Lance Armstrong... greatest doper there was or ever will be

I've yet to hear what Sheryl Crow and Ashley Olsen have to say about the whole saga, and until then I'm staying neutral.

Liggett:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/despite-usadas-evidence-liggett-remains-armstrongs-supporter

If he’s been taking drugs then of course it’s right [to sanction] but they still lack the absolute proof as far as I’m aware. I still am a supporter of Armstrong. Whatever way we look at it Lance has been good for the sport.

[...]

“He has been the best athlete in the world and the drugs have not made him that much better, He’d have probably still have won on a level playing field and still been the champion. He’s also brought a lot of happiness to a lot of people and no one seems to have taken this into account and introduced a lot of bike riders into the sport and into cycling as a pastime.”

meanwhile boonen is testdriving ferrari berlinetta! http://www.ferrari.com/english/about_ferrari/corporate/Pages/121012-cor-a-special-sprint-for-tom-boonen-in-fiorano.aspx

Only just saw the dredge ...

https://www.lfgss.com/thread14225.html

Liggett I had an email from an eminent scientist from the US yesterday. An SMS actually. It said if Lance Armstrong had taken the drugs outlined by USADA he’d have been dead ten years ago. He’s an eminent scientist and a very intelligent man. I don’t know his name, the SMS came from a secondary person.”

Fuckin 'ell Liggett. How do you know he's an eminent scientist and a very intelligent man if you don't even know his name

all that in 140 characters, someone's been practicing on that there twitter...

Liggett's drunk the koolade and the st ides!

Now I'm wondering what the sms said:

I am $EminentScientist from the US, and if Lance Armstrong had done all these drugs he'd have been dead over ten years ago!!1!One!!

160 characters for SMS. Bags of room.

From Facebook but hopefully y'all can see :-)

^Glasgow humour?

I was just looking around for a gilet, saw a nike one reduced and scrolled straight past it, thinking they support Lance. When are they going to ditch him?

They wont. He makes them millions and despite him being an absolute cunt, there will still be millions of blind armstrong zombies who will still buy stuff. Nike have made it quite clear they couldnt give a fuck if he cheated or not.

Until people boycott their stuff of course.....

They wont.

I think they will, slowly, quietly and without fanfare.*

• based on nothing more than what I would do in their situation.
  

Yeah youre right. I guess dumping him would be almost as much bad press in the US as staying with him is in the rest of the world....

What other heroes have Nike sponsored who have become tainted?

Tiger Woods & Kobe Bryant.

Nike are really unlucky aren't they.

Financially, yes.

Carl Lewis, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Christian Hesch. US track and field Nike sponsored dopers

I mean it's not like they invited peopled banned in BALCO to the US Olympic trials . .. oh

5 live are doing 2 hours on this now

They invited one of the forum's finest to contribute, but I believe he declined.

Pisti?

Marcom

By not formally disputing the charges Armstrong is losing his ability to prevent the sanction that USADA imposes, namely the stripping of his titles and a lifetime ban.

It is an imperfect analogy, but LA is trying to make out that he has a right to opt out making himself not guilty, which he doesn't.

The reality is that he has not and cannot opt out of the sanction (lifetime ban, titles stripped)

As I said above, look at nolo contendere. The point of offering no contest is not to get out of the punishment, but to accept the punishment without admitting the facts of the case, which would then be used to support any number of potential civil actions against Armstrong. I expect there are already lawyers all across the USA lining up civil suits for all manner of losses which Armstrong's doping caused their clients, so he definitely doesn't want to make their lives easy by either admitting anything or having an independent arbitration panel come to the right conclusion after examining the evidence. For this reason, this:

If the UCI throw Lance under the bus, he will have nothing to lose and will hopefully start singing like a canary.

is never going to happen, because he still has an awful lot to lose by confirming the truth.