Armstrong stripped of 7 TdF titles
- Thread starter Deckerd
- Start date
Well, there's Napoleone di Buonaparte.
Well, as Alidar suggested people tend to choose their sides and hang on to what they're already inclined to believe. Didn't someone recently post links around here to an article discussing the ineffectiveness of factual argument in changing people's long-held beliefs and opinions?
But yeah, he's probably toast in France. There's that.
Not all opinions are inherently equal though. I've followed cycling for a long time. That Armstrong cheated, and always cheated, is self-evident.
People who still think Armstrong was clean, or maybe clean or even not-more-dirty than his opponents are about on the same level as people who still think Saddam Hussein threatened the USA with WMDs and had something to do with 9/11. Yeah, you're probably not going to change their minds, but that doesn't make them right.
Link please?
http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoo...rong/Its-Not-About-the-Lab-Rats.html?page=all
It's all about "awareness" (as if anyone isn't aware of cancer yet), not research. Awareness of cancer or awareness of his Lanceness?
I heard a woman from the foundation on the radio earlier today. She stated that a cancer diagnosis in the US can often mean financial disaster, even if you have insurance, which is an appalling situation.
The foundation has apparently helped thousands of people - IF this is the case, I would think the good done by Armstrong far outweighs misdeeds such as cheating at a sport.
Is there any proof - not just of the doping, but of the tangible benefits provided by the foundation ? I'm thinking he is may well be guilty as charged of the doping, but am undecided about the foundation...
Wrong, we don't like winners.
I'm sure there's proof enough for some, never enough for others - same as the doping.
We went through the same exercise with some major league baseball players a while back.
You're saying Lance's stock should rise a bit?
So, anyway - does stripping this guy of his titles mean that they go to whoever was the runner-up or their team? What are the odds that the runners-up weren't doping? The history of the Tour de France is replete with this kind of thing, after all.
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Spock could tell us in a heartbeat, but they must be---astronomical.
This is why the whole kerfluffle does strike me as somewhat funny and trivial - we're talking about an apparently terribly corrupt sport. It's fair to assume that a lot of the guys Armstrong beat were just as juiced. Barry Bonds wasn't the only guy in the majors shopping at BALCO, after all.
The sport does, nonetheless, exist only because of the amazing, herculean abilities of individual human beings. Let's face it, most of us could take every drug known to Tour de France cyclists and we wouldn't make it past the first few miles.
Outrage or anger over this, rather than just disappointment, is like making an issue of the "amateur" status of Olympic athletes this late in the day. Captain Renault would doubtless be shocked by these goings-on.
The USADA had George Hincapie -- the guy who was Armstrong's domestique through all seven Tour wins -- willing to testify against him. That means a lot. In any event, Armstrong's decision is probably more due to the real Feds now wanting to get a piece of him due to mounting evidence that he was essentially the ringleader of a distribution operation.
The kind of numbers that Tour riders were putting up until just a few years ago are now believed to be physiologically impossible to do without doping. There's a legitimate reason cycling has, quite literally, slowed down since the '90s -- people are climbing Alpe d'Huez about 3-4 minutes slower than a decade ago, and that's an absolute eternity in cycling (and just over one climb) ... it's not an illogical theory that this is due to the sport slowly being cleaned up.
USADA claims it has 38 tests from 2009 - 2010 that show evidence of blood doping, plus the 2001 EPO test. I don't see a problem, here -- Armstrong shouldn't get a free pass just because he got millions of people to wear his bracelets, and with him being such a stubborn guy, I don't think he'd make this decision without believing that they finally had him dead to rights.
The kind of numbers that Tour riders were putting up until just a few years ago are now believed to be physiologically impossible to do without doping. There's a legitimate reason cycling has, quite literally, slowed down since the '90s -- people are climbing Alpe d'Huez about 3-4 minutes slower than a decade ago, and that's an absolute eternity in cycling (and just over one climb) ... it's not an illogical theory that this is due to the sport slowly being cleaned up.
USADA claims it has 38 tests from 2009 - 2010 that show evidence of blood doping, plus the 2001 EPO test. I don't see a problem, here -- Armstrong shouldn't get a free pass just because he got millions of people to wear his bracelets, and with him being such a stubborn guy, I don't think he'd make this decision without believing that they finally had him dead to rights.
Nope, not a shred of proof, Lance was the most tested athlete in history.
Honestly I think too much is made in all professional sports when it comes to using performance enhancing drugs/techniques. But against the rules is against the rules.
Needless to say even if he was doping, I think Lance is a great man to look up to. Doping aside he still achieved a lot considering what he had to come back from.
Needless to say even if he was doping, I think Lance is a great man to look up to. Doping aside he still achieved a lot considering what he had to come back from.
Well, they'll always have Jerry Lewis!
There is a statute of limitations, it's 8 years. So in theory only his 2004-5 should be in danger of been stripped.
Well, they'll always have Jerry Lewis!
Who ?
And we are two thirds into 2012. If the tests returned positive results in 2001 why wasn't something done about it then? If the tests returned positive results in 2009-2010 why wasn't something done then?
FWIW Jan Ullrich, who was second in three of Armstrong's TdF "victories" and was stripped of all results post-2005 because of doping (they couldn't proove anything before that) obviously has already told reporters he doesn't want those TdF wins if it comes to that, because and I'm going from memory here because I can't find the quote at the moment: "Lance was stronger than me. That was true then, and it's true now".
I guess you have to read that as Lance had the better doping techniques then, and he respects that.
It does happen. Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Cruden
Although Armstrong's decision to drop the challenge is very suspicious to begin with, sounds like a former sporting hero has been dethroned, what a shame on his part.
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