To those that still believe Lance was clean, listen to this:

Ramanujan

Betsy Andreu.
Ok, I know it's old news, but I've noticed a lot of guys on here who seem to be new to cycling, or at least don't know a tremendous amount about it's history and doping culture.
Basically Besty talks about that infamous hospital room admission by Lance that he took just about every Performance enhancing drug available.
Listen to her story and tell me that she's lying:
http://www.competitorradio.com/download ... ndreau.mp3

ExeterSimon

She's lying and to be honest I couldnt care.....soooo bored of coming onto these boards and reading stuff about LA and drugs.

ONE BIG FREAKIN' YAWN.

toshmund

You are right...it is old news. Is this the Lance Armstrong drug doping scandal of the day then? Look forward to being educated in the history of cycling, and it's doping culture. Move over Matt Rendell - a new star is born!?

aurelio_-_banned

Ramanujan wrote:

Betsy Andreu.
Ok, I know it's old news, but I've noticed a lot of guys on here who seem to be new to cycling, or at least don't know a tremendous amount about it's history and doping culture.
Basically Besty talks about that infamous hospital room admission by Lance that he took just about every Performance enhancing drug available.
Listen to her story and tell me that she's lying:

http://www.competitorradio.com/download ... ndreau.mp3

And don`t forget the Walsh interviews...

http://www.competitorradio.com/details.php?show=150

http://www.competitorradio.com/details.php?show=151

Oh, and that tape, mentioned in the Walsh interview above, where Stephanie McIlvain admits that she did hear Armstrong emit to using Epo and all the rest, despite denying this at the SCA hearing. (A statement made after both her and her husband were threatened with being sacked by Oakley if they didn`t back Armstrong, even if this meant committing perjury).

http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2132106/m/gregstef.mp3

Arkibal

she still sounds like a lunatic on meth.

And I still don't count he/she say as a proof of anything, no matter how many times you push it to my face...

aurelio_-_banned

ExeterSimon wrote:

She's lying and to be honest I couldnt care.....soooo bored of coming onto these boards and reading stuff about LA and drugs.

ONE BIG FREAKIN' YAWN.

I was wondering, do many people in Exeter say things like `ONE BIG FREAKIN' YAWN` or is there also an Exeter in the US of A?

aurelio_-_banned

Arkibal wrote:

she still sounds like a lunatic on meth .

That`s just her particularly awful American accent!

Patrick1.0

What a load of hearsay. I find it funny that you guys sit there listening to this stuff and just swallow it all like it's all fact. I've said before, if he was taking epo, steroids (all the stuff she listed) before he got cancer, where does his improvement come from? You bring up Ferrari and all the ideas of being on a real program but it sounds to me she's making out that Lance was on a concoction of drugs before he started winning the Tour.


Aurelio, you seem totally obsessed with bringing Amrstrong's name down into the gutter. That doesn't really bother me it's just that you don't consider for one moment that he may have reinvented himself as a rider after cancer without the aid of drugs.

Jez mon

Surely if he took drugs before 1999, then it's guaranteed that he took drugs whilst winning the tour. Besides, what reasons do the Andreau's have to lie about Armstrong in a country where he is held in such high esteem.

aurelio_-_banned

Patrick1.0 wrote:

Aurelio, you seem totally obsessed with bringing Amrstrong's name down into the gutter.

Not really, it`s just that baiting Lance fan-boys with a few `inconvenient truths` is always entertaining. I know that at times this is a bit akin to poking dumb animals with a sharp stick, but hey! were are just talking about some bloke who races a bike. It`s not as though we are discussing America`s plans for global domination or anything important like that. Then again, perhaps, in a way, we are!

Cougar

On the other hand it's funny to see all the Lance haters venting their impotent fury at his come back. Great isn't it?

Keep the bile coming boys. There's another 10 months before the TDF 2009

SBezza

To be honest, I am not sure if he took drugs or not, but then again, I could say that with any of the TdF riders in the last 10 years, why the vendetta against one person, what if he confessed, and lost his victories, are you then going to test the 2nd place finisher, the 3rd place etc, where do you draw the line.

Jan Ullrich was implicated with blood doping, so he is just as bad. Fact is LA wasn't caught at the time (if indeed he did take any), and a hell of alot of the riders were not caught, if you are not testing positive you have the assume they are clean, this goes for today as well, I bet there are people on CERA not getting caught, so until a test comes along, that is 100% for even the minute about of it, and you can test every rider every day, those that don't get caught can not be assume guilty can they.

If LA wants to come back let him, I bet it is harder to dope now and get away with it, so no doubt he would have to do it clean, otherwise he will risk losing everything if he gets caught.

ExeterSimon

I was wondering, do many people in Exeter say things like `ONE BIG FREAKIN' YAWN` or is there also an Exeter in the US of A?

It was a homage to the Texan himself.

But I think there is an Exeter in the US....probably more than one.

dennisn

You guys have got to let this thing go. What possible difference will it make in YOUR
life if Lance is eventually found guilty or innocent of anything? What possible impact
will any of this have on you? Unless, unless you have been foolish enough to put these people on a altar as gods and heros and now you're finding out tthat they are mere
mortals. It's a sad day when the people you worship at the feet of are revealed as
actual human beings with all the faults that come along with being a member of the
human race.

Dennis Noward

Ramanujan

Betsy:The doctor asked: ‘have you ever taken any performance enhancing drugs?’
to which Lance replied almost nonchalantly in a monotone voice : ‘EPO, Steroids, growth hormone, testosterone, cortisone.’

Babbitt: Oh my god!...what ,just sorta like the same way you’d say .. big mac, fries, coke..
Betsy: exactly!

Moomaloid

I simply can not believe that with the massive evidence and eye witness testimonies that these guys STILL believe he didn't. Andreu nearly wrecked her and her husbands lives by sticking to her morals, i have the utmost respect for her and it was her testimony and every other including his old soigneur, plus the massive evidence that persuaded me. If you just wanna stick your heads in the sand and wish it away then fair enough.... deep down i really hope that he did do it clean... but...

dulldave

You've got to admit. This forum is a little more interesting now he has come back. I wish he hadn't bothered though.

Arkibal

dulldave wrote:

You've got to admit. This forum is a little more interesting now he has come back. I wish he hadn't bothered though.

+1
I'm so sick of this.
aurelio and micron must be blowing their brains off, expect many, many more LA threads to come, yawn.

nolf

Ramanujan, great name, pretty obscure reference. You must either be/have been involved in Maths, or like the film Good Will Hunting...

Don't really care for what people say, no matter how many books they write. maybe they should try suing him and seeing how far that gets them. As far as I'm concerned he was never caught, and was tested lots. End of story.

aurelio_-_banned

nolf wrote:

As far as I'm concerned he was never caught, and was tested lots. End of story.

Yeah right! And doubtless you would also argue that if someone has no points on their licence this is `proof` they have never broken the speed limit!

First off I would emphasise that this is actually about a lot more than Armstrong, in fact Armstrong is little more an obvious focus point for the much bigger problem of doping in cycling in general and the continuing power of the `omerta`.

One big issue is the fact that many doping practices were and remain undetectable. You say Armstrong was never caught. However, when Armstrong first made his comeback there was no test for Epo in use. (When tested retrospectively six of his samples from the 1999 Tour showed positive for Epo and he also tested positive for corticoids during the 1999 Tour, but that`s another story).

When a test for Epo came into use `800 ml of packed cells` autologous blood doping became the `state of the art` method. This method remained undetectable right through the Armstrong era and the `gossip` within the peleton was that team `Disco` were experts in applying this method to events such as the Tour, using motorbikes with refrigerated panniers to transport the blood and so on. See:

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/landis ... ssage.html

On top of all this the methods used to `cheat` dope test are legion and there are suspicions that US Postal was substituting the riders urine in the 2000 Tour, the samples provided for testing being unaturally clear for riders who had just ridden a long, hot mountain stage of the Tour.

Then even today there are many doping products that simply cannot be detected, or for which tests are only just coming into use, Dynepo being a good example. For example, see the stories below.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/?id=EPOv2

http://www.bicycle.net/2008/doping-expe ... -de-france

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/05072007/ ... tests.html

All in all, never testing positive is no proof at all that a rider was clean. (Just look at all those riders who were later admitted to be dopers who never tested positive). Conversely, all a positive test shows, other than the rider was doping, was that someone slipped up or the team doctors did not do their job properly.

aurelio_-_banned

nolf wrote:

maybe they should try suing him and seeing how far that gets them.

Perhaps Armstrong should try to sue over the publication of `From Lance to Landis`... He won`t of course because so much material has now come into the public area that he would almost certainly lose the case and such an action would see the defence dragging much more evidence into court. Back in 2004 Armstrong`s manager Bill Stapleton thought a similar course of action was the best policy when Armstrong tried to stop the publication of LA Confidentiel in France, saying:

"the best result for us is to ... drop the fucking lawsuit and all just goes away. Because the other option is full-out war in a French court and everybody's gonna testify and it could blow the whole sport."

blazing_saddles

Arkibal wrote:

dulldave wrote:

You've got to admit. This forum is a little more interesting now he has come back. I wish he hadn't bothered though.

+1
I'm so sick of this.
aurelio and micron must be blowing their brains off, expect many, many more LA threads to come, yawn.

You will also notice that Iain and a number of the major contributors to this forum, have ceased to post?
This is because of this debate and the quality of the rubbish being spouted by new, or resurrected posters on how someone who now looks like this:-



Is going to turn triple GT champ, (soon to be) Alberto Contador into next year's Tour head water-boy.

Ramanujan

Paddy Power are offering 10:1 odds on LA being removed from 2009 TdF for doping

Worth a punt, me thinks

Bonus

I simply can not believe that with the massive evidence and eye witness testimonies that these guys STILL believe he didn't.

Ok - by the same token then:

. . . I simply can not believe that with the massive evidence and eye witness testimonies that lance has never been caught . . . .

:-)

aurelio_-_banned

Bonus wrote:

I simply can not believe that with the massive evidence and eye witness testimonies that these guys STILL believe he didn't.

Ok - by the same token then:

. . . I simply can not believe that with the massive evidence and eye witness testimonies that lance has never been caught . . . .

:-)

See my post above.

leguape

aurelio wrote:

nolf wrote:

maybe they should try suing him and seeing how far that gets them.

Perhaps Armstrong should try to sue over the publication of `From Lance to Landis`... He won`t of course because so much material has now come into the public area that he would almost certainly lose the case and such an action would see the defence dragging much more evidence into court. Back in 2004 Armstrong`s manager Bill Stapleton thought a similar course of action was the best policy when Armstrong tried to stop the publication of LA Confidentiel in France, saying:

"the best result for us is to ... drop the fucking lawsuit and all just goes away. Because the other option is full-out war in a French court and everybody's gonna testify and it could blow the whole sport."

A fundamentally disingenuous post which totally ignores the nature and function of French libel law. In France the defendant only has to prove that a statement was made in good faith, not that the statement was true. They can also, to some degree, reprint a defamatory statement by a third party or use a defence of public interest (in the UK known as "The Reynolds Defence").

So from a plaintiff's point of view, Stapleton had a pretty good point. All he pointed out is that, on the balance of things, the case wasn't worth fighting as the French system offers far more support to the defendant than the plaintiff. As a lawyer, Stapleton's advice is sensible in this issue and would be what anyone acting on Armstrong's behalf would advise. You never fight a libel action on the basis of truth but on the basis of whether the case is winnable.

leguape

Actually, here's my problem with people like Aurelio, micron and so on:

You focus on Armstrong as if it is the only case that matters. The case that matters most is how the UCI has for nearly 50 years has ignored the issue, lied about the issue and done nothing. Autologous blood doping has existed since the 60s:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RF6UJ3BA1EZC6

What has been done about it? Nothing.

As long as people continue to stick Armstrong on the dartboard because he's an english language case with a simple binary narrative (Lemond good, Armstrong bad), we will continue to ignore much bigger issues of systematic doping at a a level of state and academic consent - Italian National Federation and Freiburg University - and this is far more damaging to the sport than any case involving one team or individual.

Answer me this, of the following riders held in reverence for their Tour achievements, which did not dope?

Hinault
Merckx
Anquetil
Indurain

If you can credibly believe that any of them took any less advantage from the best pharmaceutical opportunities available to them than Armstrong then you are, to my mind, totally misrepresenting the sport of cycling.

That some would so vehemently denounce Armstrong's record and seek to see it destroyed without so much as a backward glance at people who still have an important voice in the sport strikes me as embarassingly one-sided. Oh and remeber who introduced Armstrong to Ferrari?

aurelio_-_banned

leguape wrote:

from a plaintiff's point of view, Stapleton had a pretty good point. All he pointed out is that, on the balance of things, the case wasn't worth fighting as the French system offers far more support to the defendant than the plaintiff.

You don`t seem to have taken on board what Stapleton actually said at all! To repeat, Stapleton said that, in his view, if the case went to court were `everybody's gonna testify` this `could blow the whole sport`.

How on earth could people being called to testify `blow the whole sport` unless such testimony led to not only the `alleged` doping of Armstrong but the degree of doping within the sport in general becoming public? Against this the likelihood of winning a libel case in a French court is almost an irrelevance, and indeed Stapleton does not directly address this particular point at all, despite what you claim. Stapleton instead explicitly and exclusively focuses on the desirability of preventing evidence coming to court that was so explosive that it `could blow the whole sport`.

aurelio_-_banned

leguape wrote:

Actually, here's my problem with people like Aurelio, micron and so on...

It almost sounds as though you actually agree that Armstrong doped his way to his 7 Tour `wins` but simply don`t feel he should be singled out for criticism because others have doped in earlier generations.

For what it is worth I have no doubts that doping has existed throughout the history of cycling. I also see nothing wrong with exposing the doping of previous eras, including that of such `heroes` of cycling such as Merckx. In fact I have just tracked down a copy of the 1981 book Le Dossier Noir Du Dopage: Les Produits, Les Dangers, Les Responsables by Jean Pierre de Mondenard specifically because it is, or so I understand, one of the few sources documenting the use of drugs by former champions including Merckx. I also am pretty convinced that Indurain was a major `beneficiary` of the Epo era.

As to the current focus on Armstrong. I feel this is entirely justified given that it is still to be established whether his was truly the `greatest comeback` in the history of the sport or the `greatest fraud` and the vast extent of the cult which has been woven around `The Armstrong Myth`. Also significant is the way Armstrong`s legacy is still so influential, be this in the way people like Bruyneel are still in the sport, Armstrong`s defence of dopers like Landis or the way those defending Armstrong so often do so by attacking the testing labs, WADA and riders who have spoken out against doping. If Armstrong is to race again the focus is all the more justified. In fact without the announcement of his comeback I doubt that this particular `discussion` would even be taking place.

I would also argue that focusing on the doping of those brought up in the Epo era is particularly important because modern doping techniques are so effective one cannot know whether the podium shows who were the strongest, most gifted or most determined riders in the race or simply which riders have the best sorted doping program or who have a physiology which responds the best to `state of the art` doping methods.

As to your point about blood doping having a long history. I am fully aware of this, as I am aware that the practice was apparently introduced into the sport as early as 1984, with the American Olympic team being blood-doped and Moser using blood doping when he broke the hour record of Merckx. However, it does seem that the complex logistics and medical support needed to apply this method to a stage race like the Tour did not come along until it was made possible by the big-budgets of teams such as `Disco`.

chuckcork

I have no points on my licence.

That does not mean that I don't speed.

It also doesn't mean that I do speed.

Which is to say lack of points on my licence proves nothing either way, just that if I had been speeding that I haven't been caught.

Hence the Scottish legal point is that a legal case can be "unproven" as opposed to Not Guilty. So far it is unproven that LA took performance enhacing drugs. Maybe it never happened. There are those who actually do know what the case is, those who think they know but can only really guess, and the rest of us who don't know and in trying to decided what the case is are kidding by relying on those who are guessing.

Debate on Global Warming anyone? Maybe get a higher standard of argument.

aurelio_-_banned

chuckcork wrote:

Iack of points on my licence proves nothing either way, just that if I had been speeding that I haven't been caught.

Exactly my point! The lack of `positive` tests which meet all the criteria for bringing sanctions against a rider is in no way `proof` that a rider did not in fact dope.

chuckcork wrote:

So far it is unproven that LA took performance enhacing drugs. Maybe it never happened. There are those who actually do know what the case is, those who think they know but can only really guess, and the rest of us who don't know and in trying to decided what the case is are kidding by relying on those who are guessing.

Many would argue that, for example, those 6 `positives` for Epo from the 1999 Tour are proof in themselves, even without the support of `B` samples and so on. Also, we need to remember that a doping case does not need to be proven `beyond all reasonable doubt`, simply to the `comfortable satisfaction` of the panel hearing the case. Given the vast range of circumstantial and witness testimony which has amassed so far, many would argue that it has already been proved that Armstrong did dope, at least to the level of `comfortable satisfaction` demanded by WADA. For example:

http://www.arpuerta.com/040917.html