Lance Armstrong will be stripped of his seven Tour titles

#76
#76
slh1089 said:
Man, USADA really has a vandetta with this one. You won now let it go.
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I think everybody loses & looks bad here. They had testing in place so that makes them look bad. Armstrong bowing out may look bad on him but it's not an admission of guilt yet they keep on & on with it making themselves look worse because any witness supposedly "in the know" was cheating themselves. At this point who wasn't cheating is a bigger question than who was. They should've just fixed their broken testing procedures & let it go. It's tarnishing the whole sport instead of one person like they think.
 
#78
#78
govols/cc said:
I think everybody loses & looks bad here. They had testing in place so that makes them look bad. Armstrong bowing out may look bad on him but it's not an admission of guilt yet they keep on & on with it making themselves look worse because any witness supposedly "in the know" was cheating themselves. At this point who wasn't cheating is a bigger question than who was. They should've just fixed their broken testing procedures & let it go. It's tarnishing the whole sport instead of one person like they think.
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The "they" here is two separate organizations. UCI, which is the international cycling federation, is the group who performs the tests and governs the sport. They're the ones who never caught Armstrong's team doing anything. The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), a de facto arm of the US Olympic Committee, are the ones who have gone so hard after Armstrong. They're going after him so hard because that's their entire mission as an organization; this is all that they do.

The whole thing is juicer because the USADA seems to have uncovered some evidence that UCI's testing procedures were not only terrible, but that people at UCI might even have been complicit in helping Armstrong and his team beat the controls (by tipping tests ahead of time, helping suppress a positive Armstrong test in Switzerland, etc.) In addition to busting Armstrong, the USADA is clearly trying to embarrass the UCI about how incompetent and/or corrupt their testing program was too.
 
#79
#79
Vercingetorix said:
The "they" here is two separate organizations. UCI, which is the international cycling federation, is the group who performs the tests and governs the sport. They're the ones who never caught Armstrong's team doing anything. The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), a de facto arm of the US Olympic Committee, are the ones who have gone so hard after Armstrong. They're going after him so hard because that's their entire mission as an organization; this is all that they do.

The whole thing is juicer because the USADA seems to have uncovered some evidence that UCI's testing procedures were not only terrible, but that people at UCI might even have been complicit in helping Armstrong and his team beat the controls (by tipping tests ahead of time, helping suppress a positive Armstrong test in Switzerland, etc.) In addition to busting Armstrong, the USADA is clearly trying to embarrass the UCI about how incompetent and/or corrupt their testing program was too.
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It's over with though. All you have is hearsay. Fix it & move on. The guy finishing 2nd or 14th was in all likelihood doping too so going after the guy that was winning isn't gonna prove anything.
 
#80
#80
Vercingetorix said:
Eddy Merckx was probably the best. Armstrong focused his entire career on winning the Tour; he didn't even ride the other grand tours. (I think he rode the Giro once after his first retirement; I don't think he ever even rode the Vuelta.) Merckx won the Tour five times and won everything else too -- the two other grand tours, the one-day classics, everything.
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I don't think there is a reasonable argument to place anyone ahead of Merckx. He won everything, from sprints, to TTs to climbing stages to classics. Won the most stages ever.
 
#81
#81
govols/cc said:
It's over with though. All you have is hearsay. Fix it & move on. The guy finishing 2nd or 14th was in all likelihood doping too so going after the guy that was winning isn't gonna prove anything.
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Have you read any of the articles? The USADA has a hell of a lot more than hearsay.

I agree that stripping Armstrong of those old titles is silly. They can't give it to anyone else and keep a straight face.

None of this would have happened if he'd just stayed retired. By making himself an active competitor again, he was basically asking for it.
 
#82
#82
Nike cut him loose.

Lance stepped down as the chairman of LiveStrong.
 
#83
#83
And Radio Shack, and Anheuser-Busch, and Trek bicycles. Plus a few others I didn't recognize.

The evidence is just too overwhelming. Not only did Armstrong dope, he was the leader of a doping RING. At this point, he couldn't even do the tearful apology routine if he wanted to, because there's so much evidence that he was the ringleader, snarling at his underlings to make sure they were keeping their doping regimens up to speed. The whole thing is incredibly ugly.
 
#84
#84
Just hoping livestrong isn't a secondary casualty because all of this. It all just plain sucks.
 
#85
#85
Good article in the most recent SI that explains everything pretty well. Hard to read it and not come away thinking he was a POS.
 
#89
#89
govols/cc said:
& never failed a test. Why wait until now & act like it matters? Nobody cares.
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Doping can be light years ahead of testing. There is also testimony that he strong armed various agencies after he did test positive. Trust me, I have been the biggest Armstrong apologist, but the evidence is just too much to fall back on the ol' "well he never failed" argument.
 
#90
#90
slh1089 said:
Doping can be light years ahead of testing. There is also testimony that he strong armed various agencies after he did test positive. Trust me, I have been the biggest Armstrong apologist, but the evidence is just too much to fall back on the ol' "well he never failed" argument.
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Even still why wait until now? Nobody denies he did it nobody cares.
 
#91
#91
govols/cc said:
Even still why wait until now? Nobody denies he did it nobody cares.
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Because Lance was the one that strung it out. If he had admitted it up front the outcome would have been completely different. He dug his own grave expecting to win against the doping agencies. He has no one to blame except himself.
 
#92
#92
slh1089 said:
Because Lance was the one that strung it out. If he had admitted it up front the outcome would have been completely different. He dug his own grave expecting to win against the doping agencies. He has no one to blame except himself.
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All he had to do was stay retired and it almost certainly would have gone away.
 
#93
#93
slh1089 said:
Doping can be light years ahead of testing. There is also testimony that he strong armed various agencies after he did test positive. Trust me, I have been the biggest Armstrong apologist, but the evidence is just too much to fall back on the ol' "well he never failed" argument.
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None of the former teammates who just testified against him -- and have been suspended, and at least in Levi Leipheimer's case, kicked off his current team -- ever failed a test either. Armstrong's team was a machine. Most methodical at racing, most methodical at doping.

I'm mostly agnostic about the whole thing, really. I sort of wish they'd just say the hell with it and let them do whatever they want. The testing is never going to catch up with the technology.
 
#94
#94
My feeling is that basically everyone was doing it and he still won. It's as if it was a level playing field almost. Sucks that it has to end this way though; used to look up to him and I hope livestrong doesn't suffer because of this.
 
#95
#95
slh1089 said:
My feeling is that basically everyone was doing it and he still won. It's as if it was a level playing field almost. Sucks that it has to end this way though; used to look up to him and I hope livestrong doesn't suffer because of this.
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Agreed. I respect his accomplishments. I still believe he is probably the best cyclist of all time and one of the best athletes of all time.

I don't respect him as a person though. I loathe liars.
 
#96
#96
Merckx is the best of all time.

I believe Garmin-Slipstream when they say they're a team hell bent on competing clean. I believe Wiggins is a former doper from his time with Lance. Thor Hushovd, I hope, is clean and has always been clean. With upcoming stars like Taylor Phinney, the sport will grow again and this time without drugs.
 
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