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leviramsey

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Riis I don’t think will be panicking. He’s a known drug user, and kind of just shrugged his shoulders. He’s fine unless the UCI collapses. Which is of course a possibility. Though today Contador & Valverde battling it out in the Vuelta left me with a sick feeling...

As for the various forms of drugs taken, it was exactly that; they are in various forms and they have been developing. Certainly it would appear that the USPS were sponsoring Ferrari to come up with multiple application methods, to be taken at various times. Its chilling to think that when Ferrari was on the phone to Armstrong on that climb in the Tour, he was probably looking at the pictures to tell Armstrong when to start taking the drugs.

Yes its all a body blow to cycling. One that could have been avoided if people like the UCI had actually acted on the 1999 positive. Or the 2001 positive.

The Tour of Britain should be fun, but certainly its going to be a little bit from the gutter.

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Think it would have been an even greater body blow to cycling if they hadn't have gone after Armstrong and uncovered this. The deeper and more damaging these claims are to the people involved the better it will be for cycling, at least there's a possibility of repairing the sport which wouldn't have been possible otherwise. People are now referring to the 90's and early 00's as the dark days, just as then they referred to the 80's as the dark days. I am still convinced that cycling is as filthy as ever and the only thing that's changed are the doses - they're still one step ahead of the testers. The same people are all still there.

I actually don't think cycling will suffer a great deal in terms of sponsorship because of this. I'm convinced that it's corrupt and people are doped but I still watch every big race on TV, and buy the cycling products they are advertising. Festina still invest heavily in the sport despite what happened them. I think the American following has slowly dissipated since Lance retired anyway.

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The 80s as a dark decade? Seemed iirc it was the beginning the 84 Olympics scandal and sprinters being fined left right and centre for testorone. Oh and Delgardo’s failed drugs test. But certainly by the mid 90s a real darkness was creeping in. Indurain has always been portrayed as clean, but I ve never been convinced by him. The real drug taking was on the Renault trip to Columbia where Fignon took a load of cocaine with hilarious consequences :D

Is cycling still dirty. Hell yes. But why oh why didn’t the footballers & tennis clients of Fuentes ever feel the real heat.

One thing is for sure Armstrong was the worse thing to happen to cycling.

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If thats the single thing that was measure it by, then in the USA you may have a point, but since him the interest has waned. But the damage he has done to individuals, his corrupt actions, his attitude, it took cycling to a dark place. He was a dictator of the peleton in the worse way.

And hopefully Liggett and Sherwyn can be shown to be part of this whole sorry episode.

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If thats the single thing that was measure it by, then in the USA you may have a point, but since him the interest has waned. But the damage he has done to individuals, his corrupt actions, his attitude, it took cycling to a dark place. He was a dictator of the peleton in the worse way.

And hopefully Liggett and Sherwyn can be shown to be part of this whole sorry episode.

Bizarrely of all the runners up who would take Armstrong's spot if and when he has his titles officially stripped the guy who is most likely to be clean could be Alex Zulle.

The Festina affair was something of a watershed moment in cycling that, unfortunately only lasted until Armstrong and USPS arrived at the Tour the next year. Supposedly most teams laid off that year, until they realised what Armstrong was up to at the Tour.

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Zulle clean????????? Zulle admitted to EPO use, and I believe his 1999 samples show extensive EPO used. Both his early teams Once & Festina were known for widespread doping activity.

Did USPS ride the tour before Armstrong? I can’t remember the history after Motorola packed up.

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Never knew about Zulle's post Festina EPO samples. I knew about his ONCE and Festina history, but I wondered if a lot of those guys in '99 were clean. Always really liked Zulle as a rider for some reason.

Pretty sure USPS were about pre-Lance but I can't remember who would have been there - Hincapie maybe. A few of the Americans from Motorola ended up at Cofidis including Lance. You wonder how things may have turned out if he'd stayed at Cofidis? Probably exactly the same.

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USPS 1997 TdF Team:

Vyacheslav Ekimov

Adriano Baffi

Jean-Cyril Robin

George Hincapie

Marty Jemison

Tyler Hamilton

Dariusz Baranowski

Pascal Derame

Peter Meinert

Never heard of most of them. Lance must have got rid of the non-US guys except Ekimov.

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Could anyone give me a brief summary on what makes it so likely that Armstrong is guilty?

I'm having a debate on another forum and they're insisting that there's no proof and Armstrong being stripped of his titles is completely outrageous.

But I'm assuming there is some sort of proof otherwise he'd have kept fighting against it?

I don't really feel knowledgeable enough about the subject to keep up the debate at the moment.

They're also saying that Armstrong already went to Court and won, but that they've stripped his titles anyway. That can't be true can it?

The closest thing to a "smoking gun" are the urine tests from the 99 tour.

Back in 99 drug testers didn't have a test for EPO so riders never fail it as such. The drug boosts red blood cells and was often given to recovering cancer patents, Lance and his doctor would have been well familiar with it.

For the Sydney Olympics the anti doping organisation developed a reliable test for it and decided to use some samples from the 99 tour as a sort of 'field test' for their new methods. The samples were numbered but they didn't know which sample was for which rider.

The agency found 13 samples had failed, 6 from the same rider, but as they were using it as a practice test on B samples rather than an official sanctioned anti-doping test on A + B samples they didn't pursue any case.

Years later in 2005 a French journalist from L'Equipe got a tip off about these failed tests from the 99 tour. He went to the UCI and asked them for the names that corresponded to the failed tests. The rider that had 6 failed samples was Lance Armstrong. The pattern in his urine was consistent with him injecting EPO every 3rd or 4th day of the tour over the 3 weeks with the biggest hit being on the prologue on the first day.

It seems pretty conclusive that he was doping during that tour and his teammates have now come out confirming that the team were using EPO systematically during that race. Armstrong says it was not an official test so it doesn't count, plus the French are out to get him and his teammates are all lying.

A second case is when his urine sample in 99 showed up traces of steroid use during the official anti doping testing of the time. According to his team masseuse, Armstrong and his team were panicking about how they would explain the failed test. Apparently the plan they came up with was to get the team doctor to write a prescription for a skin cream that contained steroids and back date it to before the tour.

The story now reads that he put on skin cream for saddle sores and his doctor miss prescribed it not realising it contained steroids. Armstrong says his former masseuse was lying about a conspiracy.

There is a 3rd suspicious case following the Tour of Switzerland in 2001. There were rumours and allegations that Armstrong had failed a test during that race. No test results came to light but the UCI did reveal that Armstrong had paid them $100,000 at that time, $88k of it they spent on some new testing equipment apparently and $12k just went unaccounted for altogether. This remains the only time the UCI has ever taken money from a cyclist still participating in one of its events.

Fast forward to the present day and the American anti doping agency have lined up 10 witnesses, former teammates etc to testify against him saying that they had seen Armstrong doping throughout his career and apparently they also have failed samples from 2009 and 2010 to back up the claims.

You still get his fans going on about “never failing a test” but Scottish cyclist David Miller never failed a test either, he was caught with the drugs in his possession and admitted he’d been doping throughout his career. Marion Jones also doped her whole career and never failed any test. It is quite easy apparently to get your blood thinned enough to pass a test after a race. Back in the Armstrong days the cyclists were allowed time alone with their team doctors after races before they had to be called up to be tested.

When you look back and realise that all the top riders from the Armstrong years have 1 by 1 been found guilty of doping, including all his teammates, it seams preposterous that he was the only clean rider and was still beating all of them.

There is still an open case against Armstrong's manager Bruyneel so hopefully all the evidence will come out as that case progresses and this can be put to bed once and for all.

That is a very impressive summing up of the Lance Armstrong case. I am now more aware and have increased knowledge of the situation. It is a shame that someone who was admired by many now appears to of been a cheat. The evidence is stacked heavily against him, especially the testimonies from his former team mates.

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Its been raised that his abuse of drugs led to the cancer, I am no expert, but its certainly being floated around.

Pretty soon after his comeback, people were raising doubts about it all, and by the end he certainly had a crowd of people within cycling who did anything but ‘admire’ him. One of the most amusing incidents was when it was clear he was being booed at a Tour, but good Ol’ Phil Liggett was telling us how much he was loved by the French. That would be Phil who with Lance invested in Paul Sherwyn’s mine in Africa.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Having recently finished "Racing through the Dark" - I thought I'd give Tyler Hamilton's book a read.

I can't say it's as good a read as Millar's work really* - the tone doesn't come across well for someone who's willing through so much muck about the place - it's all so playground-esque, it's all their fault I'm having to dope to keep it a level playing field.

Though to be frank, after keeping an eye on this thread and seeing some of the extra reading you guys have linked to (the development of the EPO test and the interview with the Australian) there wasn't much that came across as a real suprise - and really the main reason I got the book (and I doubt I'm alone in this, given recent news) was to see if there that would really help me make up my mind over the whole "did Lance or didn't he" - and there isn't anything conclusive here - there's not anything definitively reported, it's all talk and hearsay.

It will be interesting to see where this goes though from here though - but I suspect we'll never have the definitive story, since there's too much at stake for the legend that is Lance (which in a way, is quite the shame - given that on the face of it, coming back from such an awful illness and just competing would be enough to make people go out and buy yellow wristbands).

Oh, and one thing on the book - I don't know if it's down to awful editing, writing or an utter lack of research - but there's an anecdote about Tyler taking a transfusion after a nasty fall during Le Tour - he then starts feeling ill and "pissing blood" - it sounds incredibly dramatic, a bag of blood, full of dead cells, acting like poison to his body. Alas, after speaking to doctor friends of mine, it was just a bruised kidney from the fall that was giving him the really bloody pee.

While I'm here - I finally got about to watching Chasing Legends that I'd recorded during last year's Tour - I wish they'd get around to releasing it on Blu Ray =P

*(edit) This may be I've only really gotten into following pro cycling the last couple of years - I might not be appreciating what I'm reading without doing a whole lot more background research (which no doubt I'll be cramming into my head tonight) - but to someone with such a limited knowledge as mine, there isn't anything absolute in the book that would indict Lance (or anyone really) without the context of "the truth" (as it stands it's just 1 person's word against another, 1 edited version of events - possibly even highly dramatised to aid the income of a former pro who's means of income is limited - I would hesitate to suggest this, but it's not like I'm naive enough for the thought to to cross my mind as I read it)

I'll no doubt be re-reading this in a few weeks time and flip-flopping my opinion on matters endlessly.

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If one wants to know about Armstrong, here’s the unpublished English translation of LA Confidentiel

The amazing thing is where it takes his VO2 max, and then looks at his performances and the wattage produced and compared to other athletic performances. One was the equivalent of a 400 metre running the same time for 152 or so 400 metres... And this was after 5 hours in the saddle.

Hamilton’s book is good; its too detailed to be a made up job. Not sure Hamilton is an angel, but hey he’s better than Lance.

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nice

Tygart received death threats during USADA's Armstrong investigation

By: Hedwig KrönerPublished: September 24, 10:53, Updated: September 24, 11:25

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USADA set to hand UCI case file

The director of the American Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, has confirmed that he has received three death threats since opening a case against Lance Armstrong and several other individuals linked to the former US Postal team. In an exclusive interview with French L'Equipe, Tygart said that security measures inside the USADA headquarters in Colorado Springs have been increased since his predecessor Terry Madden and himself have been threatened.

"The BALCO affair changed everything, as we've had to face death threats for the first time. Two for Terry Madden, and one for me and my family, later, when Landis first confessed [to doping, in May 2010 - ed.].

"Since the Armstrong affair, I've received three death threats, individual initiatives I believe. The FBI is taking care of that."

Tygart also said that the dossier of gathered evidence against Armstrong would be sent to the International Cycling Union (UCI) very soon. "It's imminent," he confirmed. "We will transmit the files at the end of this month."

According to L'Equipe, the information contained in the files will be made public "before the end of the year", and that their impact on public opinion of the former seven-times Tour de France winner and cancer survivor will be "terrible, 30 times greater than everything that has come out until now, through books or investigations."

Tygart also revealed that Armstrong could be called to testify in the case against Johan Bruyneel, his former team manager still in charge of the RadioShack-Nissan squad. Facing important doping allegations, the Belgian has chosen to turn to USADA's Anti-Doping Review Board and be heard before the panel in the next couple of months.

"I don't know what Bruyneel is hoping for, he has everything to lose," Tygart continued. "He will be heard before the end of the year, and the hearing will be public. Lance Armstrong could be heard as a witness in this case, by the way. He would have to testify under oath, like the others. If there's perjury, it's serious..."

The American continued by explaining that USADA did not receive any information from the federal investigation into Armstrong's former team, US Postal, even though this had initially been planned. The fraud investigation was filed last February.

"In theory, we were going to receive at least the testimonies given to the grand jury, but we did not get anything. We had to take it up from zero," continued the USADA boss, who had been surprised that the investigation led by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA)'s director Jeff Novitzky was stopped.

"The witnesses told us exactly what they had declared to FDA inspectors, and we could confirm all the evidence. That's where Armstrong's declarations regarding a personal witch hunt against him don't make any sense. This affair is much greater that only the Armstrong case. We're talking about a real conspiracy inside US Postal. Perfectly organised, with many actors involved. Many of which have confessed, which will not prevent them from being suspended - moderately," Tygart added.

USADA, which has already banned Armstrong and stripped him from his victories since 1998, is acting beyond the eight-year statute of limitations normally applicable within the framework of the World Anti-Doping Code. "The statute of limitations no longer applies [under American law - ed.] if the accusation can prove that, throughout all these years, the athlete who cheated influenced the witnesses who could have testified against him, if he concealed proof or lied under oath. We are certain that this has happened in the Armstrong case, and we'll explain it to the UCI when we'll transmit the dossier," Tygart concluded.

and the UCI in their wisdom are suing Paul Kimmage. Talk about stupid

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and the UCI in their wisdom are suing Paul Kimmage. Talk about stupid

Good to see the UCI taking such a staunch anti-doping stance as ever =P

It certainly doesn't look like it's going to be a rosy few months for those at the top of the tree - especially after Pat McQuaid's floundering about after Millar quizzed him at the Worlds.

Looks like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better - after I spent the better part of 3 hours reading last night, I got the feeling that pro cycling is still hiding far too much - and every time you try to feel back a layer you find something more stinky lurking underneath.

But hey, at least I enjoyed watching the coverage of the ToB - especially watching them pedal up Merrivale hill on Dartmoor and recognising all the surrounding landscape - that was pretty awesome (though wearing my NetApp top in front of the TV was probably taking things a little too far).

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