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"The everyone is doing it so it's fair" argument also falls over as oxygen vector doping/ transfusions used in cycling can have massive benefits to one rider and next to nothing for the next guy with identical power output to begin with but a naturally high blood cell count.
The % weren't small at all, the interview with Johnathan Vaughters on Bicycling gave examples of a >20% improvement in climbing power possible if your blood cell % was naturally low whilst he might have only got a 5% boost as he was already at the 50% limit before doping.
This. There is no level-playing field with drugs, people react differently and the richer can pay for better doctors. You listen to Vaughter's or Millar's story and you hear stories of isolated pros desperate to do well to secure contracts or keep their team where it is.
You hear stories of Lance and remember him riding, this big bull of a man charging up hills and you think of someone whon revelled in his cheating, not someone wracked with guilt and shame but driven to it by desperation. Then they way he used to bully the other riders to enforce the omerta, and they way young pros were encouraged to dope otherwise they wouldn't make the team. The impression you get is of a brazen doper, arrogant and aggressive and somehow in colluision with the UCI, who presumably saw him as a golden ticket to get the sport big in the US
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Have i missed something - i assumed it would be the UCI that would be the ones that decided whether to strip him? The guardian is reporting that the usada has done so - why do they have the power to do this?
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Have i missed something - i assumed it would be the UCI that would be the ones that decided whether to strip him? The guardian is reporting that the usada has done so - why do they have the power to do this?
here's the answer to your question..
..Travis Tygart, USADA's chief executive, left no doubt that was the next step. He said Armstrong would lose the titles as soon as Friday and be hit with a lifetime ban, even though he is retired and turning 41 next month.
Tygart said the UCI, the sport's governing body, was "bound to recognize our decision and impose it" as a signer of the World Anti-Doping Code.
"They have no choice but to strip the titles under the code," he said.
-Montreal Gazette -
Today I have learned that Lance's avarice is greater than his psychopathy. That's all.
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15 minute audio interview with Travis Tygart from today.
Talks a bit about the evidence including allegations that they were getting notice in advance of UCI testers arriving giving time to get some plasma expanders in.
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Already has been, as Ironman and US Triathlon are signed up to USADA / WADA enforcement (as is UCI).
In spite of Lance's donations to Ironman too.
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15 minute audio interview with Travis Tygart from today.
Talks a bit about the evidence including allegations that they were getting notice in advance of UCI testers arriving giving time to get some plasma expanders in.
this is a really good listen
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exposing all corrupt UCI Presidents.
McQuaid
VerbruggenAny more?
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Lance Armstong's Statement of August 23, 2012
AUSTIN, Texas - August 23rd, 2012 - There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, "Enough is enough." For me, that time is now. I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. Over the past three years, I have been subjected to a two-year federal criminal investigation followed by Travis Tygart's unconstitutional witch hunt. The toll this has taken on my family, and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today – finished with this nonsense. I had hoped that a federal court would stop USADA’s charade. Although the court was sympathetic to my concerns and recognized the many improprieties and deficiencies in USADA’s motives, its conduct, and its process, the court ultimately decided that it could not intervene.
If I thought for one moment that by participating in USADA’s process, I could confront these allegations in a fair setting and – once and for all – put these charges to rest, I would jump at the chance. But I refuse to participate in a process that is so one-sided and unfair. Regardless of what Travis Tygart says, there is zero physical evidence to support his outlandish and heinous claims. The only physical evidence here is the hundreds of controls I have passed with flying colors. I made myself available around the clock and around the world. In-competition. Out of competition. Blood. Urine. Whatever they asked for I provided. What is the point of all this testing if, in the end, USADA will not stand by it?
From the beginning, however, this investigation has not been about learning the truth or cleaning up cycling, but about punishing me at all costs. I am a retired cyclist, yet USADA has lodged charges over 17 years old despite its own 8-year limitation. As respected organizations such as UCI and USA Cycling have made clear, USADA lacks jurisdiction even to bring these charges. The international bodies governing cycling have ordered USADA to stop, have given notice that no one should participate in USADA’s improper proceedings, and have made it clear the pronouncements by USADA that it has banned people for life or stripped them of their accomplishments are made without authority. And as many others, including USADA’s own arbitrators, have found, there is nothing even remotely fair about its process. USADA has broken the law, turned its back on its own rules, and stiff-armed those who have tried to persuade USADA to honor its obligations. At every turn, USADA has played the role of a bully, threatening everyone in its way and challenging the good faith of anyone who questions its motives or its methods, all at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. For the last two months, USADA has endlessly repeated the mantra that there should be a single set of rules, applicable to all, but they have arrogantly refused to practice what they preach. On top of all that, USADA has allegedly made deals with other riders that circumvent their own rules as long as they said I cheated. Many of those riders continue to race today.
The bottom line is I played by the rules that were put in place by the UCI, WADA and USADA when I raced. The idea that athletes can be convicted today without positive A and B samples, under the same rules and procedures that apply to athletes with positive tests, perverts the system and creates a process where any begrudged ex-teammate can open a USADA case out of spite or for personal gain or a cheating cyclist can cut a sweetheart deal for themselves. It’s an unfair approach, applied selectively, in opposition to all the rules. It’s just not right.
USADA cannot assert control of a professional international sport and attempt to strip my seven Tour de France titles. I know who won those seven Tours, my teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours. We all raced together. For three weeks over the same roads, the same mountains, and against all the weather and elements that we had to confront. There were no shortcuts, there was no special treatment. The same courses, the same rules. The toughest event in the world where the strongest man wins. Nobody can ever change that. Especially not Travis Tygart.
Today I turn the page. I will no longer address this issue, regardless of the circumstances. I will commit myself to the work I began before ever winning a single Tour de France title: serving people and families affected by cancer, especially those in underserved communities. This October, my Foundation will celebrate 15 years of service to cancer survivors and the milestone of raising nearly $500 million. We have a lot of work to do and I'm looking forward to an end to this pointless distraction. I have a responsibility to all those who have stepped forward to devote their time and energy to the cancer cause. I will not stop fighting for that mission. Going forward, I am going to devote myself to raising my five beautiful (and energetic) kids, fighting cancer, and attempting to be the fittest 40-year old on the planet.
This is a spectacular read. Even Pope John Paul II had fewer claims to the beatification he must be after. A lot of it reads like the strapline to an Armstrong documentary, due a bought Oscar in 2016, while more besides reads like his criticisms of any and all agencies mirror exactly his own behaviours. This surely cannot be lost on him, in which case he's certifiable. Delusions of grandeur isn't ambitious enough a concept for him.
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Lance Armstong's Statement of August 23, 2012
AUSTIN, Texas - August 23rd, 2012 - There are many people who have tried to judge my actions, to label me as disgraceful or unethical. Time and again, I’ve had to endure the harassment of the media and the average sports fan, who act as though I’ve done something so outside the bounds of human decency as to defy logic or explanation. Yet I think, if we are all honest we each other, we could agree this is far from the case. For, really, haven’t we all, each and every one of us, ritually abused steroids, in a sense?
I ask again: Is there a single person among us who has not, in one way or another, become obscenely rich and successful through the repeated use of performance-enhancing drugs?
You see, no human being is perfect. That is not to say we are not capable of acts of great virtue, but at the end of the day, I think you would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t succumbed to the perfectly natural urge to trick their colleagues and the entire world into thinking they won seven Tour de France titles honestly. Surely at some point in our lives, all of us have lied to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency about our repeated use of illicit drugs. Surely we are not so hypocritical as to deny that much.
As people, we are united by our shared experiences. We all live, breathe, fall in love, take steroids, lie to anti-doping officials, make indignant public denials about steroids, cry, achieve dizzying levels of fame and success by continuing to use steroids, laugh. Deep down, that is how we are, and we’re stuck with it.
Obviously, nobody is proud of systematically manipulating the American people into thinking their spectacular athletic triumphs were legitimate when, in reality, they owe every last one of those victories to the use of illegal chemicals. But no one ought to be ashamed of it, either, for all of us have done it, whether by condemning honest journalists as liars, hypocritically firing our personal trainer Michele Ferrari for becoming too closely associated with steroids, or simply denouncing all investigations against us as “a pitiful charade.”
I used steroids. You used steroids. Your friends and coworkers used steroids. Your children have all used steroids. President Obama has used steroids. Show me someone who claims they haven’t used steroids, and I will show you a liar.
So yes, I am a fallible person who has injected special substances into my body in pursuit of professional glory. Just like you, I abused the drugs cortisone, testosterone, and EPO, among many, many others, in order to win an unprecedented number of international bicycle races. Just like your parents and their parents before them, my shameless deception helped me become one of the most celebrated athletes in the world.
But does that mean I should be humiliated, made a pariah, treated as a criminal?
No. It merely means that I am a human being. A human being with a real, living, beating heart. A heart that circulates an unnatural, chemically stimulated number of red blood cells through my veins in order to achieve superhuman levels of stamina. Just like yours.
ftfy, thanks to The Onion
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Lance Armstrong... greatest doper there was or ever will be
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@the-smiling-buddha
Dirty bastard.