Lance Armstrong: Court of public opinion (Page 2)

when you reply to a Lance doping thread, God kills a horse.

pfft horses are not that cute.. now if it was a puppy

1. I want to believe he didn't.

2. My head says there's a pretty good chance that he did *something* more than carbs, protein, and legal supplements

3. Regardless of the above, I think he should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread...Barry Bonds never tested positive either.  The integrity of Bonds' accusers have also had their integrity questioned.  

I would like to think LA is clean.  I'd like to think he has always been clean.

Do I think he doped?  I'd bet the farm he did.  

Will I stop wearing my Livestrong shirt?  No.

One thing to remember is that the incentive to develop covert doping methods substantially exceeds the incentive to detect them.

You own a company. It makes a product. You test the product for authenticity. Factors may erode the authenticity of your product, thus reducing its value. Your current Q.C. checks do not detect these factors. Developing new techniques to do so will likely undermine the popularity of your product.

What do you do?

The highest road for the Tour de France and pro cycling would be to say,

"The sport is cancelled. WE cannot find an accurate and conclusive method of subverting fraud, and thereby cannot certify the authenticity of any of our athletes' performances. Therefore, until such time when that protocol is developed, we shall suspend the Tour de France and pro cycling in general as dubious and unadministerable."

That's not going to happen. What does need to happen is greater controls and greater and more severe sanctions, including criminal, for doping. The genetic passport is one idea. Random testing throughout the season is another.

In the Japanese betting sport of Keirin, a track cycling race that is heavily wagered on in Japan to the tune of billions of yen, the athletes are actually sequestered in a controlled living area so they do not have access to doping. Their contact with the outside world is limited and administered to prevent the passing of drugs. As a result, the sport seems to be utterly clean.

I'm on that page too.

True...but we don't tend to beat dead puppies.

With Hincapie coming out I am having my doubts now also.

He admitted in his biography to using EPO as a cancer treatment. 

1)  Most of the years (if not all of them) that LA was winning the TdF there was no test for EPO, just blood Hemocrit level.  Those are finicky tests for anyone who has had iron problems - how well hydrated you are can scew results big time.

2)  Why don't people think he was doping as a teenager?  My cousin used to be a sprinter and when he was 16 he knew people who were doing steroids

3)  That means that almost all of LAs old teammates have come out to say that he cheated.

4)  When he came back to the tour, he wasn't close to his old "shape".  I think when he came back he was clean and he wanted to try to win clean.

5)  Why is everyone so convinced that he trained so much harder than everyone else?  That is what HE says set him apart.  Maybe he did train harder than everyone else and that is what made him win in a pack of cheaters?

vonschnapps - 2011-05-20 8:08 PM What never ceases to amaze me is all the attention this gets. We all know about the rampant steroid use in the NFL, MLB, and NBA, and it gets minimal attention from the media. Why isn't there a constant outrage about Mark McGuire or Barry Bonds? The biggest movie stars are in and out of rehab on a monthly basis, and is there any 'Rock Legend, that isn't a drug user? Lance should have passed on his humanitarian efforts and just turned to drinking, drugs, women, and parties. Then the only time he would be in the news would be during his booking.

Barry Bonds isn't doing so well in the court of public opinion.  Quite possibly the greatest baseball player of this era (even before his association with anything steroids-related) may not get into the Baseball Hall of Fame when he's eligible.  To say Bonds got "minimal attention" without "constant outrage" is just not true.  

As for rock stars, don't forget Ted Nugent.  He's known for never having used drugs.  As for the rest of the rock stars and movie stars, isn't that nonsense kind of expected out of them?  The difference is that their typical drugs of choice aren't making them any better at what they do.

Heck, if Lance was found smoking a bong like Phelps, taking coke like Daryl Strawberry, or drinking like Mantle, I'd probably admire Lance more for what he was able to overcome.  I could care less if athletes hurt themselves with recreational drugs...it's the performance-enhancing drugs that are in my opinion unforgivable.

Actually, the only person I cared to hear from was Hencapie. Wow, that hurts.

Who rode and trained the course prior to the race, nobody. He does it now.... everybody. Lance was unapologetic that he only cared about the TDF, while everyone else kept working the circuit. The only competition for many years was Ulrich... a notorious off season partier that came into every season over weight and out of shape. Is that not so????

 LA may well have gotten epo, etc during his cancer treatment, as many such cancer patients do.  But during training/competition the only public "evidence" presented so has has been the allegations of individuals with a history of inconsistent statements.

No inside info, but funny how his accusers have a history of changing their stories/testimony.  Landis (I was NOT doping, errr sorry yes I was), Hamilton (2X convicted doper who initially claimed innocence, & now has a book to sell), etc.  Even Hincapie has previously denied witnessing LA dope, but now suddenly he recalls?  OTOH George has a reputation as a stand-up guy so that one might sting.  But still another flip-flop.

The reality is LA never had a valid pos test over many, many years of intensive scrutiny.  The one alleged pos urine he had (out of 500+ tests) was collected anonymously (voluntary with no legal chain of evidence) to validate a testing methodology under a protocol not intended nor designed to ID individual doping athletes.  That test was eventually found to have a very high false pos rate (~25% as I recall) & was withdrawn from the market by the company. 

Did LA dope? Who knows, but so far this all seems like a witch hunt to me. 

Let's just legalize doping and set them aside in their own sports:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/4090/saturday-night-live-weekend-update-all-drug-olympics

For what it's worth, many of the people who we know doped from Lance's era never tested positive.  We learned about it some other way.  So, not testing positive isn't much support in my view.  Of course, it doesn't do anything to suggest he did either.

Just seems to me that you either believe him because he says so.  Or you don't.  But to use "the most tested" defense seems fairly blind to the fact that testing didn't catch much of anyone (except for the careless) and we know there were a lot of people doping.

FWIW, I think he probably did.  But that's just my opinion on the matter and worth exactly what you just paid for it.

The 'never tested positive' defense is bogus for reasons stated, and factually questionable anyway.

The testimony of Landis and Hamilton comes from questionable sources.  Andreu a bit too.  Hincapie, not so much.

But really, LA's main defense is that these guys are lying SOBs.  Yeah, sure they are.  That's well established.  But do people generally switch from the truth to a lie when they get in front of a grand jury and their own a$$ is on the line?  Maybe some do.  Most of them?  All of them?  Hard to believe.  Only one of these guys has to be telling the truth for LA to have been doping (which, to me, seems pretty likely on a lot of other grounds anyway).  The house will continue to crash.  If it crashes hard enough, maybe cycling will get reformed.  Maybe.