Lance Armstrong

[avalon]

I am on the side of Armstrong and not because we share the same surname.

Whilst I am not an avid cycling fan I have always followed his career due to him being my namesake and a few facts I would like to clarify.

Armstrong has been tested for drugs in excess of 500 times during his career, more than any athlete in any sport. He did indeed fail one test in 1999 but the drug found in his body was as a result of a prescribed medication given to him by his doctor for health reasons and he had the supporting documentation so no action was taken. This was and is not preferential treatment, anyone receiving the list from the BDO will see that there are occasions that when you actually NEED a drug for health reasons and your doctor prescribes this then WADA can take no action against you if they agree with your doctor. Of the other 500+ occasions he has been tested he has never failed a test.

Over the years other cyclists who have failed tests have come forward and publicly stated that USADA told them that if they could incriminate Armstrong in the use of drugs then the charges against them would either be dropped or they will be treated very leniently as far as their own punishment is concerned. The whole thing reeks of a witchhunt and has done for many years.

I would seriously question why have drug testing if, having passed test after test after test, no evidence ever found against you, a sporting organisation can then produce witnesses, most who have been found to be drug users themselves, can then overule the testing results because so an so claimed this or that.

Drug testing doesn`t lie.... people do, and if a drug test fails to find a drug that has been used then would it fail a further 500 times, I would say no, but if a person lies would they lie again... yes, a very good chance of that.

I think USADA are setting a very dangerous precedent here as far as drug testing goes. What they are doing is saying that drug testing is pretty much worthless because if we can find people to say otherwise then you will be found guilty regardless of your test results.

Coming to the fact Armstrong has said he will give up on trying to prove his innocence, can anyone seriously blame him. This has been going on for around 13 years, he has been tested more than any other athlete in any sport in history, he has been hounded time and time again over many years, USADA have tried to find people to incriminate him with promises of something in return. It not only happened during his career but has continued since his retirement. It is never ending and he can see no end to it. He has a family to worry about, he has a business to worry about. With 5 children he has better things to do with his time and money than to keep paying out for legal advice that appears to have no end. He knows that even if he battled and won this latest case it wouldn`t stop there, another one would follow and after that another one etc etc.

What Armstrong has on his side are the simple facts of all the tests taken over the years and has passed. USADA cannot produce any `facts` against that, what they can produce are a number of dodgy witnesses who will testify against him, so I come back to something above... why have drug testing if the results can always be overruled by `witnesses`.

[mrsheen]

I'm a bit confused by all this.

So Armstrong won 7 Tours? Was he drug tested after each of those wins? Did he pass or fail those drug tests?

What has suddenly come to light after all these years?

Nothing has suddenly come to light, there have been whispers for years. However in 2010 after 4 years and millions of dollars spent claiming his innocence Floyd Landis confessed to doping and said he would name others. After being deied a wild-card ride with a team in the Tour de France, Landis stated naming Armstrong (his former team-mate) as one of a number of high-profile cyclists he said had cheated.

He was tested multiple times during each Tour. Countless times at other events and even more times in out-of-competition testing.
Not one of those tests ever came back positive.

However, several of his former team-mates (only two named so far including Landis - both confessed dopers) have said that Armstrong was systematically doping thoughout his career. Also, there is a claim that a positive test during the 1999 tour was covered up by tour officials although this is only hearsay with no physical evidence.

It may well be that the doping chemists were just better than the detecting chemists, but as it stands he has never failed a test and has often been referred to as "the most tested athlete on the planet".

It's a mess.

That's the whole problem with performance enhancers, the detectors are only testing for drugs that they know about and the chemists are always inventing new ones.

Which answers Lee's question about what new has come to light. Samples from years ago could be dirty, but the testers were behind the times then, but have caught up on those drugs now. No agency would go after anyone unless they have strong evidence.

Armstrong is guilty, he's fought and fought up to the point where all the evidence would be in the public domain and if he lies under oath will go to prison. That is why he has stopped now. He wasnt fighting the charges, just fighting to have them thrown out. Once he lost that case he had the choice of accepting the charges and losing his titles or perjuring himself and going to prison as well as losing the titles. This is the Lesser of two evils and he can still claim to be the victim of a witch hunt, whilst keeping the drug-peddling truth out of the public eye.

[avalon]

So Landis and Armstrong on the same team with the same `medical` team etc..... get tested time and time again, one day Landis gets caught but at the same event Armstrong is tested but is found to have no drugs in his system, so the tests worked on the drugs Landis was using and not on Armstrong who Landis claimed was using the same thing.... yeah right.

The problem is that some people just cannot accept being second best or worse when they know they have been using drugs so they instantly believe that the people better than them must be doped up too.

mrsheen just ask yourself this.... why have a number of riders who have been found to be using drugs come forward and stated that they were offered leniency if they would make a statement about Armstrong. How many of the witnesses such as Landis have been offered the same thing, how many of them are telling the truth, how many THINK they are telling the truth, and how many want to believe they are telling the truth although they actually know nothing at all.

For every Landis who speaks in court there is another cyclist who can speak and tell them what was offered if they spoke against Armstrong. The court wouldn`t actually know who to believe, but what they can believe because the facts are recorded is that Armstrong was subjected to more tests than any athlete in history and was cleared, the very fact he was tested so often points towards a witchhunt.

Why do you say he is guilty, what concrete evidence do you have to show that?

Why do I think he is innocent... well 500+ drug tests show that and yes the drug makers could stay one step ahead of the testers... but seriously, 500 times over 12 years or more.

[Dannyboy]

Got to say, I believe there were athletes in London that are still using undetectable drug/doping techniques in order to enhance performance. There were only a handful of positive tests throughout the entire Games.

I was also extremely disappointed to hear that an athlete that I looked after for a short period of time pre-Games, became the first in London to fail a drugs test.

[WCDPA]

Must have been dodgy baking techniques in your household mate.

[avalon]

New on WADA`s list of banned substances:

Danny`s Dodgy Donuts

[Deleted User]

Drugs or not, cycling all the way to the moon in 1969 was some achievement.

[Stubby]

In the Ben Johnstone documentary in the build up to the olympics - the doctor in charge of testing, said he kept all of the gold medals samples fromm 88 and decided to test them to todays standards last year and he claims that if he went public over 30 gold medalists had drugs that werent detectable in 88!!

You'll never stop cheats in sport!

[Deleted User]

In the Ben Johnstone documentary in the build up to the olympics - the doctor in charge of testing, said he kept all of the gold medals samples fromm 88 and decided to test them to todays standards last year and he claims that if he went public over 30 gold medalists had drugs that werent detectable in 88!!

You'll never stop cheats in sport!

As I understand it, the freezing of samples ruins the prospect of future testing which is why Hamilton kept his Olympic cycling gold in 2004. Failed the A sample, but the B had been frozen and couldn't be tested. How are these samples preserved then?

[Stubby]

Wouldn't have a clue - he said something like they were kept in optimal conditions, probably due to the Johnstone scandel????

[Deleted User]

Apparently, Olympic samples are now kept for 8 years to allow retestes to the detectives can catch up with the cheats. Athens ones due to be re-tested. This from ESPN.

"Doping samples from each Olympics are stored for eight years to allow for them to be reanalyzed once new testing methods are validated. The eight-year period for Athens will expire Aug. 29, the date the Games closed in 2004.

The Athens samples are stored at the doping lab in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The move to retest comes after the World Anti-Doping Agency sent a letter to the IOC requesting that the samples be checked again based on the emergence of new testing methods since 2004.

"This is the very message that we wanted when we asked people to store (samples) for eight years," WADA director general David Howman told the AP on Tuesday. "If you cheated and you thought you got away with it, you might have to think again. Don't look yourself in the mirror until the eight years are up."

The Athens Games produced a record 26 doping cases, more than double the previous Olympic high of 12 at Los Angeles in 1984. Six medalists, including two gold winners, were caught in Athens from among 3,600 tests."

I can find nothing about re-tests from 1988 samples. I think this guy may have speculating.

[Stubby]

Can't find the program on iplayer - it's called "the race that shocked the world"

but I've found this clip about Marion Jones and how she cheated at Sidney and never got caught

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=en ... 10PBhVYTmg

[avalon]

In the Ben Johnstone documentary in the build up to the olympics - the doctor in charge of testing, said he kept all of the gold medals samples fromm 88 and decided to test them to todays standards last year and he claims that if he went public over 30 gold medalists had drugs that werent detectable in 88!!

You'll never stop cheats in sport!

weren`t detectable or weren`t banned in 1988 and yes there is a difference. WADA publish a new list every year by October 1st. The list does not become valid until January 1... 3 months later. The reason being that some new items on the list may well be being used by athletes up until Oct so they have to have a chance to get them out of their systems.

What would be wrong is to test old samples against a new list, that would be like changing the speed limit on the M1 to 60 and then fine everyone who had previously driven at 70.