Questions for Lance haters

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Comments

  • rockmount
    rockmount Posts: 761
    johnfinch wrote:
    rockmount wrote:
    OK so what you lot are saying, 7 consecutive TDF victories is a piece of p*ss (pun intended), in fact ANY one of the armchair experts here would, if they popped a proplus or two be capable of notching up 7,8,9 or more TDFs if they chose. I have to say, I had no idea I was in the midst of such greatness !!

    (sigh) No, rockmount, nobody was saying anything like that at all. The OP asked if we believed that LA was the GREATEST TdF rider ever. Therefore, people like me take that as an invitation to answer yes or no. I answered no, like some others, and thought that maybe I would explain my reasoning.

    Believing that other factors outweigh "he won it the most" does not mean that LA's achievement is being belittled, and that nobody thinks that he's a great.

    Adjective: Great
    Comparative: Greater
    Superlative: Greatest

    I believe LA is a bit of a golfer, Jacques Anquetil a right good chucker of Les Boules, and who knows ... maybe Merckxy is a dab hand at ping pong ... how the heck are we going to factor that all in ???

    PS

    This is just the most fun forum ever !! :lol:
    .. who said that, internet forum people ?
  • DaveyL
    DaveyL Posts: 5,167
    edited January 2009
    It's diffiuclt to compare the greatest from different eras in any sport. Sidle over to a chess forum (as if being a bike geek wasn't bad enough) and watch how vicious it gets when someone says Bobby Fischer would've cleaned Garry Kasparov's clock...

    OK, Lance focussed solely on the Tour, but so did all his rivals.
    Le Blaireau (1)
  • finchy
    finchy Posts: 6,686
    rockmount wrote:
    johnfinch wrote:
    rockmount wrote:
    OK so what you lot are saying, 7 consecutive TDF victories is a piece of p*ss (pun intended), in fact ANY one of the armchair experts here would, if they popped a proplus or two be capable of notching up 7,8,9 or more TDFs if they chose. I have to say, I had no idea I was in the midst of such greatness !!

    (sigh) No, rockmount, nobody was saying anything like that at all. The OP asked if we believed that LA was the GREATEST TdF rider ever. Therefore, people like me take that as an invitation to answer yes or no. I answered no, like some others, and thought that maybe I would explain my reasoning.

    Believing that other factors outweigh "he won it the most" does not mean that LA's achievement is being belittled, and that nobody thinks that he's a great.

    Adjective: Great
    Comparative: Greater
    Superlative: Greatest

    I believe LA is a bit of a golfer, Jacques Anquetil a right good chucker of Les Boules, and who knows ... maybe Merckxy is a dab hand at ping pong ... how the heck are we going to factor that all in ???

    PS

    This is just the most fun forum ever !! :lol:

    :lol:

    Golfer? Awww, that's a pity, I'm gonna have to become a Lance hater now. Can't stand golf(ers).

    So come on, give us your opinions please (with reasons), as to which is the bigger achievement, winning TdF 7 times in a row, or winning TdF five times but winning other big prizes in the same season?
  • Meds1962
    Meds1962 Posts: 391
    Kleber - I got the angle about a low number of positives on T mobile and how you might apply that principle to USPS / Discovery. Maybe you speculate a stage further and say the whole crowd were doping because Zabel came clean later on, Riis had to bite the bullet because of Zabel; Vinokourov later on with Astana etc. It paints a black picture for T mobile but you still come up with zero positives for disco / usps.

    If you look at them you see several notables caught with subsequent teams, Hamilton, Landis, Heras, the guy in last year's tour etc. You can draw a conclusion that it means they were doping all along; you can also draw a conclusion that they were caught out because they started after leaving the team eg. how could Landis be so stupid on the 2006 tour if he was such an experienced doper, same for Heras.
    7 tours for a 9 man team x say 19 stages = 1200 potential testing opportunities with no positives; that excludes all other races. I don't know for a fact that none of them ever doped because I wasn't there, but those stats are hard facts.
    O na bawn i fel LA
  • finchy
    finchy Posts: 6,686
    DaveyL wrote:
    It's diffiuclt to compare the greatest from different eras in any sport. Sidle over to a chess forum (as if being a bike geek wasn't bad enough) and watch how vicious it gets when someone says Bobby Fischer would've cleaned Garry Kasparov's clock...

    OK, Lance focussed solely on the Tour, but so did all his rivals.

    I quite agree. I don't usually start this kind of conversation, but I'll join in if somebody else does. Thanks for the chess tip. I'll go and start an argument now, I think.
  • blazing_saddles
    blazing_saddles Posts: 22,704
    Meds1962 wrote:
    It paints a black picture for T mobile but you still come up with zero positives for disco / usps.

    I don't know for a fact that none of them ever doped because I wasn't there, but those stats are hard facts.

    Erm.....doesn't Frankie Andreu count? He fessed up to taking EPO, so he could lead the USPS train up those 1999 Tour hills.
    Of course, he never tested positive.
    Not surprising, since there wasn't a test for EPO back in those dark days.
    That's why the whole team were measuring over 49% proof. :wink:
    "Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.
  • finchy
    finchy Posts: 6,686
    Meds1962 wrote:
    Kleber - I got the angle about a low number of positives on T mobile and how you might apply that principle to USPS / Discovery. Maybe you speculate a stage further and say the whole crowd were doping because Zabel came clean later on, Riis had to bite the bullet because of Zabel; Vinokourov later on with Astana etc. It paints a black picture for T mobile but you still come up with zero positives for disco / usps.

    If you look at them you see several notables caught with subsequent teams, Hamilton, Landis, Heras, the guy in last year's tour etc. You can draw a conclusion that it means they were doping all along; you can also draw a conclusion that they were caught out because they started after leaving the team eg. how could Landis be so stupid on the 2006 tour if he was such an experienced doper, same for Heras.
    7 tours for a 9 man team x say 19 stages = 1200 potential testing opportunities with no positives; that excludes all other races. I don't know for a fact that none of them ever doped because I wasn't there, but those stats are hard facts.

    I'm not talking about USPS here, just about doping tests in general. Have you ever read Willy Voet's Breaking The Chain? It's a very good account of how easy it is for a team with a good doctor to avoid positive tests even when riders are up to their eyeballs.

    Coming back to USPS, Blazing Saddles, I knew about Andreu's confession, but I've only heard rumours about the 49% USPS tests. I thought that test results were meant to be confidential unless there is a positive case. Can you tell me where I can see these results, please? Not on wikipedia, mind!
  • timoid.
    timoid. Posts: 3,133
    micron wrote:
    It is quite instructive to compare the palmares of Beloki, Ullrich and Basso - the main opposition in the Armstrong years - with Rominger, Zulle and Jalabert. The calibre of Armstrong's opposition is questionable - but it is hard to judge when increasingly riders prefer to train and prepare than get on the road and race.


    Zulle was Armstrong's opposition (at least in 99)

    Ullrich had decent palmares Tour de France, Vuelta Worlds TT, Olympic RR and of course all those second places in the Tour. What about Heras or Simoni?

    Armstrong has beaten everything in front of him in the Tour. What else could he do (in the Tour at least).

    There are many reasons to knock Armstrong. The quality of his opposition is not.
    It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.
  • richard wants a baum
    richard wants a baum Posts: 744
    Why the personal animosity, why suggest "give them hell"?

    It's ironic that a thread about "lance haters" broadly reveals not hate, just sceptism about Armstrong but flushes out anger from others who don't want to debate cycling, only to have a go at people. What's up?

    Ive notice this in other threads but it blatantly obvious in this thread particular one person who just seems to be looking for an argument which is fine if it didnt involve so much agro.[/quote]
    Take care of the luxuries and the necessites will take care of themselves.
  • LangerDan
    LangerDan Posts: 6,132
    Meds1962 wrote:
    7 tours for a 9 man team x say 19 stages = 1200 potential testing opportunities with no positives; that excludes all other races. I don't know for a fact that none of them ever doped because I wasn't there, but those stats are hard facts.

    There wouldn't be anywhere near that number of real testing opportunities. Until very recently, testing has usually been on the basis of a test at the pre-race medical, daily tests for stage winners and classification leaders plus sufficient "random" tests each day to ensure every rider is tested once during the race. If you kept your domestiques out of the classifications they only faced two tests per tour. Not only that, once the domestique had completed his "random" test, he was home-free ofr the remainder of the race..

    So for, say, the 6 riders of the squad who wouldn't be troubling the finish-line judges, there would be a total of around 84 tests over the seven years, half of which would be the"fixed date" tests at the start of the tour and could be quite easliy worked around. A team therefore has to deal with about 6 random tests per tour. For the leader and perhaps two "super-domestiques", the situation is trickier as they will appear on the testing schedule far more frequently. Even so, the lieutenants may get only a few additional tests on the basis of a stage win so you are still looking at perhaps a dozen tests per team per tour, excluding the team leader.
    'This week I 'ave been mostly been climbing like Basso - Shirley Basso.'
  • moray_gub
    moray_gub Posts: 3,328
    micron wrote:
    iainf, did you read the article you linked to? Didn't you love the line about:

    "I just didn't have the firepower to keep it going." Armstrong said after finishing the Australian six-day classic in 29th position, 49 seconds behind a winner that many cycling fans hadn't heard of.

    What cycling fans would they be? The ones who follow Lance Armstrong to the exclusion of every other rider? Davies used to ride for Astana FFS! But then the article goes on to call him the 'greatest ever' rider showing the ignorance/lack of research of the reporter.

    See that's the kind of blinkered sh*te that makes me mad about Armstrong - the assumption that we are all Lance groupies and couldn't give a fig about any other rider and that the sport essentially is Armstrong - not a long and colourful and extraordinary history of exploits and grand champions like Merckx and Coppi and Bartali and Hinault et al. Armstrong may figure amongst them - no one can argue that winning 7 TdFs isn't a great feat - but he is not the greatest of them and his achievements and palmares don't stand comparison with the very greatest.

    But that's an opinion based on a knowledge of the sport's history not admiration of the achievements of one rider. You want an extraordinary accomplishement then Anquetil's Dauphine-Libere/Bordeaux-Paris double takes some beating http://homepage.ntlworld.com/veloarchiv ... double.htm

    So let me get this right im never sure exactly where your generalisations are at any given time so does it go something like this ......Not being anti Lance categorises me and i suppose others as not being very knowledgeable about cycling and its history ?



    MG
    Gasping - but somehow still alive !
  • moray_gub
    moray_gub Posts: 3,328
    johnfinch wrote:
    rockmount wrote:
    johnfinch wrote:
    rockmount wrote:
    OK so

    So come on, give us your opinions please (with reasons), as to which is the bigger achievement, winning TdF 7 times in a row, or winning TdF five times but winning other big prizes in the same season?

    if we discount the early tours in this In my opinion there are 6 or 7 TDF riders who stand head and shoulders above everybody else and these are Coppi, Bartali , Anquitel Merckx,Hinault,Indurain and Armstrong. Each could be considered as one the greatest for a variety of different reasons such as the 10 years and the war between Bartalis wins, Coppi destroying the field in 52 (two wins out of three TDfs) . Master Jacques with his 5 wins and enjoying a few glasses of wine along the way, Hinault and Indurain with their five and Lance with his 7 all fantastic achievements in their own right but for me the greatest is Merckx mainly for his exploits in 69 to win every jersey and the manner in which he won ,in particular the day he took off some 140kms from the finish and rode the whole field of his back wheel a brilliant aggressive riding style that charecterised him. Also he has most stage wins and days in yellow . Also by staying in the tour in 75 when he could easily have dropped out showed the mark of the man, he gave the Thevenet win a bit of legitamcy if you like.

    MG
    Gasping - but somehow still alive !
  • blazing_saddles
    blazing_saddles Posts: 22,704
    johnfinch wrote:
    Coming back to USPS, Blazing Saddles, I knew about Andreu's confession, but I've only heard rumours about the 49% USPS tests. I thought that test results were meant to be confidential unless there is a positive case. Can you tell me where I can see these results, please? Not on wikipedia, mind!

    I doubt that you will find the specific figures for each rider, online. It was Vaughters, in LAC and "From Lance to Landis", that got it to print.
    In the meantime, dependant upon how much credibilty you give to various riders and the media, there is some sensational "heresay" (key word for fans) evidence, in these links.

    Matt di Canio and Tim Clinger on FLandis:-
    http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20 ... andis.html

    Vaughters denying EPO use at Postal, but quoting the very high HC figures.
    http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id= ... hters_1999

    1995. Swart reveals the whole Motorola team testing at over 50%. (including Armstrong, but before the 50% limit)
    http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/09 ... armstrong9

    This is just a tiny selection of the press on such incidents out there. Believe it, or not, at your discretion. :wink:
    "Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.
  • blazing_saddles
    blazing_saddles Posts: 22,704
    Moray Gub wrote:
    johnfinch wrote:
    rockmount wrote:
    johnfinch wrote:
    rockmount wrote:
    OK so

    So come on, give us your opinions please (with reasons), as to which is the bigger achievement, winning TdF 7 times in a row, or winning TdF five times but winning other big prizes in the same season?

    if we discount the early tours in this In my opinion there are 6 or 7 TDF riders who stand head and shoulders above everybody else and these are Coppi, Bartali , Anquitel Merckx,Hinault,Indurain and Armstrong. Each could be considered as one the greatest for a variety of different reasons such as the 10 years and the war between Bartalis wins, Coppi destroying the field in 52 (two wins out of three TDfs) . Master Jacques with his 5 wins and enjoying a few glasses of wine along the way, Hinault and Indurain with their five and Lance with his 7 all fantastic achievements in their own right but for me the greatest is Merckx mainly for his exploits in 69 to win every jersey and the manner in which he won ,in particular the day he took off some 140kms from the finish and rode the whole field of his back wheel a brilliant aggressive riding style that charecterised him. Also he has most stage wins and days in yellow . Also by staying in the tour in 75 when he could easily have dropped out showed the mark of the man, he gave the Thevenet win a bit of legitamcy if you like.

    MG

    Exactly. +1000
    "Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.
  • finchy
    finchy Posts: 6,686
    Moray Gub wrote:
    micron wrote:
    iainf, did you read the article you linked to? Didn't you love the line about:

    "I just didn't have the firepower to keep it going." Armstrong said after finishing the Australian six-day classic in 29th position, 49 seconds behind a winner that many cycling fans hadn't heard of.

    What cycling fans would they be? The ones who follow Lance Armstrong to the exclusion of every other rider? Davies used to ride for Astana FFS! But then the article goes on to call him the 'greatest ever' rider showing the ignorance/lack of research of the reporter.

    See that's the kind of blinkered sh*te that makes me mad about Armstrong - the assumption that we are all Lance groupies and couldn't give a fig about any other rider and that the sport essentially is Armstrong - not a long and colourful and extraordinary history of exploits and grand champions like Merckx and Coppi and Bartali and Hinault et al. Armstrong may figure amongst them - no one can argue that winning 7 TdFs isn't a great feat - but he is not the greatest of them and his achievements and palmares don't stand comparison with the very greatest.

    But that's an opinion based on a knowledge of the sport's history not admiration of the achievements of one rider. You want an extraordinary accomplishement then Anquetil's Dauphine-Libere/Bordeaux-Paris double takes some beating http://homepage.ntlworld.com/veloarchiv ... double.htm

    So let me get this right im never sure exactly where your generalisations are at any given time so does it go something like this ......Not being anti Lance categorises me and i suppose others as not being very knowledgeable about cycling and its history ?



    MG

    Mr Gub,

    I don't think that the poster was suggesting this at all. He or she was merely saying that it is annoying to see mainstream coverage of road cycling limited to one man and one race. As you can speak knowledgeably about the other greats, as well as admire Armstrong, then Micron would not be speaking about fans like you, but people who only take an interest in cycling once a year.

    Makes me mad as well, but I blame the media for that, rather than Armstrong. Surely an in-depth article and a decent interview covering his return would have been sufficient.
  • Kléber
    Kléber Posts: 6,842
    I think it was all about the quote "a winner that many cycling fans hadn't heard of" when Allan Davis is a reasonably well known rider. As well as a high profile suspension for Operaction Puerto, he's won a lot of races. Not a household name but many cycling fans will be fully aware of him. It's the way Armstrong overshadows everyone that can irk a bit, a rider who's got all the results below is deemed irrelevant.

    2003
    1st, Trofeo Manacor
    1st, Stage 4, Circuit Cycliste de la Sarthe
    2nd, National Road Race Championship
    2004
    1st, Stage 5, Deutschland Tour
    1st, Stage 3, Tour de Pologne
    1st, Giro del Piemonte
    1st, Trofeo Alcudia
    1st, Trofeo Manacor
    98th, Overall, Tour de France
    2005
    1st, Points Classification, Eneco Tour
    Winner Stage 3
    1st, Points Classification, Vuelta a Aragón
    Winner Stage 5
    1st, Stages 1, 3 & 5, Vuelta a Murcia
    2nd, Overall, Tour Down Under
    3rd, Paris-Tours
    3rd, HEW Cyclassics
    84th, Tour de France
    2006
    1st, Stages 2 & 5, Tour Down Under
    Commonwealth Games, Road Race
    2007
    1st, Stage 3, Volta a Catalunya
    Tour of Qinghai Lake
    Points classification
    1st, Stage 1, 3, 5, 6 & 9
    2nd, Milan-San Remo
    2008
    2nd, Overall, Tour Down Under
    1st, Stage 3
    2nd, Overall, Geelong Bay Classic Series
    1st, Stage 4
    4th, Overall, Tour de Pologne
    1st, Stage 2
    1st, Points classification
  • micron
    micron Posts: 1,843
    Timoid, sorry, you missed my point which was that the riders who competed in the Armstrong era have shallow palmares compared even to the Indurain era because of the fixation that has developed with the TdF as the 'one and only'. Personally I bemoan that fact - it's not that long ago that Hinault was becoming probably the second greatest rider ever with his ability to win on all terrains. Indurain won back to back Giro/Tour doubles and the last winner before the Armstrong era did that double - it really is since 1999 that it's become TdF uber alles and Armstrong was a prime mover in that move to ultra specialisation.

    I appreciate that some fans simply like to watch one rider dominate, like some football fans will only follow the big 4 but it's not for me - it's unhealthy for a sport to be predicated on one event and one rider, especially should that poster boy turn out to be not all he seems.
  • Meds1962
    Meds1962 Posts: 391
    Langer Dan wrote
    There wouldn't be anywhere near that number of real testing opportunities. Until very
    So for, say, the 6 riders of the squad who wouldn't be troubling the finish-line judges, there would be a total of around 84 tests over the seven years, half of which would be the"fixed date" tests at the start of the tour and could be quite easliy worked around. A team therefore has to deal with about 6 random tests per tour. For the leader and perhaps two "super-domestiques", the situation is trickier as they will appear on the testing schedule far more frequently. Even so, the lieutenants may get only a few additional tests on the basis of a stage win so you are still looking at perhaps a dozen tests per team per tour, excluding the team leader.[/quote]

    No doubt that's a realistic assessment of likely tests but all of the 1200 opportunities exist but there's no knowing which one will have your name on it and no second chance for 2 years if you're caught.
    O na bawn i fel LA
  • Kléber
    Kléber Posts: 6,842
    But there was no test for EPO for a long time, it's use in the peloton was widespread for a decade and no one was being tested for it. So nobody could be caught. Once the EPO ban came along, many riders and teams moved towards blood doping, because there was no test for that.
  • cadenza
    cadenza Posts: 8
    TheDrunkMonk wrote:
    Hello Lance haters. I've seen loads of threads that spiral into Lance is a cheat, 1999, EPO. So I have a few questions to start you all off again. Try and stay on subject, I'm not judging and I'm genuinely interested.

    1. If eveyone agreed that he was doping in 1999, would you accept that he is still the greatest TDF rider of all time?

    2. Do all of you believe he was doping in all of his tour wins?

    3. If he came top 5 this year at 38, (proved clean) would you admit he's pretty special?

    4. Are you all as anti-Pantani, Merckx, Anquetil etc?


    Apologies for dragging it back to the original question, but:

    1. Regardless of doping, strength of team, focus on one event - to accumulate 7 successive TdF wins marks anyone out as one of the greatest athletes of recent times.

    2. No...although I am unfashionable in that I do tend to base my opinions on available evidence.

    3. Again...I consider anyone who finishes top 5 in TdF in any year as special. 99.999999%+ of cyclists will never achieve it, even with drugs as staple diet.

    4. No

    Just my tuppence worth.
    "Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people"
  • BilgeRat
    BilgeRat Posts: 23
    Meds1962 wrote:
    No doubt that's a realistic assessment of likely tests but all of the 1200 opportunities exist but there's no knowing which one will have your name on it and no second chance for 2 years if you're caught.

    The "doping test" is merely the taking of samples and subsequent performing of various assays available at the time. If there is no assay available (or it is insufficiently sensitive) for the substances taken by an individual then the number of tests is entirely irrelevant whether they are tested once in a decade or every bleedin' day. In fact as pointed out by kleber your line of reasoning is also mostly irrelevant. They're not gambling on the chance of being tested they're gambling on the existence of a test.
  • Meds1962
    Meds1962 Posts: 391
    Fine, but we're looking at a 7 year period during which (correct me if I'm wrong), an EPO test was developed, 'normal' red cell values were known, and a means of identifying abnormal values available.

    Pantani was caught in 1999 or 2000 on that basis but was thrashed by LA on his first Tour thereafter. If there was a golden opportunity to nail both of them it was at the top Mt. Ventoux (or anywhere else on that tour), even if it only established that something was so abnormal that it could not be explained.

    The fact is that the people doing the testing came up with nothing in 7 years.
    O na bawn i fel LA
  • Kléber
    Kléber Posts: 6,842
    Meds1962 wrote:
    If there was a golden opportunity to nail both of them it was at the top Mt. Ventoux (or anywhere else on that tour), even if it only established that something was so abnormal that it could not be explained.
    You assume that the UCI wanted to catch the riders. Sadly even today the UCI could test the samples from the Tour of Italy this summer but refuses to do this because it doesn't want to rewrite the result.

    It still persists today with the "Vampire" testing of riders early in the morning, meaning riders can prepare for any test of their haematocrit count and can also infuse blood during the hours after the test but before a race.
  • rockmount
    rockmount Posts: 761
    BilgeRat wrote:
    Meds1962 wrote:
    No doubt that's a realistic assessment of likely tests but all of the 1200 opportunities exist but there's no knowing which one will have your name on it and no second chance for 2 years if you're caught.

    The "doping test" is merely the taking of samples and subsequent performing of various assays available at the time. If there is no assay available (or it is insufficiently sensitive) for the substances taken by an individual then the number of tests is entirely irrelevant whether they are tested once in a decade or every bleedin' day. In fact as pointed out by kleber your line of reasoning is also mostly irrelevant. They're not gambling on the chance of being tested they're gambling on the existence of a test.

    No doubt that some time in the future the genetic variation that pre-disposes a rider to higher lactate tolerance, and aerobic capacity will be identified. These advantageous variances will be outlawed, and eventually engineered out. The racing will be incredibly exciting, amongst genetically similar competitors, the winners being determined by luck alone ... :wink::wink:
    .. who said that, internet forum people ?
  • moray_gub
    moray_gub Posts: 3,328
    BilgeRat wrote:
    Meds1962 wrote:
    No doubt that's a realistic assessment of likely tests but all of the 1200 opportunities exist but there's no knowing which one will have your name on it and no second chance for 2 years if you're caught.

    The "doping test" is merely the taking of samples and subsequent performing of various assays available at the time. If there is no assay available (or it is insufficiently sensitive) for the substances taken by an individual then the number of tests is entirely irrelevant whether they are tested once in a decade or every bleedin' day. In fact as pointed out by kleber your line of reasoning is also mostly irrelevant. They're not gambling on the chance of being tested they're gambling on the existence of a test.

    Pantani was nabbed (of a sort) before Lance had even pulled on his first yellow jersey !

    MG
    Gasping - but somehow still alive !
  • finchy
    finchy Posts: 6,686
    Moray Gub wrote:
    BilgeRat wrote:
    Meds1962 wrote:
    No doubt that's a realistic assessment of likely tests but all of the 1200 opportunities exist but there's no knowing which one will have your name on it and no second chance for 2 years if you're caught.

    The "doping test" is merely the taking of samples and subsequent performing of various assays available at the time. If there is no assay available (or it is insufficiently sensitive) for the substances taken by an individual then the number of tests is entirely irrelevant whether they are tested once in a decade or every bleedin' day. In fact as pointed out by kleber your line of reasoning is also mostly irrelevant. They're not gambling on the chance of being tested they're gambling on the existence of a test.

    Pantani was nabbed (of a sort) before Lance had even pulled on his first yellow jersey !

    MG

    Yeah, Marco and his team messed up big time there!

    I think the point still stands though, that given all of Ullrich's negatives, as well as Basso's, and for years Vino's, it's difficult to say that a cyclist MUST be clean because of no positive tests. Rather, we should give them the benefit of the doubt unless there is other evidence to suggest otherwise.
  • singlespeedexplosif
    singlespeedexplosif Posts: 1,564
    we should give them the benefit of the doubt unless there is other evidence to suggest otherwise.

    so name a rider for whom there is no evidence to suggest otherwise? ;) I think you'd be going back to before the invention of the bicycle...
  • AntLockyer
    AntLockyer Posts: 561
    TheDrunkMonk wrote:
    1. If eveyone agreed that he was doping in 1999, would you accept that he is still the greatest TDF rider of all time?
    No, I think he is the greatest cyclist that targeted just the TDF for seven years.
    TheDrunkMonk wrote:
    2. Do all of you believe he was doping in all of his tour wins?
    Yes
    TheDrunkMonk wrote:
    3. If he came top 5 this year at 38, (proved clean) would you admit he's pretty special?
    Yes
    TheDrunkMonk wrote:
    4. Are you all as anti-Pantani, Merckx, Anquetil etc?
    No
    My silly looking GT
    WTP Pony flatland bike (maybe 4 sal3)

    http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... =3&rows=50
  • Kléber
    Kléber Posts: 6,842
    johnfinch wrote:
    I think the point still stands though, that given all of Ullrich's negatives, as well as Basso's, and for years Vino's, it's difficult to say that a cyclist MUST be clean because of no positive tests. Rather, we should give them the benefit of the doubt unless there is other evidence to suggest otherwise.
    Very fair. But where do you draw the line on evidence? Must it be, say, court admissable evidence? Or do we include other aspects, for example is paying Dr Ferrari to be your preparatore a form of evidence?
  • calvjones
    calvjones Posts: 3,850
    Kléber wrote:
    johnfinch wrote:
    I think the point still stands though, that given all of Ullrich's negatives, as well as Basso's, and for years Vino's, it's difficult to say that a cyclist MUST be clean because of no positive tests. Rather, we should give them the benefit of the doubt unless there is other evidence to suggest otherwise.
    Very fair. But where do you draw the line on evidence? Must it be, say, court admissable evidence? Or do we include other aspects, for example is paying Dr Ferrari to be your preparatore a form of evidence?

    post-dated TUEs anyone?
    ___________________

    Strava is not Zen.

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