take the chance of being caught to make the big pay day.

I'm just pissed now that I wasted my time reading his book.#-o

 

I was thinking the same thing. At least I borrowed it, instead of paying for it.

 

I bought a copy of that book at the 99 Cent Store, across the street from Riverside USA Cyclery!
Never finished reading it...

 

Well...(opening can of worms)...maybe it should.

As far as I'm concerned, if any of these individuals racing in the ToC is doping, they should not be in the race. Period. If they all are, then kill the race. Exclude the Lances', the Levis', anyone caught doping - no special "celebrity" passes.

Want to make the argument that doping is necessary to be competitive? That the race needs to go on, and that these issues should be deal with after the race? Think long and hard about that.

If doping as as pervasive as nearly every single case seems to make it out to be, then I can't see any other way to root it out than effectively kill the sport and start over. It's purely the fault of those that have done this over the course of the years that it has come to this. Let it die, and regrow it from its amateur roots. Take it off tv, get rid of the huge sponsorships, get it back to those that race for the sport, not the spectacle. Make doping testing random and mandatory, the enforcement harsh, and the punishment enough of a deterrent to clean the sport up.

Is Floyd broke, broken, remorseful? Tough shit. He cheated. Pure and simple, he cheated. He knew the consequences going in. Same goes for any other of these riders. The choice ultimately is theirs, and the consequences are pretty damn well laid out for them.

 

Yes! I've got the next 3days all planned out, we are very lucky to have this world class cycling event here in SoCal! Each year has been awesome.

However, I don't know which is worse Versus or Landis, I'm leaning towards Versus...Tuesday's afternoon cuttoff was outrageous...

Floyd is the 2006 Tour de France champion, just like Lance is the 99-2005 champion.

 

I have to say that I respect him a great deal more for coming clean during a time where so many would accuse him of merely fighting for the spotlight. The fact of the matter is that he did dope, as many others did, and for whatever reason, he is coming clean about it--what is the problem? That you bought the silly innocence defense to start with and feel used for doing so? That you don't want to believe the heroes you put up on a pedestal are pulling the wool over your eyes in the same way?

I think it's a travesty that every athlete who finally comes clean about doping is then villainized about it while those using are continued to be treated as heroes.

Whether or not I believe in Lance, I can tell you that I wholly believe that Hincapie was involved in the past. If you look at Hincapie's performance while he was working with Lance, prior to his accident, he was a great deal "stronger" than when he came back, after working with a coach known to dissuade athletes from doping. Now, while still strong, he is usually not in the top 1% on the climbs. Because of this, I lean a bit more towards believing the stories of Landis.

As for doping procedures, I only know what I have done. When you are picked to be tested, you have a chaperone who monitors you until you get to the doping tent. Once in the doping tent, you are with an UCI official and a volunteer who is a medical doctor or nurse. That medical person will walk with you into the bathroom, where they watch you wash your hands, rinse thoroughly, dry them, then actually watch you urinate into the cup--watching the urine from the urethra into the cup. When you urinate into the cup, you must have all clothing pulled away for full visualization of that void. Once complete, you go out to the UCI official, set the cup onto the table in full view of you and the official, review any medications that you are taking (that are then recorded onto the lab sheet), sign the paper that you agree with everything the UCI official documented. YOU then take the number sticker from the lab sheet and place it on the urine container, seal the container and place it in a box with the paperwork for transit to the lab. No one other than the athlete, is to touch the testing cup, from the time the athlete breaks the seal to pee into it, to the placement of the cup into the box. Obviously, the lab takes over after that. But, I've only worked in the doping tent once, I did not do any blood testing.

At one point in time, the in thing to do was to "wash" your hands, leaving a bit of soap on them. When you pee'd into the cup, you would let some of that urine stream across your soapy hands. Everything in the urine was then "clean" and tested as such. That is, until the UCI noticed that everything was a bit too clean. Now there are other tricks.

As for blood doping, think of this, when Tyler Hamilton tested with two types of blood in his blood test, as he claimed to have a conjoined twin who produced a second type of blood that tainted the test, one of his team mates tested positive for blood doping, with a second type of blood in his veins as well. Rumor is that the two mixed up their blood. Of course, Tyler only returned for a short bit of time after this suspension before he was found to have another positive test.

Testing for blood doping is difficult when riders use their own blood. You can test Hemoglobin/Hematocrit and look for elevated levels, but some people run high and dehydration can be a factor. Oh, then there is the fact that after several days of stress (like in the Tour), your H/H SHOULD drop, but how can you proove that someone is doping just because their H/H does not drop?

Want to know what meds are against UCI regulation? You have a long list to mull over. You need to be sure that you use the proper cold medicines, because pseudoephedrine is on that list (or it was last year), don't drink too much coffee (you are only allowed so much caffeine), and supplements are tricky, as there is a common additive that is also banned (it is a byproduct of steroids but also does something to assist in the production of vitamins).

As a side note, here is an article about the rider confirmed to be the first CONFIRMED clean rider to finish last year's Tour: http://www.theonion.com/articles/nondoping-cyclists-finish-tour-de-france,2268/ :lol::lol:

 

Lance Says....

Lance Armstrong spoke to the press prior to Thursday's Stage 5 at the Amgen Tour of California, responding to allegations by Floyd Landis against himself and other riders in the professional peloton. "Obviously everyone has questions about Floyd Landis and his allegations. I would say that I’m a little surprised, but I am not. In all honesty, this has been going on for a long time. The harassment and threats from Floyd started a few years ago and really, at that time, we largely ignored him. Johan can speak more to what Floyd exactly wanted from us and the team. A year ago, I told him, ‘listen, you do what you have to do.' We have nothing to say and nothing to hide."


"They started again with some consistency and with some energy about a month ago before this race when Floyd continued to email, text and harass myself, Johan, Dave Zabriskie, Levi (Leipheimer), Andrew Messick, the CEO of Amgen, right around the time that they were trying to get into this race. Floyd made pointed threats to Messick and to the leadership of Amgen that if he wasn’t let in the race he was going to say X, Y and Z about their product.


"I would remind everyone that this is a man that, first of all, from our perspective and from what’s gone on at US Postal and Discovery and all of those Tours, we have nothing to hide. We have nothing to run from and if anybody has any questions we would be more than happy to answer them.


"I would remind everyone that this is a man that has been under oath several times with a very different version. This is a man that wrote a book for profit that had a completely different version. This is somebody that took close to a million dollars from innocent people for his defense under a different premise and now when it’s all run out the story changes. So we are a little confused. Maybe just as confused as you guys.

"But with regard to the specific allegations and the specific claims, they are not even worth getting into. I’m not going to waste your time or my time. I think history speaks for itself here. We’ve all followed this case for the last four years. We’ve followed Floyd winning the Tour and we don’t know what he did or didn’t do when he was on that team. We can only speak about what he did when he was on our team. We followed the case, we followed all the drama with regard to the case and now we see something different. That is about it.


(Asked about allegations that the UCI was paid off in a bribe)" Absolutely not. No. That is the other thing, if you get into it. Obviously we’ve seen the email and that is not correct. But a lot of other things in the email, the timeline is off, if you go year by year."



"Ultimately all of the other emails that have been sent around will come out. The emails to myself will come out. All of the emails to Andrew Messick will come out, to John Burke from Trek. For someone that says he is here to clear his conscience, why are you sending emails to other people’s sponsors, other people’s partners, to the organizer of a race, to the sponsors of a race? That has nothing to do with your conscience. Eventually that will all come out. But, no, absolutely not."


(Asked why he pin-pointed he and Johan)" He didn’t. He pin-pointed a lot of people and I mean, let’s be honest here. Obviously my name will be at the top of the story and my name will be in the headline. But, it goes from myself to Johan, to Levi, to Zabriskie, to Andy Rihs, to Jim Ochowicz to Michael Barry, to Matthew White, to Steve Johnson, to Pat McQuaid. At the end of the day, he pointed the finger at everyone still involved in cycling, everyone that is still enjoying the sport, everyone that still believes in the sport and everyone that is still working in the sport was in the cross hairs.

"I’m standing here with you guys because I won the Tour de France seven times. But, you have to keep in mind that the yellow jersey of this race is also in the cross hairs and that is not by accident. Maybe that is a good strategy to get as much attention as possible but if I look at, I can use Allen Lim as an example, someone that I view that has the highest standards and the highest ethics of anybody in this sport, the fact that he is thrown in there speaks volumes to the credibility of this and I think that’s, if I walk away with one word to sum this all up - credibility. Floyd lost his credibility a long time ago."



(Asked to comment regarding the details of the emails) "I think if anyone browses the internet or the news groups of anyone’s Wikipedia page, that time line is easy to put together. I could have made it even juicier. Some of it is off, obviously the timing and the dates and the people are off again. If you saw the rest of the emails that we have it speaks volumes to his mental state, and, the time of the day that they were sent it. I don’t need to fill you guys in on people’s habits or lifestyles.

It started a couple of years ago and as texts and I wrote him back after a while. Johan can speak more about what he wanted from the team but after a few of them they got to be so annoying that I wrote him back and said, ‘Floyd leave me alone. Do what you have to do, I’m going to be fine, don’t worry about me but you have to stop texting me, annoying me, you have to stop harassing me.’"



(Regarding racing with him at an event in April)" I saw him every day at the Tour of the Gila. Not one word was said. It was ironic because not one word would be said to any of us during the race. We heard stories about him talking to himself. But we would get home and all of a sudden we would have these emails from him at night. Strange."



(Regarding the timing, to reveal this during the Amgen Tour of California)" I think the timing of the race is obvious. As I mentioned, he didn’t get in the race. To be honest, I was surprised that it didn’t come up in Sacramento. We were all fully expecting it to come out then. These emails have been out for quite some time. We were fully expecting this then."

(Asked if he will take legal action)" No, my days of legal action are over. Legal action takes time energy and a lot of money. I have sued a few people in my day and have been successful there and proved my innocence. But, I don’t need to do that anymore. My energy needs to be devoted to the team, to Livestrong, to my kids. I’m not going to waste time on that."

(Asked if he will cooperate with a Federal Prosecutor if asked to) "Absolutely."



(Regarding the affect on the Tour of California and the Tour de France)" It’s definitely news and juicy and salacious, but at the end of the day bike fans are going to see the people talked about here, myself, Levi, Zabriskie, George, Johan, they know the truth."



(Asked if this changes plans for the Tour de France )"Absolutely not. We all know that Floyd won’t be in France telling the story."



(Regarding if ASO reacts negatively to the team selection for the Tour de France)" At the end of the day why would they do that? We have a person who has been under oath several times with a completely different version, written a book with a completely different version, someone that took people’s money. He said he has no proof. It is his word verses ours. We like our word. We like where we stand. We like our credibility. I don’t think there is a lot of credibility on the other side so why would ASO think any differently. Keep in mind back in the day there was all this talk that Floyd said he had pictures of a refrigerated motorcycle. Where is that? It’s all a bunch of bullshit and never existed.

It is very sad. At one point or another, all of us implicated have cared about Floyd, that is one thing that we have shared in common. We might be on different teams, come in different backgrounds or be at different places in our lives but at some point or another we share this bond that we all gave him a ladder at some point in his life when he dug himself a hole. We gave him the ladder to dig out of the Mercury situation. Andy Rihs came along and gave him a ladder to dig out of that hole. People aren’t throwing him ladders anymore. I don’t want to make a personal attack on Floyd Landis. I don’t think he is a good guy or a bad guy, he certainly has some issues. You know that as well as I do. I’m not breaking any news here. Floyd is an interesting character. He’s volatile."



(Asked about allegations that Johan taught riders to dope) "Other than saying it is not true? We can only speak about what happened on our team. I can’t tell you what happened at Phonak and I can’t tell you how he won the 2006 Tour de France. The one thing that brought this about was him testing positive for the synthetic testosterone. He denies that still which is slightly odd. We categorically deny Johan teaching anybody, forget about Floyd teaching anybody to do that."



(Asked about the impact of this situation on US Cycling) "No doubt it is not a good story. This is a distraction. If you look at this race and the turn out I’d say things are strong. The sponsorship is strong and I feel that the teams here will be in the Tour this summer and I am optimistic that this will, but this is something that we have to deal with."

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/teamradioshack/news_lance-responds-landis-allegations/#ixzz0oWK0NV4V

 

My opinion is that anyone that is bitter and angry at the cyclists for doping should find another sport to enjoy!
History shows that they dope. Whether it's amphetamines or EPO or Pot Belge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_Belge)
It's there! Yes they are cheating. Accept it or go watch baseball, NFL or track which I'm sure are all much cleaner!
Personally, I am digging the ToC and the Giro. Great racing!
Are they doped? :?: I want them to put on a great show. That's all I want! I want to watch the peloton wind it's way up Mulholland Dr. to Kanan on Sunday and I want to run alongside yelling. It's a blast! I dig it.
I'll be wishing I was at the Tour too. :beer:

 

I jsut did a line of dried Acai berry. Tingled a bit but I know I'm going to take a good 30seconds from my Blackstar time now.
ps: Landis has ginger hair.......he's practically satan.

 

What an A hole

 

<1% of 1% of people on this planet think cycling is relevent (well, 100% of people on this forum think it's relevent, so this may not be a good audience)...but in a sport where drug testing is performed on every winner, a random pool of riders, and out of competition testing as well - it speaks volumes for the problems around doping, and the individuals (riders, doctors, team managers) who participate in the highest levels of the sport. Cycling doesn't hold a monopoly on this thinly disguised morale dilema...Nascar (what's that funny smell in your fuel, or isn't your restrictor plates from a John Deere tractor?) Horse racing...don't get me started Guido, football (who's beat up their spouse in a 'roid rage) - thank God baseball's clean.

So now that gene therapy is becoming a viable treatment, say I go find Greg Lemond's hair brush, isolate the gene that gave him the highest VOmax of any measured human being, find a nice virus to load it into, and tada! I'm now hanging with Manny!

Guess what. No testing for that. It's going to make testing irrelevent. So now it comes down to the riders, doctors, and team management to self police good conduct. I think there's a track record here regarding their ability to make good choices. <1% of 1% of people on the planet care. Everyone wants clean water though.