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Eelface
Jul 23, 2002


Where do you think this leaves Lance? I'm just trying to figure out after so many tests negative we end up here

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INSPECTAH DECK
Feb 15, 2012


Eelface posted:

Where do you think this leaves Lance? I'm just trying to figure out after so many tests negative we end up here
Well I don't think he'll be the face of too many advertising campaigns going forward but he already has his money that can't be taken away from him. He's also a higher up in several cancer charities/initiatives/etc., including his own obviously, and I don't think he's necessarily going to resign. I also imagine his more rabid fanbase will continue to defend him since he never admitted his guilt and put up some pathetic "I'm just tired of the investigation" response on his website.

Carver Crisis
Oct 4, 2006

Surrender your gooch.

An 800 Pound Dog posted:

He was right on a lot of things.
Unban Kyoon

ShutteredIn
Mar 24, 2005

El Campeon Mundial del Acordeon


Some of the comments online about this already are incredible:

Deadspin Commenter posted:

I understand the wisdom of knowing when to quit. Yet I think Sisyphus cry's today. Fighting a corrupt and wholly soulless USADA machine that is only as a gear box of bureaucratic and suckling legal vampires and the financial demigods of power without true divinity. This is not one man's fight. Those who know this beast is not of man need say so publicly, or suffer next to it in the hell it will inherit. These system-entities of power without awareness or being that circle the globe and by nature see fit to destroy all that is good and sacred and try to throttle human sacred beings who are limited only by our imagination and spirit. It's own metal gears are greased with the fears of many, but the gears cannot ever do what people like Lance can, as gears are finite and simple mechanisms who are by design jealous haters and control us only from the fear. We know this.

I will watch how this beast consumes good, and will then we become aware of it's weaknesses. The USADA is just one small petty tyrant. There are much larger ones by many magnitudes we will confront.

Lance doesn't need medals or status to know what he has done. Those accomplishments are part of the world we all share and cannot be taken away any more than we can change history. Good for you Lance. You won this one too.

Neodoomium
Jun 20, 2001

You are now hearing this
noise in your head.


guy in a jetta posted:

If you kept up with cycling you would know that the power outputs of those at the front of pro pelotons are significantly lower than they were 10 years ago.

I don't, largely because Lance Armstrong doesn't compete in the Tour anymore.

cereal eater
Aug 25, 2008

I'd save these, if I wanted too

ps i dont deserve my 'king' nickname


I think it would be fascinating to see someone "in the know" post the charts of the blood/dope chart work, and explain exactly what an expert sees. Is there any place like that online where that has ever happened? Is that even legal?

I'm not defending Lance in anyway, I am sure he doped. I just think it would be an extremely interesting read from a sports enthusiast's perspective.

Neodoomium
Jun 20, 2001

You are now hearing this
noise in your head.


My question, and obviously I'm not much of a cycling fan outside of occasionally showing interest in the Tour, is that the Tour's last two decades are just a wasteland of revoked or abandoned championships. Is the activity just going to go through 10 year cycles of having champions and then destroying those champions after the fact when the tests catch up to the technology?

jyrka
Jan 21, 2005


Potato Count: 2 small potatoes


Great news. Apparently there is some fairness still left in this world.

Jack's Flow
Jun 6, 2003

What happen then, Mr Bones?
if be you cares to say.


Oz Fox posted:

Congratulations Jan Ullrich, 5-time Tour de France champ!!!

e: 4 times, I guess - Bjarne Riis and Marco Pantani's wins still stand
That was my first thought as well: Germany is reaping Tour titles now (Ullrich + Klöden). I'm glad they didn't let this one go and kept going after Armstrong.

Edit: From Armstrong's Wiki:

quote:

USADA says Armstrong used banned substances, including the blood-booster EPO and steroids, as well as blood transfusions dating back to 1986. Armstrong, who retired from cycling last year, sued in federal court to try and halt USADA's probe but lost. "The bottom line is I played by the rules that were put in place by the UCI, WADA and USADA when I raced," Armstrong wrote.

Jack's Flow fucked around with this message at Aug 24, 2012 around 05:56

vaginal culture
Feb 29, 2012

3 Time Football State
Champs in Ohio
1984, 2005, 2006
kiss the rings fgts


Rand alPaul posted:

I think it's pretty funny the man passed every single drug test. He's the greatest cheater of all time.
He didn't, he tested positive for cortisone in the 99 tour and they swept it under the rug, then tested positive for EPO in the Tour de Suisse, same story, and retroactive testing of his urine years after showed he did EPO during his tour de france wins.

His 500+ tests quote was a lie - he wasn't tested half that amount, and the tests are easily beaten anyway.

grack
Jan 10, 2012


Neodoomium posted:

My question, and obviously I'm not much of a cycling fan outside of occasionally showing interest in the Tour, is that the Tour's last two decades are just a wasteland of revoked or abandoned championships. Is the activity just going to go through 10 year cycles of having champions and then destroying those champions after the fact when the tests catch up to the technology?

10 years? The TdF has always been dirty, right from the very first races. Of course these days the cheaters use drugs instead of paying people to run the competition off the road in cars.

DreamingApe
Jul 15, 2001

Maar geen cent teveel hoor...


Agrajag posted:

Thing is wasn't the whole tour pretty much doping during that time? If so are they going after every single person?

Voeckler was among a few cyclists that signed a document that said they were clean, so perhaps he will finally get the yellow after they disqualified everyone else.

jyrka
Jan 21, 2005


Potato Count: 2 small potatoes


jimmynmu posted:

If he didn't then he is the greatest freak of nature to ever play a sport.

Agreed. He was a great bicycle player.

vaginal culture
Feb 29, 2012

3 Time Football State
Champs in Ohio
1984, 2005, 2006
kiss the rings fgts


In discouraging news, this years Tour featured the most blatant doped performance since Riis in 1997. Now the UK can have their winner for a few years til the testing methods catch up and he is disgraced, perhaps he can start a sham of a charity too. Armstrong is human garbage, and hosed over a ton of people trying to keep this under wraps. Today is a victory for Greg LeMond, Cheryl Crow, and the Olsen Twins.

vaginal culture
Feb 29, 2012

3 Time Football State
Champs in Ohio
1984, 2005, 2006
kiss the rings fgts


Jack's Flow posted:

That was my first thought as well: Germany is reaping Tour titles now (Ullrich + Klöden). I'm glad they didn't let this one go and kept going after Armstrong.

Edit: From Armstrong's Wiki:

Well I like Ullrich, but he was doped too, and Kloeden as well, is under investigation for blood doping today. The sad thing is cycling is no dirtier of a sport than any others, but it gets a bad reputation because it actually makes a bit of an effort to catch people. If the NFL instituted WADA testing they'd not be able to play the season.

davebo
Nov 15, 2006

Parallel lines do meet, but they do it incognito

A friend was trying to get me worked up about what a morally bankrupt terrible role model Lance is, completely unaware of how many other people exactly like him were already found guilty. As though once Lance's trophies are removed they will be rightfully bestowed upon some paragon of human athleticism.

All I could say was that spandex biking is boring and this is the future of bicycle sports: http://youtu.be/YfMQdFGTKAs

(Yes, it's Danny Hart's 2011 run)

hampton
Aug 3, 2012


Rand alPaul posted:

I think it's pretty funny the man passed every single drug test. He's the greatest cheater of all time.

It's impossible to detect many kinds of PEDs in testing. The truth is top athletes in almost every sport, especially in the US, are doing whatever it takes to get an advantage over the competition. It's up to the fans to decide whether to demonize drugs like steroids and the athletes that do get caught using them or to embrace it as a part of the sport.

Rerun
Aug 5, 2001
Live the dream

bewbies posted:

I know very little about doping or this case so forgive this question: if he was doping, how was he able to pass the hundreds or thousands of tests he was given over his career? Surely those tests are cutting edge, it seems like you'd need some pretty enormous resources to beat them without fail.

The tests are incredibly easy to beat.

Use EPO for a few weeks, and microdose when in competition so you don't test positive and keep your RBC count high. Lance rode in an era where there wasn't a test and when the test was implemented (2000 Olympics) new generations of EPO drugs became available that could clear your system quicker.

Also, as mentioned, Lance did test positive but because he had a lot of money/connection/was 'good for the sport', those tests were swept under the rug.

Lance employed Doctors like Ferrari who were doping gurus and experts in scheduling when to use drugs to evade testing positive.

New oral forms of EPO are on the horizon. This years tour was an absolute joke. AICAR/GW1516 + Whatever new generation EPO and you get this years tour.

The drugs are always ahead of the tests. EPO was introduced in the early 90s and it took a decade for a test to pop up.

wraith_5_
Aug 25, 2003


Someone smarter than me help me understand this:

http://nyvelocity.com/content/inter...ichael-ashenden


This paints a pretty gloom picture for Armstrong.

Boris Galerkin
Dec 17, 2011


Mike Toole posted:

Because seriously, the guy is the most-tested athlete of all time, and he never tested positive once. If he cheated, wouldn't that mean that all testing is pretty much worthless?

In the Olympics 2012 subforum, there was a thread about doping and long story short: everybody is doping. I don't have that thread saved so if anyone else does feel free to post it, but apparently some drugs can be pissed out of your body within a day or something like that, and the other drugs don't even show up in tests. Plus something about statistics and a test taking into account of false positive/negatives and the end result is you've got to gently caress up real bad to test positive.

Jack's Flow
Jun 6, 2003

What happen then, Mr Bones?
if be you cares to say.


Many people thought Jan Ullrich (in his prime) was one of the most gifted bicycle racers of the past twenty years. He also got busted for doping. And even though he was natural freak AND a doper, he still couldn't beat Lance Armstrong. And yet there were still people who believed Lance won all of his titles because "he wanted it more".

Edit:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mo...p&sct=hp_t11_a0

quote:

Lance Armstrong might be the only athlete in history to hang a banner commemorating a forfeit. He gave up his fight against doping charges Thursday and congratulated himself for it. "Today I turn the page," he proudly announced in his statement, which he presumably wrote with "The Star Spangled Banner" playing on his iPod. "I will no longer address the issue, regardless of the circumstances."

This is ridiculous. Doping charges are serious, the evidence is significant, and some credible people have accused Armstrong. (I mean, how much of a jerk would Armstrong have to be for this many people to want to frame him?) Armstrong was losing this battle. He can't just hide the ball and declare the game over, except ... Well, except maybe he can. He is banking on one thing here: That we don't care if he used drugs.
He is probably right. We don't care. Admit it: We ... don't ... care.

If athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs are criminals, then Armstrong pulled off the perfect crime. Most Americans only cared about the Tour de France because Armstrong won it; if you take away those wins, then we don't care about the event anymore. Genius.
Barry Bonds toppled Hank Aaron for a coveted record. Armstrong stole an ugly yellow shirt from the French. So what? Livestrong, man.

Jack's Flow fucked around with this message at Aug 24, 2012 around 09:06

DreamingApe
Jul 15, 2001

Maar geen cent teveel hoor...


quote:

Armstrong stole an ugly yellow shirt from the French. So what? Livestrong, man.

gently caress you and the horse you rode in on, that loving attitude was tiresome when Armstrong was still riding and it's not aged well.

LordPants
Mar 5, 2011

Four more years boys, four more years.


Boris Galerkin posted:

In the Olympics 2012 subforum, there was a thread about doping and long story short: everybody is doping. I don't have that thread saved so if anyone else does feel free to post it, but apparently some drugs can be pissed out of your body within a day or something like that, and the other drugs don't even show up in tests. Plus something about statistics and a test taking into account of false positive/negatives and the end result is you've got to gently caress up real bad to test positive.

Okay, the short of it is that up until the early 2000s they couldn't test you for the poo poo you were on, and if they did they allowed such a huge margin for error that you may not have been picked up anyway, and thirdly all they'd do is take like four riders a stage.

Now it is the top x number of riders in a stage plus a random selection and they can actually test you for most of the stuff. Sport is cleaner than it was, but then again they could be doing stuff that we don't know about. But at the end of the day it is progress.

Here's a little quote from the guardian with some hokey math, but the general point remains:

quote:

So, in terms of what that means for Wiggins and co at the front of the stage, it predicts about 6.4 to 6.5 W/kg. Over 16 minutes, that's not at all unreasonable. To give you some context, calculations of climbing power output in the Tour de France in the 1990s and 2000s often estimated that top riders maintained power outputs of 6.4 to 6.5W/kg on the Tour's HC climbs, most of which take over 40 minutes to climb. So in other words, there was an era where the best riders were maintaining similar power outputs to what we saw on Saturday, for three times the duration. Put differently, all those riders would probably have been a minute clear of this current generation on this climb…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blo...cience-of-sport

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007


Winner, Best Scale Model Painter on SA, 2013


I always thought Lance Armstrong was too big to go down after everything that was swept under the rug and excused.

stratdax
Sep 14, 2006


evensevenone posted:


But if you legalize everything, then there's no limit to what they can take. There's a whole spectrum of way more powerful drugs out there, and the effects of those drugs and safe doses are really not well known.

Well, if they were legal, then proper labs could do research and testing and clinical trials and all sorts of other things that they do with any other drug that is currently legal. Find safe-but-just-as-viable alternatives, etc. If it's illegal, it's a little harder to test.

spamman
Jul 10, 2002

Chin up Tiger, There is always next season...

serious gaylord posted:

I always thought Lance Armstrong was too big to go down after everything that was swept under the rug and excused.

That's why it was important that USADA managed to get the UCI out of the way. The UCI is reported to have been fairly complicit in some coverups over the years.

xie
Jul 29, 2004

If you liked it,
then you should have put a ring on it.


Armstrong is widely believed to have obtained drugs that were in FDA clinical trials, or had already been shelved for not passing FDA clinical trials.

That's why the FDA was going after him, this isn't some multi organizational witch hunt. The guy stepped on everyone to get to the top and broke a ton of laws/regulations.

It's not just that he was taking some EPO once in a while in the bathroom, the charges, with tons of evidence, were of a systemic drug/blood doping ring that ran through & around Lance. Entire teams of riders on whatever they could possibly slam in the systems at the time, regardless of how safe or tested it was.

c0ldfuse
Jun 18, 2004

The pursuit of excellence.


DreamingApe posted:

Voeckler was among a few cyclists that signed a document that said they were clean, so perhaps he will finally get the yellow after they disqualified everyone else.

If Voeckler ever got popped it would be hard to follow cycling after. Favorite rider in the peloton hands down.

And I think this years tour was as clean as its been in a long time. Wiggins through tactics did exactly what he needed to do for the win.

If you thought it was boring its more of an issue in the race set up: make shorter ITTs and change the radios one-way transmit to all.

Aqualung
Oct 10, 2005

Don't worry guys, Ron knows the guy who drives the crane.


I think it's important to repost this link that someone posted in the Olympic doping thread. It's piece by former cyclist and admitted doper Jonathan Vaughters, that looks into the effect that doping by the top guys has on the rest of the pro-peleton as well as young kids looking to get into cycling themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/o...=3&pagewanted=1

Tezzeract
Dec 25, 2007

How am I going to explain this to my wife?


xie posted:

Armstrong is widely believed to have obtained drugs that were in FDA clinical trials, or had already been shelved for not passing FDA clinical trials.

That's why the FDA was going after him, this isn't some multi organizational witch hunt. The guy stepped on everyone to get to the top and broke a ton of laws/regulations.

It's not just that he was taking some EPO once in a while in the bathroom, the charges, with tons of evidence, were of a systemic drug/blood doping ring that ran through & around Lance. Entire teams of riders on whatever they could possibly slam in the systems at the time, regardless of how safe or tested it was.

This might be true, but so what? Are we going to go back and retroactively test every athlete to see if they doped? Maybe Skip Bayless is right and that not even Derek Jeter is above the suspicion for doping this season. All your favorite sports stars are cheats now and let's all just watch esports where caffeine and adderall are king.

Regulators are just on a witch hunt to justify their own job security. Why the gently caress should the public care?

Ribsauce
Jul 29, 2006

Blacks in the back.


This makes me so mad. I'm sure he did doped, hell who didn't, but so what. They had their chance to catch him when they gave him thousands of drug test. They didn't catch him. It is now 10 years later. Lance has probably spent millions fighting this. And the government has probably spent 100 million pursuing it.

I'm not so naive to think he did not dope. However, he wasn't caught when he had the chance. They blew it. What is the point of this investigation? Is anything better now that they doping agency can strut around like the "won." What a waste of loving time. Do we go take the 70's Steelers Super Bowls away next?

As a taxpayer I want to know how much this cost and even moreso I want my money back. What a goddamn waste.

Aqualung
Oct 10, 2005

Don't worry guys, Ron knows the guy who drives the crane.


Wow, OK I don't even know where to start. Have a list.

  • They didn't test him thousands of times.
  • You actually care that he spent his money to defend himself? Given that he made all his money by doping? That's like feeling bad for a drug dealer who had to spend some of his drug money to defend himself from a drug charge. Nice.
  • The USADA didn't spend $100 million on this. Not even close. Their entire yearly budget is below $20 million, and they have a lot of other things going than the Armstrong case. And they've only been going at it for a year.
  • You want your money back? Nice. Assuming they actually did spend a full yearly budget (which is ridiculous already) on the Armstrong case, you should be getting about $20m/310million people = $0.065 back. You should be furious about how this money was spent. Forget about the fact that this case will probably have a net positive effect on deterring doping in professional sports (see below), they should just stop and give you your 6.5 cents back because you are mad.
  • The point of the investigation 10 years later (well actually given that he competed as late as 2010, 2 years later but sure) is to shame him for his actions so that others are encouraged to stop doing it knowing that you can be caught a long time after you stop cycling. It's supposed to make pro-peleton cleaner and stop the vicious cycle of having to dope in order to even get to the pro level of sports. I only posted an article about this exact issue 2 posts ago, maybe you should read it.

Aqualung fucked around with this message at Aug 24, 2012 around 13:00

Quanta
Jul 28, 2002


Ribsauce posted:

They had their chance to catch him when they gave him thousands of drug test. They didn't catch him... They blew it... What is the point of this investigation?

I have to hand it to Armstrong's PR men. Even after experts have spent so long trying to expose this blatant lie of HE PASSED 9000 TESTS AND DIDN'T FAIL A SINGLE ONE, there are still millions of people who have their head in the sand and believe he passed all of his drugs tests, even the hundreds of imaginary ones Armstrong's team plucked out of thin air. His team have done a fantastic job of circulating lies that people are ready to believe.

Armstrong has failed drugs tests, and he's also bribed the UCI to keep his positive drug test hidden.

Quanta fucked around with this message at Aug 24, 2012 around 13:02

Rerun
Aug 5, 2001
Live the dream

Ribsauce posted:

This makes me so mad. I'm sure he did doped, hell who didn't, but so what. They had their chance to catch him when they gave him thousands of drug test. They didn't catch him. It is now 10 years later. Lance has probably spent millions fighting this. And the government has probably spent 100 million pursuing it.

I'm not so naive to think he did not dope. However, he wasn't caught when he had the chance. They blew it. What is the point of this investigation? Is anything better now that they doping agency can strut around like the "won." What a waste of loving time. Do we go take the 70's Steelers Super Bowls away next?

As a taxpayer I want to know how much this cost and even moreso I want my money back. What a goddamn waste.

He passed like 200 tests. The government is interested because Lance's teams were sponsored by US Postal and they pumped millions of dollars into him and the team for many years. Lance was also part of a systematic doping program of illegal drugs and also drug trafficking taking said drugs.

MD2020
May 29, 2003


Uh, the only thing Lance was "on" was his bike. Six hours a day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIl5RxhLZ5U

Ribsauce
Jul 29, 2006

Blacks in the back.


OK excuse, me, it looks like it was only 300 to 60 tests he took. Nevermind then. Is there any evidence of any of this besides testimony from old teammates and other people? Like actual proof? I read 3 articles and never saw a mention of proof. I actually investigate people for stuff as part of my job (btw I always hate when people say this when making a point) and someone telling us someone else did something doesn't mean anything without proof. I must have missed the proof in these articles. Proof is not another teammate thrown out of the sport for doping saying they doped with Lance, or they saw him do it, or he told this person he did it with no recording or support. Proof would be the actual piece of paper showing the failed test or something similar. Not a guy who was thrown out of the sport saying "Lance did it too!"

The 100 million was an estimate based on 10 years and what I figured it probably costs a year to have people looking into this. I did google trying to figure out the total cost. And it isn't that I want my 6 cents back, it is just an example of stupid spending. You could break down any government expense and say "bbbut it only adds up to 6 cents per person, quit crying."

This article says the UCI failed him in 2001. From what I just read this comes from Tyler Hamilton. He was thrown out of the sport for doping (edit two times hahahaha). It is in his interests to dirty everyone. I didn't see anything but "according to Tyler Hamilton" in the article.

Rerun, I just read 5 articles and never saw one mention of the Postal Service sponsoring his team as a reason for interest.


I actively quit following this a few years ago but I just read a few articles and never once saw real proof. I'm not naive enough to think he did not dope, but the fact you can spend 10 years trying to prove something relying on testimony from other dirty people alone is pretty gross.

And yes I care he had to spend a bunch of money defending himself. I'd be pissed if the government tried to prosecute me for something, couldn't prove it after a year, two years, three years, but then 10 years later I'm still spending money fighting it. There is a point where enough is enough, and I'd say chasing someone over something that is not even a crime (certainly a victimless crime) is a little beyond reasonable.

quote:

Armstrong has failed drugs tests, and he's also bribed the UCI to keep his positive drug test hidden.
I googled this and I only see Tyler Hamilton telling 60 minutes it happened. I don't see where anyone saw this mysterious test.

edit

to be clear again, I'm not trying to claim in any way Lance did not actually dope, I just think it is pretty gross he has to sit here and fight charges based on hearsay from other dirty people for a decade plus.

Ribsauce fucked around with this message at Aug 24, 2012 around 13:29

Breaky
Jul 21, 2006

STRIKE FIRST
STRIKE HARD
NO MERCY SIR


please respond posted:

He didn't, he tested positive for cortisone in the 99 tour and they swept it under the rug, then tested positive for EPO in the Tour de Suisse, same story, and retroactive testing of his urine years after showed he did EPO during his tour de france wins.

His 500+ tests quote was a lie - he wasn't tested half that amount, and the tests are easily beaten anyway.

You got any sources for the positive EPO test? The cortisone one was known, and he presented a doctors prescription for it upon the failed test.

The EPO however I've never seen actually reported.

Mechafunkzilla
Sep 11, 2006

Shumpin'


Criticizing a TdF winner for using PED's is like criticizing a bodybuilder for using steroids. The 50 guys who finished after Lance in each race he won were all doing the exact same poo poo.

c0ldfuse
Jun 18, 2004

The pursuit of excellence.


It's about time.

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Eggs
Apr 15, 2007


All this news on the heels of Premium Rush, tis a sad day indeed.

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