Having accepted the “reasoned decision” of the US Anti-Doping Agency, the International Cycling Union’s (UCI’s) Pat McQuaid would just like Lance Armstrong to vanish. At a press conference yesterday McQuaid said, ‘Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling … He deserves to be forgotten.’
While McQuaid and the UCI came to the right decision regarding the Armstrong case, he is very much wrong in his desire to airbrush Armstrong out of the annals of cycling history; much like the old Soviet Union removed party members who fell out of favor from photos and books.
The old saying goes that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Now that Armstrong has well and truly become the scapegoat-in-chief for the EPO era of professional cycling, his story is one that should be taught to upcoming cyclists and others. Lance Armstrong wasn’t the first cyclist to use EPO, or testosterone (heck, Bernard Thevenet won at least one of his two Tour victories in the 1970s by using the drug), or human growth hormone, or blood doping, or anything else.
Still, Lance is the one brought low, banned from the sport for life – as he should be, given the magnitude of what he appears to have done.
Armstrong and long-time team manager Johan Bruyneel and the others named in USADA’s case may arguably have been the best at doping, but anyone who thinks that other teams weren’t trying to do the same things is fooling themselves. If you’ve read Tyler Hamilton’s book, that much should be crystal clear.
McQuaid is being a bit more than disingenuous in his desire to make Lance Armstrong vanish like a puff of smoke. With the allegations of corruption in cycling’s governing body, it’s a bit precious for him to be acting as if he’s shocked by the revelations.
Be that as it may, Armstrong deserves a place in cycling history. He is the perfect illustration of just how corrupting a “win at all costs” attitude can be. The characterization of Armstrong that comes through in USADA’s documents is not pretty. Arrogant, abrasive, brash, domineering. Those are just a few of the adjectives that come to mind. Perhaps these are the characteristics of a person driven to be a champion, but they are not very flattering. And they are not the image that Armstrong cultivated.
Armstrong’s case illustrates just how easy it was to beat the testers at their own game. With a bit of help from people such as Dr. Michele Ferrari, he was able to circumvent new tests and find new ways to enhance his performance without coming up positive.
And it illustrates the limits of drug testing as the sole means of discovering cheaters. One of the biggest problems with a testing-based program of detecting those who are using performance-enhancing drugs is that it’s impractical to test each athlete every day. Or even often enough to be certain of catching the cheaters in the act. The element of surprise is good, as it heightens the chances of catching someone who has recently doped. But then, the story is that Johan Bruyneel was able to tip off his riders when testers were going to show up.
During Armstrong’s day beating the drug testers was a kind of IQ test. If you were smart, or you had access to some smart people to help you, or someone could tell you when the testers were on their way, you could consistently come up “clean.” Lance Armstrong was tested several hundred times, and how many positive test results came up? Just a few, each of which he found a way to make go away. The cortisone in 1999, the alleged suspicious result at the 2001 Tour de Suisse, and the retesting of samples that became the heart of the 2005 L’Equipe scandal.
Armstrong and Bruyneel managed to concoct a backdated prescription to cover the first. And Lance is said to have paid for the UCI to look the other way in the 2001 scandal. In both instances, the UCI doesn’t come out looking very good, either. And the L’Equipe scandal didn’t lead to any charges because the tests weren’t officially sanctioned drug tests, they were conducted for “research.” Which leads to another point.
Armstrong’s case also illustrates the inherent conflicts of interest when a sport’s governing body also is responsible for managing the anti-doping efforts. In the wake of the 1998 Festina scandal, the UCI and the promoters of the Tour de France sorely needed the 1999 edition to be a “Tour of Renewal” or “Tour of Redemption” that could herald a new era of clean cycling. But cycling was still rotting from the inside. In a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” the UCI accepted the backdated prescription that he and his team produced when Armstrong came up positive for corticosteroids. In other words, the sport’s governing body helped cover up a positive test, for whatever reason.
Maybe Hein Verbruggen, the UCI’s leader at the time, felt that another doping scandal at the Tour would rock the sport to its core and perhaps destroy professional cycling, and thus decided to give Armstrong a pass. But the better approach would have been to bring an anti-doping case then and there. That would have illustrated a real dedication to clean cycling.
In Armstrong, however, they got the feel-good story to end all feel-good stories. Someone who was wracked with cancer just a few years before, who was able to get back on his bike and race, and even more incredibly, who could actually win the toughest race of all– the Tour de France. Who couldn’t love a story like that? The marketing possibilities and the PR possibilities would be endless. Cycling would grow by leaps and bounds. And it did.
If Pat McQuaid could make Armstrong vanish into the haze, perhaps the UCI’s own partial responsibility for the EPO era – their inability to detect cheats and their apparent willingness to let certain cheaters skate – would disappear, too. Which might be good for the UCI in the short term, but wouldn’t bode well for the sport in the longer term.
Cycling is best served when its history is an open book, when people can see what happened, see who was responsible, and learn from the mistakes of the past. While Lance Armstrong should be branded a doper – and one of the most successful, at that – he should not be erased from cycling’s history. His story is the perfect illustration of the EPO era in all its excess. But it is not the only story, and those stories should be discovered and documented, too. There are many lessons to be learned from rise and fall of Lance Armstrong. So while it may be right to condemn him for how he won, and for how he treated people, and for what he forced them to do, his place in cycling history should be secure – as the best damn doper who ever rode a bike.
Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace seems almost complete. Oakley, the last of his major sponsors, dumped him yesterday after the UCI announced their decision. He may yet face lawsuits from former sponsors and SCA, the insurance company he tussled with over the $5 million bonus for winning the 2004 Tour, and all that may well take a deep financial toll. But with an estimated net worth of $125 million, Armstrong should be able to weather the financial and legal storms to come.
Pat McQuaid is wrong. Forgetting Lance Armstrong is not what we should do. We should remember. We should remember everything. It is the only way to avoid falling prey to such a con-man again.
On MIKE & MIKE this morning (ESPN2), they gave out their “JUST SHUT UP” award to the one & only Captain Renault, I mean McQuaid, for his statement that Lance did “not belong in cycling”. They mentioned that 20 of 21 podium places in the Tour the years Lance won have ALL been connected with doping & thus it seems Lance was “exactly” where he belonged….
Con-man? More like con-SPORT. Did Lance dope? Yeah, probably. Did he FORCE anyone to dope? Give me a freakin break. All the guys who had been on other top (based in Europe) teams BEFORE they joined Postal were ALREADY DOPING (including SAINT FRICKIN VAUGHTERS). And if they left Postal/Discovery (before 2007), they CONTINUED to dope on their new team(s), at least for some time.
Doping was entrenched in the peloton long before Lance got there. As the LEADER of his team, perhaps he & Johan just figured out a more efficient way to have the team partake. Or not – WHO KNOWS what methods the other teams used? Someone should ask RIIS how they did it at Telecom/T-Mobile AND what he had CSC using back in 2006 when Basso won the Giro by such a margin it was like he was in in a another gdamn time zone. Yeah, Riis – the very guy McQuaid is now offering up as a HERO! Makes me PUKE.
The COMPLETE LIE that Tygart has been pushing that Postal was “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen” should be enough for a LIBEL suit. HELLo, East Germany Olympic sports teams, XC skiing & weight lifiting teams from 70s thru today, BALCO, baseball, football, JAMAICAN TRACK teams of the past decade, & worldwide Track & Field teams in 80s,90,2000s.
I do agree that Lance was hardly a Prince of kindness. He demanded loyalty & yet rarely returned it. He was so focused on himSELF & how to win more Tours that all relationships & other aspects of life, including his own, suffered. Gee, why couldn’t he have been like all the other GREATS of their fields – business, art, literature, music, etc. Wait, they’re almost all laser-focused/obsessed SOBs too? Hmmmmm. Maybe it’s a “pre-req” for domination? Talk amongst yourselves…
Lance Armstong is now the single whipping boy not just of this sport but of doping in ALL sports. Maybe it was predestined – he transcended his sport, financially & by level of reach of fame & those that soar so high always, AWAYS have the most brutal Fall.
Another thing I hate about this ‘case’ is how today’s “media” (both real & ‘social’) have distorted & twisted facts & thrown around & repeated rumour as truth. I’ve seen the ‘fact’ about Lance’s net worth repeatedly in the last 2 weeks & unless you have access to his personal tax returns & ALL investments or are his freakin accountant, HOW DO YOU KNOW?!And yet, it is stated & restated as FACT.
I see this entire saga as the ultimate “morality” tale & as The Great American Tragedy. And the morality I’m talking about is NOT the “choice” to dope or not to dope. It’s about the much vaunted belief that to GET TO THE TOP, you have to do WHATEVER IT TAKES. It’s about how easy the line gets blurred between hard work, sacrifice, determination, perseverance, & focus to obsession & breaking any & all rules to reach that goal. It’s about how being a “nice” guy (even if you fake it) is paramount to one’s long term success or your actions WILL come back to take you down. It’s about the sad FACT that covering one’s ass is RULE#1 & that ANYone, no matter how high, is ballast to be thrown overboard when the ship is goin’ down. (I believe this is in the UCI bylaws).
Pro cycling should unequivocally reject Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen. The sport has been shamed under their watch. These 2 did their upmost to cover up the problem, smear whistle blowers, and sue truth tellers.
Firing them is only a start, but it would be positive signal to the fans.
Wow, Ludwig and I actually agree.
Go figure.
What’s next? Jean C and I seeing the sky as being blue at the same moment? ……………
Some more impressive stuff : Lance blackmailing democrat party
http://reader.roopstigo.com/view/roopster/story/595#/chapter/1/
Susie…I’d say you knocked it out of the park on this one…you go girl! Not much I could possibly add…what a mess…and so far, not really much is happening to TRULY fix it. Just sweeping it all under the rug and waiting for the uproar to die down.
The whole blackmailing the democratic party thing didn’t work out too well for him. Small potatoes anyway. Demonstrates his inflated ego. It’s gratifying he received no love for his efforts there.
The more troubling aspect of the article for me, is, and has been, the co-mingling of Livestrong.org, Livestrong.com, CSE, and appearance fees for LA’s personal benefit. (argued on this site previously) The article Jean C cited gives clearer examples than I was able to supply. Hat tip.
Isn’t that written by Selena Roberts? The same Selena Roberts that used her NY Times columns to compare the Duke lacrosse players to gang members & career criminals, that contributed to a PUBLIC LYNCHING of the 3 accused, who were later EXONERATED because the “crime” DID NOT HAPPEN & for which she NEVER WROTE A RETRACTION? That Selena Roberts?
Can’t WAIT to read it! I am ‘sure’ it will be an objective, balanced, unbiased, fair investigative masterpiece. Or NOT.
Hey Rant, Larry & whomever would like to answer, I have a couple questions. Do you now or at what point in the past did you come to the realization/belief that most (more than 60%) of the top (Euro racing) cycling teams were doping or using other ‘illegal’ forms of performance enhancement? For me it was about 2008, almost totally due to the “knowledge” I gained about doping in cycling & all pro sports thanks to the Landis case (& my time spent, ahem, here, among other “low places” ;). I still naively held out hope that Landis, Lance & all the other American riders had not, but that belief was chipped away almost every.single.day.
IRONICALLY, it was that growing awareness/knowledge about the true extent of doping in cycling going back to at least the mid 80s, that I am NOT enraged or heartbroken now. Not about the doping any way. I AM enraged, disgusted & saddened by the current saga. That the “responsibilty” for ALL of doping is being heaped upon 2 men – Lance & Johan. By the level of vindictiveness & glee oozing out of almost EVERY cycling media update. (Funny how they couldn’t kiss his ass enough when they were selling MAGS with his FACE on the COVER). Some may say Lance deserves every bit of vindictiveness coming his way as payback for HIS own. I find it repugnant that the current buzz words to stir up the self-righteous is “BULLYING” & “BULLY”. Apparently, those words have more heft to get across one’s point that Lance is ‘evil, a devil, a con man, a thief’ & thus basically a human reptile deserving of no one’s empathy or understanding. In all the many LA-USADA articles (a couple hundred?) I’ve read the past couple months, Lance is portrayed as so selfish & arrogant that he could not POSSIBLY have any real friends. That all those leadership & super competitive qualities that were once SO admired & exalted (as in just 2months ago) were in reality nothing but “bullying tactics”. Really?
I have never met & will never meet Lance Armstrong. I became a fan in 1993, the 1st year I saw him on TV at the Tour de France. I cried on my sofa in 1996 the week of my birthday when he announced he had cancer. When he returned to the peloton, I was shocked & happy but didn’t expect much. The next 7 years were a THRILL & a JOY for me & I will never regret spending the hundreds of hours in front of my TV each July. Truthfully, I would have been devastated in 2005, if all this had exploded then. But, thanks to POS Landis, I became “educated”. Some may say I’m just numb or desensitized & that’s how I still support Lance. I just know that in reality, I’ve been going thru the friggin stages of grief the past 6 years about this sport – denial, rage, bargaining, sadness & depression & finally acceptance. This has NOT been 6 years of “thrills & joy”, I can tell you that.
Bottom line – everyone here knows more about pro cycling & its past & the culture around it than 99% of Americans. You may or may not have liked Lance as a person or that he dominated the Tour for so many years (some found this “boring”.. as IF!). I always knew he was cocky & liked it. Wasn’t so happy to learn of some of his more “alpha-male” characteristics, but winning the Tour de France not once, not twice, but 7 TIMES IN A ROW is NOT for the weak. And I tell you what – if I had to go into any kind of battle, I’d want the toughest son of a bitch on MY side. And that guy’s Lance Armstrong.
And hey, Matt – thanks. 🙂 And my fingers & toes are crossed about Antarctica! I am kinda mystified that a California guy who supposedly hates his battles with Mr Wind EMBRACES the idea of 0 (as in ZERO) degree temperatures! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Well, as long as you’ll have internet access & a camera (yes, I am that selfish, I ‘ll want to READ & SEE your adventure!) that works in ZERO degree temps , I will implore the gods to grant your wish. And they OWE me! 🙂 🙂
I’ll catch you back at IA soon!
Looking at official web site of the Tour de France, I see they didn’t even run the race between 1999 and 2005. This Armstrong fellow you mention apparently never rode in their race at all. I don’t have any idea what you people are talking about.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/9628828/Tyler-Hamilton-hits-back-over-scumbag-comments-with-call-for-UCI-president-Pat-McQuaid-to-step-down.html
“Pat McQuaid’s comments expose the hypocrisy of this leadership and demonstrate why he is incapable of any meaningful change,” said Hamilton, whose book revealed the doping system operated by Armstrong and closely mirrored evidence in the United States Anti-Doping Agency report which brought about his downfall.
“Instead of seizing the opportunity to instil hope for the next generation of cyclists, he continues to point fingers, shift blame and attack those who speak out. Tactics that are no longer effective. Pat McQuaid has no place in cycling.”
I stopped following cycling a while ago, but during the time I was following it, McQuaid and Verbrueggen were everything Hamilton describes. Any time any kind of truth teller or whistle blower emerged they were promptly smeared in the cycling press by McQuaid or Verdrueggen.
Further investigations will/would demonstrate that these 2 profited financially from the elaborate fraud and deception of Lance Armstrong and other cyclists.
What I find REALLY funny (in a “are you KIDDING ME? kind of way) is that THOSE years (and you all know which years I’m talking about…when HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED was the wi.n.er…sheesh, I can’t even say it anymore..some of my letters are stricken from the screen as soon as I type them!) are the only years that cycling was dirty. So all the other winners (such as that ‘other’ guy in 06), and Riis, Pantani, Ulrich, etc. were OBVIOUSLY riding clean. Yep…everybody before and after are good to go. So THEIR names still show up as winners. Ahhh..yes…the history books will show that the doped-peleton years were ONLY 1999 thru 2006…er, I mean 05…
And Cub…that is very interesting….so instead of the 100th anniv. race this year, they will be having the 93’rd anniv. race. COOL!
Susie b, since you asked:
I don’t know from percentages of doping cyclists. But once I realized the false negative rate for drug testing AND the extent of the cycling performance boost available with PED use, I also realized that a lot of cyclists must be doping. The cost-benefit analysis simply makes it so. I think it was probably in mid-to-late 2007 that I put 2 and 2 together. As for who was doping and who wasn’t, I’ve resisted moving from the general conclusion to particular cases.
As far as the vindictive quality of the Armstrong reporting … I’m not surprised by it, I’m not even disappointed. Armstrong’s fall was going to be precipitous, because he (and we) had placed him on such a high pedestal. He was not only the cancer survivor, but the self-advertised hope for so many others fighting cancer. It’s an understatement to point out that PED use is not something anyone would advise for those in cancer remission. It’s also not pleasant to contemplate all those in the survivor community who had taken hope from Armstrong’s assurances that he was racing clean. There are lies and damned lies, and then there’s lying to kids ravaged by chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Yeah, I think that a lot of people writing about Armstrong are pissed off, and who can blame them?
Of course, Armstrong is being accused not only of doping, but also of being a thoroughly bad person. This is a downside of Armstrong’s decision not to defend himself against the doping charges; now he cannot effectively defend himself against any of the charges made against him, and now is not the time for anyone to come forward to let us know that Armstrong pats the dog, puts a dollar in the collection plate and lowers the toilet seat when he’s finished. Now is the time for Armstrong to disappear from public view and let the storm pass. In a few years, he can make a PR comeback. Dick Nixon came back (twice, almost), and so can Lance.
Thank you susie b for your sane and spot on comments.
Greg Lemond, the 3times TDF winner, is requesting the resign of McQuaid qualified of corrupt.
http://nyvelocity.com/content/features/2012/open-letter-pat-mcquaid-greg-lemond
Seems that McQuaid has deceived alot of Irishes
http://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/james-lawton-mcquaid-out-on-his-own-in-defence-of-indefensible-3271015.html
It seems that he has a file, probably linked to his fight against Lance and Trek as proof of his allegations.
I totaly agree with Greg, UCI leaders appears being corrupt for years, cycling could only better without McQuaid, Verbruggen and their people.
An other reading about Livestrong.com and livestrong.org
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/wheel-dubious-lance-charity-raises-ethical-flags-article-1.1190810
Dan, do you have a primary source for the assertion that Bernard Thevenet used testosterone in the 1970s?
Are you certain it was an anabolic steroid (testosterone) and not a cortico-steroid (cortisone)?
Millard,
That’s one of the stories in my chapter on doping in the 1970s in my book. Can’t remember the original source off the top of my head, but I believe it came from news accounts of the dustup that occurred when a French paper found out and published the story. Thevenet, as I recall, apologized after the story came out. Since using testosterone was not yet illegal in cycling, his Tour victory stands.
Susie B,
I’m not quite sure how to answer your question, but I’ll give it a try. I started following pro cycling the year that Eddy Merckx won his first Tour. And before that, I vaguely remember the story of Tommy Simpson dying on Ventoux during the 67 Tour. Growing up, my friends and I always assumed that the people who pay professional athletes (sponsors, teams, etc.) are paying for those individuals to produce results. That being the case, the athletes will do whatever it takes to give their employers/sponsors what they want performance-wise. If that means using performance enhancing drugs, then they’ll do it.
That’s not to say all, or even most, athletes do so, but that some would do so if needed. When it comes to pro cycling, then, I’ve never been under the illusion that the sport was 100% clean. At the same time, I’ve never been one to point fingers and say “So-and-so is a doper” without some pretty solid proof. No doubt there have been teams throughout the history of the sport that had organized efforts, perhaps even as organized and enforced as the one at US Postal/Discovery/Astana (Bruyneel years at the very least)/RadioShack. But if that’s the case, the people involved have managed to keep the story quiet for a long time.
Never been able to say with any certainty that it’s 60% of the teams, or 80% of the teams or even 100% of the teams that are organized. I suspect that at one point it was more the case that doctors on the teams would help individual cyclists set up doping programs, and that only certain members of the team were doping to any great degree.
What astounds me about the Armstrong case is just how, for lack of a better word, professional they were in their approach. And how much the organization of the program, and imposition of the program, reminds me of a Mafia operation.
With Landis, I had (and continue to have) reservations about whether the evidence against him constituted real proof that he’d used testosterone. Even today, he denies doing so (or at least intentionally doing so). So I took to the internet and advocated in his favor. After he owned up to having doped during the 2006 Tour — even if not with testosterone — I felt pretty darn foolish.
But even so, the critiques that I have of the anti-doping system still seem valid to me. Testing isn’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. After all, Lance “never tested positive” during his career (except when he did and managed to cover it up). And Armstrong’s case illustrates how cheating athletes will find a way to evade testing. Especially if they’ve got the money to buy the best doctors, scientists and (apparently) the people running the sport’s governing body.
I was never a big fan of Lance (despite what some have suggested in the past). Even back in the early 1990s, I thought he was a brash, arrogant jerk. And not one especially destined for Tour greatness. But for a long time, I was willing to grant the benefit of the doubt that since no one had caught him in the act that it might be possible he was competing clean, despite how totally his team dominated the Tour for seven consecutive years, and despite the fact that except for Indurain (who may well have been using EPO), no rider had won that many consecutive tours ever. It might have been a stretch, but…
I think it’s wrong for the media and the UCI to pretend that doping in cycling started and ended with Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel. It’s been around for decades before. And even if the “clean cycling” movement succeeds, it will be around for decades after. The only things that change are the techniques. As long as there is big money to be made, and fame and glory to be had, there will always be at least a few people tempted to take shortcuts to victory. So it will never completely go away.
Because of all research I did for my book and all the doping scandals since then, these days my default assumption is that if someone does something unexpected in any sport, I wouldn’t be surprised if he/she doped.
So when did I realize that most of the top teams were doping? Hard to pin a date on it. I’ve always thought there were some riders who doped, and some who didn’t. And for a long time, I’ve assumed that the teams had at least some hand in those efforts. But what’s happened over time is that the doping on teams has become more sophisticated. Armstrong’s case illustrates just how sophisticated those efforts can be. I’ve got no doubt that many other teams were doing the same thing, and have been for a long time. And I think that there should be more efforts to bring that aspect of the story to light.
Otherwise, we’ll just be headed back into a cycle similar to what happened in the wake of the Festina scandal. The illusion of change while nothing really has.
The 2013 cycling yearbook came out already — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnSgSe2GzDc . But shhh . . . reality is still over here. http://www.letour.fr/le-tour/2012/fr/histoire/ . Don’t tell anyone!
Well, it’s official now that there won’t be any winners for those seven TdFs:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/26/more-armstrong-fallout-no-winners-for-tour-de-france-from-98-to-05/?hpt=hp_t3
Doesn’t mention other results, but I assume the same.
The article mentions that he “should” return prize money, and I am not sure exactly what that means. Just a suggestion to do the “right thing” or is it really something stronger? Since he is already banned for life, UCI doesn’t have that ax to wield to force repayment, so presumably they would have to take him to court if he were unwilling to fork over the dough. That would bring up the whole issue of jurisdiction. I took a look at the UCI constitution, which states that Swiss law applies, so I presume they would take it to the Swiss courts, but what hold does that have over Armstrong?
Mc Quaid and Verbruggen on the grill soon?
Manifesto for a credible cycling
We are a group of newspapers in five countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy and France) to continue cycling history for over a century. We love this sport with passion and strongly believe in its future.
We are also very concerned about the current situation. In the long blacklist of doping scandals that have clouded the horizon of cycling in recent years must be added the case of Armstrong, the confessions of several of his former teammates, the report of the American Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) as pointing to a malfunction or complicity of the International Cycling Union (UCI), and disturbing reports have filtered in Padua called research. And in January opens in Puerto trial in Madrid. This recent revelations show clearly that we can not put our faith in the ICU or team managers complicit in the deception. But the failures rest on all families that make cycling.
It seems that things have improved recently. We believe in a new generation of riders, but we believe it is impossible to continue in the same structures, the same operation, the same rules and the same men.
That’s why we recommend:
– That the UCI recognizes its responsibilities in the Armstrong case and apologize.
– The constitution, under the responsibility of the Agency (WADA), a neutral and independent commission to investigate the role and responsibility of the ICU in case Armstrong and the fight against doping in general to report errors, abuses and possible complicity.
– That the organization of controls on the biggest races is directly responsible for WADA and anti-doping agencies.
– That the suspension penalties applicable in doping cases are more severe and sports groups pledge not to sign for two years for athletes suspended for more than six months.
– The restoration of the gentlemen’s agreement which provides that a broker who is under investigation for doping is automatically suspended for his team.
– A stronger involvement and accountability of the sponsors who fund a team and give it its name.
– Reform of the World Tour, its points system and licensing, maintaining a closed and opaque. We also propose that the licenses are no longer issued to the managers, but the sponsors.
– The celebration of “overall the bike” before the start of the 2013 season in order to define a new organization and new rules.
We sincerely hope that the cycling world will seize the opportunity that is offered to a fundamental reform.
De Telegraaf (Netherlands), Le Soir (Belgium), Het Nieuwsblad (Belgium), The Times (UK), La Gazzetta dell Sport (Italy) and L’Equipe (France)
That sounds good, Jean.
Whatever the nature and extent of UCI’s complicity in this affair (and others), I am sure that more than just McQ and V were involved. I hope someone does investigate.
I’m on board with most of that Jean C
More severe sanctions for the riders is not part of the answer.
It’s bs to require teams not to hire a rider for longer than the sanction. Make the sanction the sanction and make it reasonable and in keeping with the offense.
The “under investigation” gentlemen’s agreement is also bs. Better to be transparent. Better also not to penalize the potentially innocent.
Just saying……
Um, people …
I understand that UCI got its fair share of criticism in the Armstrong case, mostly for actions it may have taken ten years ago. Back then, UCI controlled the anti-doping effort in cycling. That was a long time ago.
As everyone here knows, the anti-doping effort in cycling is now controlled by WADA, and this has been the case for quite some time. Remember, this blog site was born 6 years ago, around the Landis case. UCI had little to do with the Landis case. Remember? Even by 2006, WADA was in control of drug testing. WADA was the group that certified the labs and wrote the rules. Since WADA took over, there hasn’t been a way for UCI to cover up drug test results or bend the anti-doping rules to favor anyone — that is, at least not without the cooperation of WADA-certified labs, national ADAs or WADA itself.
OK … UCI played a major role in creating the biological passport. That’s one in UCI’s favor. Remember that WADA does not require any sport to adopt the biological passport. This was UCI’s initiative. On the other side of the scale, UCI might have done more to combat doping or break the “code of silence” in the peloton. I’m open to any specific suggestions on what more UCI might have done, but I’m sure they could have done something more.
True enough, when it comes to cases like the Armstrong case where there’s no failed drug test, UCI plays a larger role. But that’s how the WADA rules are written. In a case without an adverse analytical finding, SOMEONE’s got to get it going. It could be UCI, or a national ADA, or it could be WADA itself. True enough, UCI could have initiated action against Armstrong a long time ago. But so could WADA, and USADA.
Many here have pointed out, correctly in my view, that it’s crazy to blame Armstrong for the problem of doping in cycling. I’ve said it here already: if Armstrong had never learned to ride a bicycle, the history of doping in cycling would have played out in pretty much the same way — the story would have been the same, and only a few of the names would have changed. But it is equally crazy to blame UCI for doping in cycling without also blaming the rest of the alphabet soup, WADA in particular.
Another opinion piece about Armstrong:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8554120/lance-armstrong-legend
Thanks for the link William…that article definitely falls into the “food for thought” column. I guess it’s all about perspective…right now there’s a lot going on in my life, and Lancegate has slipped to the far-nether reaches of caredom.
I’m still fundraising for LIVESTRONG (I pretty much do that year-round), and don’t see that changing anytime soon, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘he who sha’nt be named’s’ fall from grace.
Next topic please! (yeah, right)
Larry,
UCI is still closely implicated in the anti-doping process. If WADA lab are testing samples, UCI collect those samples especially on TDF. And as it was reported, for OOC no time should be given to athletes to beat control with masking technics as it has been reported on TDF.
In the recent years, when drugs became detectable, like CERA, UCI didn’t allow the retesting of samples of the precedent years. Those kind of retrotesting would have been deterrent.
On Contador’s case, UCI has tried to “clean” it again.
UCI actions show that they protect top-riders and just throw some little riders under the bus.
What can do UCI with riders showing sign of doping through biological passport? Do they give a warning? Do they try to catch him ? Or do they try to blackmail him when he doesn’t show allegiance to their power?
The first issue that should be fix is the corruption problem, since Verbruggen UCI smells too much rotten.
In recent years, at least, there has been a tendency whenever something bad happens, to look back and try to find some blame. “If only someone had done something”. If there’s a mass shooting, some people will find, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight that perhaps authorities should have realized the shooter was disturbed and done something. Or maybe security arrangements at the venue should have been different. And perhaps in some cases things could have/should have been done differently.
I think we are seeing this phenomena in the Armstrong case: if only UCI or WADA or someone had done something different, this could have been nipped in the bud. Perhaps and then again, perhaps not.
Some sports writers seem to be tripping all over themselves saying that we should have known this all along; that Armstrong was simply too good to be true. But I don’t think that we can and should take action against an athlete simply because we find their performance too good to be true, other than maybe do some addition testing or the like. Armstrong was tested quite frequently, even if the actual numbers are short of what he claimed. And it seems true enough that the testing methods of the day weren’t up to detecting the way his doping program was run.
There is that cortisone positive and the cobbled up TUE. Perhaps UCI should have acted, but the one theme seen here and at TBV when that was running, was the idea that athletes were sometimes being unfairly punished for administrative fouls up with things like TUEs. And even if Armstrong was suspended then, doping would have continued.
More troubling, to me, is the idea that USPS knew when testers were coming and thus were able to avoid them. We’re people in UCI tipping them off? Or were the supposedly unannounced tested eing telegraphed in some way? And if the team was getting tips, we’re they from or with the knowledge of the upper levels of UCI, or was this merely some low level clerk getting paid to do some espionage?
I am not sure I am comfortable with the idea of retro-testing, maybe because I have some issues with the ways it has been done in both the Landis and Armstrong cases. If we are going to do retro-testing, then we need some good, clear guidelines on when it gets done, including things like statute of limitations, scientific verifications of testing procedures for such testing, etc.
Jean C, let’s not argue over small details. WADA owns the doping testing process. WADA writes the rules that govern sample collection. WADA controls the labs that control the samples that could be retested. WADA also writes the lab protocols, and WADA can promulgate criteria for retro testing (IF such criteria can stand up to scientific scrutiny).
I don’t have time for the hard research, but if UCI is guilty of 10% of what’s being alleged, then for certain they’ve violated the WADA Code, and WADA can bring enforcement action.
An additional punishment:
http://espn.go.com/olympics/cycling/story/_/id/8578177/lance-armstrong-burned-effigy-english-town
America’s public intellectuals have weighed in, with much more sublety and sense than your average (and aren’t they all?) cycling journalist:
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-october-23-2012-john-grisham (see the second section)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s16e13-a-scause-for-applause (and hey, Parker & Stone have been paying attention)
WADA gets on board:
http://espn.go.com/olympics/cycling/story/_/id/8583784/wada-appeal-stripping-armstrong-titles
And you can find a bunch of other related articles in the “see also” box on the right.
Oakley is “sad” to loose Armstrong:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/sport/lance-armstrong-oakley-cycling/index.html?hpt=us_c2
For anyone who doesn’t know my position on LA, I don’t like him.
However, I have to laugh at this big FU from him:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/the-turnstile/lance-armstrong-just-happens-pose-next-tour-france-190124213.html
I’ll clarify that while I don’t admire Armstrong, my dislike of the soup runs much deeper, so I say good for him.
Yeah, he made a lot of money cheating in a sport rife with cheaters. A lot of entities (ASO, various TV, sponsors……) made money off of him too.
Truth and reconciliation was in order following the Festina affair in ’98. A lack of strong forward thinking leadership, along with anything resembling a spine, at that time has provided us with a roughly dozen years of soap opera & farce comedy, culminating in USADA’s dubious power grab.
Enjoy the popcorn……..
I’m chuckling at the entire affair at this point…the fact that ANY team was able to run such an elaborate doping program right under the very noses of the powers that be for so long and so sucessfully…they (said powers) should be embarrased beyond belief, and everybody in any leadership position should have already resigned in humiliation.
And quite honestly it doens’t matter to me what the record books show…I watched those races and know who won (apparently so does Lance…which is what makes that photo so interesting). The system was rigged with doping well before Lance and the Americans showed up…they just learned fast and did it better. If you want to put a bunch of astericks next to the podium list from those years fine…but to say there wasn’t a winner is dumb. And if you are going to start putting astericks by the years won by dopers, how far back do you go? Did Indurain win clean? Pantani? (I guess if EPO wasn’t technically illegal at that point then it’s a gray area…but to say this guy won while using EPO is fine, but Lance won using the same stuff and it’s not fine is just assinine).
And uhm, well…what about all the OTHER races in those sordid years? You know…the other grand tours, the spring classics, ALL of them. Were they won by CLEAN athletes? Given the doping-state of the peleton of which we are now aware of, I’d say probably not. So when are the record books going to be adjusted to show all of THAT?
And uhm, well…just to be brutally clear here, how do we KNOW that Wiggens is as clean as the driven snow in this years TDF win? Becasue he passed his doping tests? Or do we just ‘trust’ that the system is now fixed?
The question is, to me, just what WADA Et al could have done at the time. All these riders did pass doping tests, however flawed they might have been. I suppose they could have nailed Armstrong for that cortisone positive, or at the least, for failure to submit the proper paperwork Ina timely manner, but on the other hand, sometimes these organizations get heat for being overly strict about these things. Remember that US swimmer in the 1972 Olympics? The powers of investigation for the various agencies of the sporting world are limited, especially in the face of whatever form of omertà might have existed then. I have he feeling that the USADA investigation was aided considerably by the preceding DOJ investigation. DOJ has considerable powers to bring to bear, and once all those LA associates spilled the beans there, there was much reason for them to clam up to USADA, even if DOJ didn’t turn over their findings. Most troubling to me is the idea that riders were able to knew when testers were going to show up and thus were able to avoid testing.
Interesting to scan the comments on the article that Matt links to, along with various others I have seen in many places. Opinions on LA and this affair are still all over they place: some people are ready to tar and feather him and ride him out of town on a rail, others are more he got what was coming but he was just one of many, still other are why nail him when others were guilty of the same thing. There are even some who question the testimony of all those teammates who got a pretty sweet deal.
In a side note, LA is totally severing ties to Livestrong:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/12/lance-armstrong-quits-livestrong-entirely/?hpt=us_c1
Probably a good thing to do, why drag down what appears to me a pretty good charity with all this baggage?
Mattc,
You have missed a lot of points about Lance’s doping affair, especiallay the corruption part and accomplice UCI.
There is no reason to be proud to be a bigger cheaters than predecessors, who had not be caught. Do you have read about the berating of his opponents by Lance?
Lance has been the only one to have threaten wifes, riders, journalists, and so. That make him totaly different.
JeanC…I’m not saying that maybe I don’t get some of the points, but I do see that Lance had the most to lose due to his dominance, and reacted to protect that which he had. The only people in this affair I feel sorry for are those VERY FEW who chose to walk away clean rather than dope (or other innocents caught up in the quagmire, such as Emma his assistant, and Betsy Andreau, and probably a few others I can’t think of at this moment)…THEY have my sympathy. The rest were complicit in the system and have no leg to stand on (and getting a lighter sentence for doing the same thing and then being a rat…that just stinks to high heaven…plea bargains…HATE EM!).
And my real point is as I said before: what about all the OTHER races? The other grand tours, the spring classics, etc etc. It’s pretty firmly established that the peleton was doping well BEFORE Lance and the Americans showed up…but ONLY Lance (and Floyd) have had their wins negated.
You wanna go after cheaters, fine. But finish the job. Which races in the last 20 years have been won by CLEAN riders? (and why stop at 20 years, make it 40, or 100!) That is my point. Everybody is so focused on Lance and those 7 TDF’s that the entire rest of the equation is lost in the noise and nobody cares.
It’s not lost on me that Lance did all those things…however knowing that most everybody else who were (are?) also doping have gotten away with it, and their records stand intact….well, THAT is just sad. The powers that be have said “We got Lance…The sport is now clean becasue he was the only one”.
On the other hand, I guess you can say that Lance now has a keen sense of how Floyd felt…being the first TDF winner caught and stripped of his win, knowing fulll well that he wasn’t doing anything different than the rest of the peleton…and becasue he chose to fight it (putting up the same lies as Lance: “I didn’t do it, I’m wrongly convicted”, etc) and having his entire career ruined rather than be welcomed back into the fold after serving his time…that had to stick in his craw something fierce.
As to the corruption and such, how is that Lances fault? Put that blame where it belongs…against those who were corrupt (and btw, didn’t the UCI sue Paul Kimmage, or try to and then drop it? So apparently Lance ISN’T the only one doing this sort of thing). In the end, it’s all still just cheating in sport, and has no real bearing on my day to day life.
I look around…and see that life is FULL of people threatening others, cheating, robbing, murdering, etc…mostly over money. Quite honestly, it’s the cheating, lies and corruption in our Government is a FAR bigger worry for me right now than who won some bike races.
Matt,
I agree with you Lance was not the only one to dope,
but
other riders have been caught, striped (Contador as TDF winner) and banned too, so Lance had been lucky to have stolen so much money as he should have beeen kicked out of sport in 1999!
You are making a serious flaws, punishment are deserved by people who cheat, steal, and so. That is not because all of them are not caught that is unfair for those cheaters, it’s only unfair for their victims.
Riis cannot be striped of his title because rules and laws cannot be backdated, SOL applies there and even for much older winners like Indurain,… there is no proof of their doping.
Maybe if Lance had fought WADA he could have saved titles out of the 8 year SOL, but he would have been under a much bigger threat with jail for perjury.
At the moment, Lance is still a big beneficiary of his doping and others faults.
“At the moment, Lance is still a big beneficiary of his doping and other faults.” that’s true, but let’s keep this in context: what is has been sanctioned for is simply his doping, not for being a total a**h***. And in the overall scheme of things, doping in cyclings is not that evil. YMMV, but given a choice between Lance and Jerry Sandusky, I’d take Lance any day.
It’s highly unlikely that had UCI chooses to sanction Armstrong in 1999 for that cortisone thing, he would have been banned for life; rather her would have gotten at most a 2 year ban.
We probably will never be able to detect and sanction 100% of all dopers, whether going back in the past or going forward. That shouldn’t stop us from getting those we are able to reliably detect.
Anybody read this article on SI last week :
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/11/09/yasmani-grandal-synthetic-testosterone-mlb/index.html?sct=mlb_bf3_a3
Here’s the 1st 2 paragraphs :
“Major League Baseball has a drug problem again and is engaged in discussions with the players’ association regarding what to do about it. The very specific problem is the use of fast-acting synthetic testosterone, the primary performance-enhancing drug of choice among emboldened players who believe they can avoid detection with dosages that are carefully timed and controlled.
Testosterone was the substance that triggered positive tests in the previous 12 months by Ryan Braun of Milwaukee, Melky Cabrera of San Francisco, Bartolo Colon of Oakland and Yasmani Grandal of San Diego. Braun’s positive test, which occurred during the 2011 postseason, was overturned upon appeal after he challenged procedural issues related to the sample. The other players were suspended 50 games. Grandal, who flunked a test in September, did not challenge his positive test and was suspended this week — the seventh PED suspension this year, the most in five years.”
Why is it that the OTHER pro sports can “police” themselves for doping & NO ONE SAYS A THING? Meanwhile, if I read one more handwringing, wailing, & whiny-ass cry that cycling MUST ‘separate’ the sport’s overseers from the doping overseers I will PUKE.
And as for all those idiots patting themselves on the back for this never-ending wretched WITCH HUNT & crow how they are “saving cycling” – are you INSANE?! This sport is DESTROYED.
And hey Jean C – Laurent Fignon confessed to DOPING before he died, so WHY aren’t his wins STRIPPED? And I guess Hinault won all his Tours on “bread & water”?HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Meanwhile, I await with breathless anticipation for Paddy McQuaid’s CALL ME MAYBE video….
And see NO problem whatsoever in an anonymous Hotline where those in cycling can report..er..their doping? The supposed doping of others? Nah, such “policing” by those selfless other competitors couldn’t possibly be a problem.
Just one question – who will be the Grand Inquisitor?
OH also JeanC…” and even for much older winners like Indurain,… there is no proof of their doping.” Since when is proof needed? There is no proof that Lance doped…just a whole bunch of people who (mostly) were compelled to testify under threat of their own prosecution. Proof has nothing to do with it.
Matt,
Almost everyone has concluded that the evidences against Lance were overhelming. Despite of that your belief still remains that Earth should be flat. Fine.
Susie,
Dont compare Fignon to Lance they have nothing in common.
If Fignon has doped, he never ran a such doping program. BTW how many riders could have afford to par $600.000/year for a similar doping program of Lance?
Fignon confessed only to have used drugs during Criterium Après-Tour and recreationnal drugs like cocaine in Colombia.
Even if he had said I doped for Tour de France, it’s impossible to drop him of TDF because of SOL.
Lance has been caught because he came back in sport still doping, and protected by UCI. Riders who had better blood values than Lance had been prosecuted while Lance was able to publish the proof of his doping on his website.
Lance has lacked of respect for others, he was caught for his stupidity to believe he were god. No one like to be fooled for so long time as Lance did with us. By posting his recent picture with yellow jerseys, he has done the same kind of mistake, that will cost him his last supports.
Susie:
Your comment about how other sports seem to suffer little in terms of negative public opinion vs. cycling is right on, at least here in the US. I don’t pretend to know just how extensive use of PEDs in in the MLB, NFL, etc., but certainly there is some use. But when someone is caught, there is not the same degree of negativity we offen see re cycling. Perhaps this is related to the idea that cycling, despite its deep American roots, is perceived as being a “foreign” sport?
Jean, I never said that I don’t believe the ‘evidence’ against Lance…however IMO that isn’t really the correct term. What USADA has compiled is a whole bunch of ‘testimony’, with pretty much zero actual evidence. Big diff (at least to me).
Lance was convicted entirely on heresay (that was mostly given under duress), and if they can do that for Lance, then they can do it for anybody. However, I don’t see any other country’s anti-doping federations lining up to take down their retired elite athletes based on sins of their past.
And I think I do see the world as round…cuz what I see is that most likely the VAST majority of the top cyclists in the last XX years (insert how many decades you like) have been doping with one thing or another, whether legal or illegal at the time is just semantics.
In years past doping of one form or another was pretty much taken for granted. But to now say that all those OTHER doped wins are ok but Lances are not is just ridicilous. Sure, it’s easy to stand on the “well, it wasn’t illegal at the time” defense…but a doped win is a doped win. I guess it’s all splitting hairs here…but I don’t disginguish between a ‘doped but not yet illegal’ win over another guy doing the same thing 2 years later and that is now not ok. They are BOTH not ok.
I think there should just be astericks over pretty much the entire last 20 plus years of winners (the astericks signifying “we don’t really know if the win was ‘clean or not”), being as it was during the EPO era. To single out any one guy and void all his wins yet leaving all the rest is laughable.
I believe the end result of this entire brew-ha-ha will be much like the aftermath of the Festina affair. Big whoop-de-do at first, with everybody acting all surprised and shocked, then all kinds of new rules and riders suspended, etc etc…but after the dust finally settled the rest of the peleton went on about their ‘business’, only being much more careful and smarter about it. But already so many people are saying how clean cycling is now. But HOW would we know? It’s not like the system has ever been any good at catching them obviously.
Matt,
Just a point about hearsay. A good example of hearsay would be if Billy Joe Bob testified that he heard Peggy Sue say that she saw Lance take EPO on the team bus during a “repair” stop in the mountains of France. Direct evidence would be if Peggy Sue testified that she saw Lance take EPO on the team bus during a “repair” stop in the mountains of France.
The testimony in USADA’s dossier is of the direct evidence variety. You can believe the testimony or discount the testimony, depending on what you know about the credibility of the witnesses. Hincapie’s and Zabriskie’s testimony, for me, is highly credible.
Hey Rant…thanks for setting me straight on the ‘heresay’..(I always thought personal testimony was heresay..but I guess it makes sense…if you testify YOU saw this, rather than Billy Bob told you he saw this)…I’m not saying I don’t believe it all (as you say, George and Z-man’s word is good enough for me)…my point is that the powers that be can use this method to get anybody for anything,even years after the deed(s). You put enough pressure on people and they will spill their guts eventually (and I’m not saying they’re lying just to say something, rather that they will break Omerta to protect themselves at some point, cuz you gotta look after #1).
Also it seems I read somewhere that personal testimony is pretty much the least reliable form of ‘evidence’…as our memories are flawed. I know I’ve done the ‘one person gets told something, then passes it on to the next person and so on, and 15 people later the last person tells what he was told, and it’s completly different than what the first person was told’ experiment years ago…it was amazing how fast a simple statement gets mangled. We humans are strange creatures.
Anyway, given what USADA found out, it would appear that there was a HUGE period of time when most of the peleton was doped, and it obviously had started before Lance and Co. showed up to the party. That’s my biggest point here. Lance didn’t invent the system, he (with help) just perfected it and beat the rest of the world 7 times at their own game. And I find it hard to believe it’s all been shut-off. They (the doping riders) are smart…and quite obviously know how to beat the system.
The biological passport seems like a good idea, but I’m guessing it has flaws and crevices to be exploited by those looking for an edge. And I’m guessing we won’t know what those are cuz those who are doing it won’t be talking about it.
Just read this article on Velo News by University of Texas professor and author John Hoberman.
http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/11/analysis/university-of-texas-professor-explores-cultural-phenomenon-of-doping_265230
It was pretty good…here’s a quote from the end that summs up doping in sport pretty nicely:
“The pro sports world prohibits and rails against PEDs at the same time it endorses and promotes them. This contradiction, along with the public prohibition and demonization of certain drugs that, like marijuana, are still used voraciously in private, make public attitudes toward athletes who use drugs both conflicted and self-contradictory.”
Matt,
Do you believe that Hamilton, Landis or Hincapie could have confused Lance with someone else who was doping in their bus or rooms?
Their testimonies are the most damming evidences. More important their are coherent with other facts, like all precedent Lance doping scandals.
Jean, I’ve already said that I DO believe the mountain of testimony…I’m not arguing that whatsoever. I’m saying that it’s quite obvious from this same testimony that there are MANY MANY MANY more who should suffer the same fate if we’re TRULY interested in bringing justice to the peleton, as they had (have) been doing the same thing. But I guess if they didn’t win then nobody is interested in taking them down.
Are you telling me that there aren’t any witnesses to be found who could detail doping done by other riders? Or is this entire thing becasue everybody hates Lance, and that he was SO successful…and due to that he’s the only one who will suffer the total erasure of his cycling career?
And as to testimony, yes it can be quite damning. However, it is still a persons word (rather than undisputable physical evidence), and subject to the agenda of the person providing said testimony. EVERYBODY has an agenda. Doesn’t mean what they say isn’t true, however it also doesn’t mean it’s not untrue, or even partly false (whether by intention or by omission or by mis-remembered ‘facts’). To say that everything people testify to is true would be like saying that everything on the internet is true.
Hey Jean C – was Jeannie Longo married to SOMEONE OTHER than the guy arrested for buying EPO? Oh that’s right – it was for his OWN use. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha.
Many people are acting like Lance was THE PROBELM. He wasn’t. Sure enough, in a way he was a problem, but more importantly, he was really a symptom. Doping existed before he ever forked a two-wheel steed, and it continues today. Had he decided to become a football player instead of a cyclist (he was from by-god Texas, after all), little would have been different in the peloton. Sure, probably there would not have been someone win the Tour seven times, but riders still would have doped.
So USADA has a big scalp to hang on their wall, but they have done little to really clean up cycling today.
Suzie,
To prosecute Jeannie Longo, evidences are needed. Despite of that French cycling federation is trying its best to keep Mrs Longo out of competition.
William,
2 points:
Lance was more than a doper, he set up a doping ring, that makes him different of normal dopers. Who else had used cancer as shield or to attack his opponents or to promote his cleanness?
Lance’s case is a big help for USADA to gain support, and that is a strong message sent to dopers everywhere on the planet. There is a big wave is moving acroos planet. We can hope for something a bit fairer.
Jean C
1) There are many more dopers who set up doping rings. Some have moved on. Some continue. Lance apparently did it well? After all, it took quite a while for him to get caught, and the drug testing regime, combined with the cycle/olympio bureaucrats, didn’t manage to come close to nipping it in the bud. Any organization claiming a huge victory over doping, due to finally getting Armstrong’s scalp, at this late date, seems to be a bit out of touch with reality. Had Armstrong been a bit more generous and likable, he might have avoided his dubious fate. In the end, he still has wealth and the comfort that goes along with it. I don’t think USADA won a lot? YMMV
2) USADA does seem to be milking as much out of this as they can for increased public funding and increased influence? I don’t see USADA’s resolution or conduct as being a great success. I’m troubled by the power grab that has allowed USADA to charge foreign nationals who operated almost exclusively abroad. While I agree they had significant jurisdiction with LA, they do not rightfully enjoy jurisdiction wrt YB and the others.
USADA’s “victory” is largely symbolic. It’s an irritation to LA, but not much more. The guy was mostly out of cycling and on to Tri’s and living well off his foundation.
I have mixed feelings about those who testified, or were willing to testify against LA. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but Betsy Andreau was completely justified. She carried that ax for a long time, and it finally landed. For LA’s companions in doping, I only give a full pass to those who were harshly discarded or hung out to dry. While I find Hincapie a likable guy, I also find his behavior here more disturbing than most of the others. He benefited from doping with LA, wasn’t harshly dismissed or hung out to dry, yet trades testimony for a relatively clean walk away? He lives a charmed life though. He has had a long and successful career, a life & children with a former TdF Podium Girl, and retired at an opportune time.
In the end, I feel badly for the innocents who will never be made whole and the the soup’s lack of concern for those people, evidenced by a complete absences of any plan that would take steps to compensate them in any way.
The Soup Sucks worse than the Dopers!
Exactly, Matt. The disco story is that they were in fact doping before LA showed up, and that mostly what he did was ramp things up. What would have happened if Discos were clean when he arrived? Who knows.
There was a large and seemingly effect doping program at Discos, but whether is was the largest, besy, or any other superlative we simply don’t know, since we know little if anything about other teams’ doping programs. If the Disco program was so well run, why the screwup with the cortisone in 1999?
Jeff,
And what about Madoff? Like Lance, he was not the first to use a Ponzi system.
Jean C,
Red herring? It might be better if you would comment upon the subject matter. Other than being a disagreeable fellow (sort of like LA is a disagreeable fellow), there really isn’t much similarity.
Brought to you by the public guardians who couldn’t find a single witness to the tack-throwing incident on the Mur de Peguere.
http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/13351/No-charges-for-Europcar-team-after-OCLAESP-investigation-proves-fruitless.aspx
http://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article/2012/11/23/cyclisme-vers-un-classement-sans-suite-de-l-affaire-europcar_1795263_3242.html
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/no-charges-expected-in-team-europcar-investigation
These guys make the Pink Panther films look like documentaries.
TV and PR did well at the 2011 Tdf for Europcar
Must have been doping 😉
Now that people are willing to confront the truth, academics like John Hoberman can offer much-needed historical and philosophical perspective
http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/11/analysis/university-of-texas-professor-explores-cultural-phenomenon-of-doping_265230
For me, Hoberman’s 1998 Festina article (below) is among the best commentaries on doping in cycling ever.
http://thinksteroids.com/articles/festina-tour-de-france-doping-scandal/
Hoberman seems to have studied the subject from a relatively detached academic position, over decades. Interesting material. Thoughtful study.
Odds of WADA, UCI, or team management/sponsors heeding his advise is almost nil.
We’re still in “blame the riders/athletes” mode, supported by calls for lengthening penalties, doubling suspensions, lifetime suspensions and reducing structures supporting checks & balances for the athletes in favor of expediency.
Until we get to a point where the athletes are no longer scapegoated, there is no progress and the problem, however you define it, will persist, and I won’t get excited about any so called “reforms”.
I’m perplexed as to why sports fans seem so anxious to hang athletes out to dry while supporting a system that encourages sketchy bureaucrats to live well off of the athletes’ labors? They could save the middle man and initiate Fan Clubs for the likes of Jacques Rogge, John Fahey, Travis Tygart, Paddy McQuaid & Steve Johnson to fawn over and throw money at?
Ligget Junkie – “These guys make the Pink Panther films look like documentaries”. Priceless! 🙂
Jean C – everyone’s “fave” witness Joe Papp has said he SOLD EPO to Jeannie’s hubby who TOLD HIM it was for his wife. That’s pretty much the same kind of horseshit “evidence” that has crucified Lance, so why isn’t it ‘good enough’ for the French heroine? And keep her OUT of “competition”?! Isn’t she 80?! Ok, ok, but I thought she SAID she’d retired. However, just envisioning the French cycling federation “trying” to keep a senior citizen off a bike has MADE MY DAY!
And did you all see the “news” this morning that 2 of Seattle’s non-coffee finest (AKA footballers on the Seahawks) are being (suck in my breath) SUPSPENDED 4 GAMES EACH for PEDs! Sacre bleu! How oh HOW will these DEMONS survive?! Crank up your Google machines for the voluminous RANTings & wailing of the sports media condemning these slime of the earth as “disgraced”, “cheats”, lower than a “snake’s belly in a wagon rut”. What? So sorry, I just ASSumed!
And BTW, do you guys ever watch ESPN? Have you SEEN the commercials they run NONSTOP on football Sundays? ‘Be a BETTER MAN!’ (Nugenix – the “all-natural testosterone booster!” is but 1 of MANY). Please, please, please, someone tell me one of those T-booster ads ran next to a segment of some blowhard trashing Lance for ‘cheating’!
Now I know how Tom Lehrer felt when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize —
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/contador-says-cycling-needs-to-introduce-zero-tolerance-for-dope-cheats
Oooh! Oooh! And just when I thought my laughmeter was already at ’11’ over the Jets’ butt-busting (haha), Stooge homage Thanksgiving night (can’t blame Tebow for THAT ‘ass’inine debacle!), I just see that Contador, he of the infamous “tainted meat” alibi, now says that cycling needs to introduce “ZERO TOLERANCE for dope cheats”. Oh man, make room in the vault Ligget junkie, THAT is PRICELESS!
So, by the standard Alberto advocates, he would be out for good due to his little clenbuterol situation. Cognitive dissonance much, AC?
Alberto’s gaffe is not that uncommon. People will propose stiff punishments AFTER their case has been decided.
Zero tolerance, while is often appears as a good idea, has a rather checkered history. People get busted for minor and often inadvertent violations are nailed to the wall. Do we really want to see an athlete’s career totally destroyed because he wasn’t aware of the slightly different formulation of the US vs. UK version of the same brand of nasal inhaler?
Susie,
You are making a confusion between hearsay and evidence.
If Joe Papp had directly spoken to Longo, that would have been evidence.
Hamilton, Landis, Hincapie,… having seen Lance while doping or listening him speaking about his doping practises are direct evidences.
Well, actually the part where friend Papp says he sold EPO to M. Longo is direct evidence, just the part where Papp says hubby told him it was for the wife is hearsay. But who do you suppose that EPO was for? Is/was M. Longo some sort of athlete or connected to any other athlete other than Jeannie?
But then I don’t have a lot of faith about what Papp says.
Jean C, I hate to get all technical about this. But it’s not hearsay merely to have witness A testify about a conversation he had with person B. So if A testifies that B purchased PEDs from A, and that B reported that B purchased those PEDs for C, there’s no hearsay involved. The evidence is perfectly good evidence that B intended to provide PEDs to C. The evidence is, of course, only circumstantial evidence that C ever received or used the PEDs. It WOULD be hearsay if A testified that B told A that C ASKED for the PEDs, if the testimony is offered as proof that C actually asked for the PEDs. Also Jean C, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d thought that hearsay was admissible in French courts.
I’m still waiting for part two of Tygart’s grand plan to be revealed. I still think we’ve only seen the tip of the ice berg. How far can he expand his empire on this foundation he’s laid?
His recent comments about athletes coming clean under a truth and reconciliation commission reeks of ivory tower thinking.
Larry,
Of course, that kind of testimonies could be admissible by french court. But, Ciprelli can say, “I never said that” or ‘ I say that to get a discount”,… so that kind of testimonies can only be used to corroborate other evidences.
Because Joe Papp has probably sold/send drugs on french soils, he could be arrested too, diminishing the value of his input.
In our justice system, defendant can lie, and, of course, witnesses have to be honest in their testimonies.
And in his spare time the past decade, Travis Tygart has been secretely running the University of Maryland’s athletic department…
INTO THE GROUND!
Awww Larry,
“Sit down boy,
I think I love ya’
No, get up boy
Show me what you can do
Oh, A B C
It’s easy as, 1 2 3
As simple as, do re mi
A B C, 1 2 3
Larry, you and me
A B C – it’s easy,
It’s like counting up to 3
Sing a simple melody
That’s how ‘easy’ the law can be
That’s how ‘easy’ the law can be
Sing a simple melody
1 2 3 Larry!”
Seriously, you’re da best! And thanks for answering my question a while back. I just haven’t had the chance to respond. (Thanks to you too Rant!). 🙂
New question – do you think Lance will ever tell/write his side of the saga?
Depends in part on what you mean by telling his side of the story: some spin on things to make him look better, or at least not as bad, or a full-out confession?
I don’t see him coming out with his version of “Positively False” but I think it is likely that there will be comments, posts, etc. he makes to put some spin on things, and maybe some nose-thumbing, like that picture with the jerseys. Mostly, in the near future I think he will lie low and let the furor die down.
I would tend to doubt that he will offer up a confession, it seems to be rather out of character for him and I see little incentive to do this. The psychological/theological aspects of “getting it off your chest and coming clean” seem to be foreign to him, and I don’t see any PR benefit: Lance haters will continue to hate him, perhaps even finding new ammo while those on the other side of the fence might be forced to switch.
But then I was surprised by Landis’ confession. I always figured that if he was guilty, he might take that to the grave. But then circumstances changed for him and introduced some incentive to confess and drop the dime.
Jean C, again to be clear, it’s always possible for ANY kind of evidence to be contradicted, whether or not the evidence is hearsay. Moreover, it’s my understanding that French law does NOT require hearsay evidence to be corroborated – in other words, a French defendant could in theory be convicted based solely on hearsay evidence. Please understand, I do not say this as a criticism of the French system, which I greatly admire (as I admire most things about France).
Susie, consider it a mutual admiration society. As for Armstrong, I agree with WS: Armstrong’s strategy is to lie low and let the dust settle. I suspect he’s fallen about as far in public esteem as he’s going to fall. He’ll make a comeback of some sort when the time is right, probably in 3-5 years. He’ll resume his work for charity, make motivational speeches, join boards of directors, and make a nice income doing pretty much whatever it is he wants to do. America likes a comeback story, and America will like Armstrong better once he re-emerges into the public light with his nose bloodied. He won’t make anyone’s top 10 list, but that’s the fate of just about every retired athlete not named Michael Jordan.
I suspect that Armstrong will eventually make a simple statement that he DID dope, that he did it because it was the only way he could race successfully, and that eventually there came a choice between building the Livestrong cancer-fighting brand and riding as a clean but unknown cyclist at the back of the peloton. He’ll apologize to everyone he lied to, in particular to the cancer survivors he lied to, but he’ll intimate that he doped in order to help those cancer survivors, and he’ll say it with the best PR coaching and in a way that most of us will understand. He’ll say that he made the wrong choice, but most of us will understand why he made the choice, and life will go on as it did before. No one will expect or even want Armstrong to “tell all” about how he doped in what will then seem like the distant past. America has a short memory, and maybe sometimes that’s a good thing too.
Larry,
You are probably right for the lowest level of our court, but with that case of drug trafficking, criminal standard should be applied. Don’t forget that we don’t ever know wheter Papp has given a legal testimony.
We had a similar case in 2003, when french TV filmed Lance’s teams dropping seringues and others used PED packets. They were not able to arrest them.
Hey, did ya’ll see the list of nominees for MLB’s Hall of Fame? Before I drag my Irate & Indignant soapbox out of the garage, I need someone who’s knowlegeable about baseball (hi Larry!) to inform us whether one automatically becomes “elligible” for the HOF list after they’ve been out of the game for so many years OR if they are selected. And please hurry, as I have the garage door open & it’s COLD in here!
Susie:
A brief rundown of the process: any player who has 10 years experience in the major leagues is eligible for consideration 5 years after he retires. A selection committee the “weeds” out and submits a shortlist of about 25-30 names to the BBWAA for consideration. Of course, any player banned from baseball is not eligible. Think Pete Rose. So yeah, Bonds et. al. are technically eligible. The allegations and admissions of PED use as well as convictions for obstruction of justice or perjury can be taken into consideration at either stage of the process.
I might point that there is a certain amount of agitation that Pete Rose should be in the HOF, so transgressions are not universally considered as disqualifications
BTW, there is a US Cycling HOF, but is there some international HOF. And I looked at the US HOF website, and LA is not there. Whether he was at one time and has been removed, I can’t say.
susie, the players you mentioned do not have a chance in hell of being elected to the HOF. Not for a long time anyway.
It’s off-topic, so I’ll try to be brief: baseball players should be elected to the HOF based on their performance on the field, regardless of their PED use. The argument in favor of this position is simple and clear-cut: we don’t know who did and did not use PEDs. In baseball, this problem goes beyond the VERY high false negative rate in drug testing — as WADA kept telling us during the Armstrong affair, it doesn’t MEAN anything if you pass a drug test. Baseball also has a special problem, which is that it tested all players in 2003 to determine if a program of drug testing was necessary, and while the results of that testing was supposed to remain confidential, the identity of some (but not most) of the players who flunked the 2003 tests have been leaked to the public.
We can be reasonably sure that a large percentage of baseball players were doping during the so-called “steroids era”. The thing to do is to admit candidly that every baseball player from that era is a possible doper, and not discriminate against the ones unlucky enough to get caught (or to have their 2003 results disclosed).
Oh, and by the way, as this is about the only crowd I know that would find it interesting … that 2003 testing I mentioned above? It was T/E testing only. No CIR confirming tests were ever run. And there are baseball players that will effectively be banned from the HOF based on that T/E testing, some of whom still claim that they never took PEDs.
Larry:
I’ll agree that these players are probably “effectively” banned from the HOF, even if not officially banned. Whether or not an athlete should be judged for such honors based solely on his performance, or whether or not other factors should be considered is another question. This is particularly true when there is little substantive evidence as to whether or not a player is actually guilty of PED usage. My feeling is, that unless you’ve got the goods on someone, they should be eligible for consideration, but then when the committees actually meet and vote who knows what all they consider?
WS, we know that the writers who vote on HOF membership have refused to vote for certain players based on the writers’ suspicions that the players used PEDs. The suspicions are based on things like whether the player had large muscles or enjoyed an unusual spike in career performance.
As for whether HOF membership should turn on factors other than on-the-field performance … well, we have some crazy racist violent sons of bitches in the HOF. And we have players in the HOF who have admitted that they habitually broke the rules. But if anyone wants to start a Baseball Hall of Good People, they can count on me for a $10 donation.
Larry:
Good points. As long as the HOF process involves people voting, they may vary well consider any factor. Should Barry Bonds be excluded because we think he took steroids, but as of yet has not been convicted of same? Or should he be excluded because he was convicted of obstruction of justice? Or should we say “what the hey, he was a good enough player, so let’s vote him in”? I’d basically say, let the process work itself out, however flawed it may be.
I bet if Ty Cobb were up for consideration now, it would be a different story. He might ultimately get in, but there sure would be a lot of discussion about his racism, etc. I wonder if there is any way someone could get voted out, if new facts were to arise?
Since we seem to have digressed a bit from our mainstream here, I will attempt to tie this back there. If baseball has a problem regarding records, HOF, etc. for the “steroid era”, cycling has a similar problem. There were a lot of other riders other than Lance and company, and I am sure that some of them doped too, even if they weren’t caught. How are we in the cycling community going to deal with this?
Baseball
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……….
Whether or not one personally likes baseball is not the issue here. Rather, we can learn from how other sports deal with the issue of PEDs. I’m not saying that MLB, or the NFL, etc. have always taken the best course of action, but we can learn from failures just as we as from successes.
My grandfather is likely rolling over in his grave over me disparaging baseball. He loved the game. MHRIP.
And it is a “game” or “pastime”. It’s certainly not a sport. It’s a game or pastime played occasionally by athletes and often individuals better suited for the couch (even on the professional level).
MLB and the NFL don’t do much wrt doping in their leagues. I’m not sure much can be learned from those leagues for cycling, other than cycling would probably be better off if it were not under umbrella (iron fist w/ a brass knuckle) of the ioc, similar to the more independent arrangement MLB/NFL enjoy. 😉
I don’t think this is the answer.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/lemond-to-run-for-uci-presidency
Sandy: mais oui, nous savons:
http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/13417/Sandy-Casar-We-dont-know-who-was-good-and-who-was-not.aspx
I have watched the Tour de France on American TV every year for 28 years. I became an even bigger fan when my cable provider finally included OLN back in 2003 & I got to see more races. That is also when I began reading & devouring books & websites about pro-cycling.
When 2006 happened (OP & Landis), I thought that was as low as this sport could go. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, how wrong I was. The last 6 years have been one pathetic, disgusting disappointment after another. We fans are just as PATHETIC as we seem to act like we deserve the abuse heaped upon us by this sport.
Well, after 28 years, if LeMond takes over the UCI, that’s it for me, sayonarra, see ya, au revoir, ya won’t have susie b to kick around anymore! Just the IDEA of LeMond in charge of ANYthing let alone this sport is more effective than a bottle of Ipecac if you want to toss your cookies.
If cycling TRULY wants to be professional, it needs to TAKE BACK the anti-doping from WADA, just like all the other pro sports do.
And for all those hypocritical blowhards that scream & shout that ALL doping “offenders” need to be “BANNED FOR LIFE!”, I have some advice for ya – get back on your own meds & GET A LIFE!
Holy crumb…I go away for 2 weeks and all hell breaks loose here! Lots to digest…but it’s good to see things are still happenin’! And Susie, you crack me up as always!
One more thing. I’d like to say that I was but a toddler when I began watching the Tour. It’s not true, but I like to say it.
🙂
On first blush, the notion of LeMond leading the UCI does seem to reek of Chicken Little Syndrome.
IMHO, the reign of HvB & Paddy McQ has been nothing short criminally incompetent or incompetently criminal, you pick.
Given the ineptitude of their collective “stewardship”, it should be impossible to nominate a worse candidate for successor.
Apparently not………………………….
Pro sports organizations seem to be having many problems now. The NHL is trying to commit suicide, the NFL had a problem early in the season with the refs and has on-going issues related to the commissioner’s power to suspend players, the NBA and some European football leagues have had problems with crooked officials, the Football League in England is have problems with racismor at least allegations of the same. Heck, even badminton of all sports had issues at the Olympics.
I am not sure what to think about Lemond in general. I admire him for his wins, but some of his actions since then leave me wondering. It seems to me he essentially walked away from the sport, except for his badge-engineering deal with Trek, and taking the odd anti-doping potshot from time to time. So now he proposes to be the one to lead UCI out of the wilderness? What is needed is someone with some real organizational and leadership skills, maybe even someone from outside the sport. Any takers?
So, over the past 3 weeks, there have been 6 (I think) NFL players testing positive for Adderall. Let’s beat all the other sports blogs & media by warming up our vocal cords & huddle up – 1,2,3, altogther now : “BAN THOSE DOPING SCUMBAGS FOR LIFE! BAN ‘EM FOR LIFE!”
What do you MEAN we’re voices in the wilderness? What do you mean the NY Times, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, NBCSports, CNN, YahooSports, Deadspin, Huffington Post, etc, etc are not scrolling the news 24/7? They’re DOPERS! They’re SCUMBAGS! You use, you lose, right? RIGHT?!
And one MORE difference between cycling & a REAL pro sport (better sit down…) – the NFL dopers get to KEEP PLAYING til their appeal is heard & judged! KEEP PLAYING!
And btw, if these 6 actually got caught in the NFL’s infrequent testing parameters, how many MORE NFL players do you think are actually using this & other PEDs? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Indeed, I have heard that aderall is the PED of choice in the NFL. Apparently, some are claiming to be ADHD as justification while others are just using. I imagine it’s pretty easy to get ahold of.
Most of the pro sports leagues in the US have provision that any proposed suspension is delayed pending the outcome of an appeal. Kind of makes sense: if your forced to sit out and then you win the appeal, how do you and your team get those games back?
Just came across this:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/05/sport/armstrong-austin-doping-cycling/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
Or experience? “Anti-doping policy more important than results, says Brailsford” http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/sky-still-searching-for-directeur-sportif Anyone need a job? just . . . anyone? You probably do need a driver’s license though.
Listened to Fatty’s live interview with Levi yesterday morning…pretty interesting stuff! (here’s a link to the interview in case you missed it (it’s almost an hour long tho…get some coffee n snacks):
http://www.fatcyclist.com/2012/12/07/behind-the-scenes-of-my-levi-leipheimer-interview/
And then I just saw this article on VN:
http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/12/news/rick-crawford-confesses-to-aiding-doping-riders_262717
THIS is the kind of stuff I’ve been waiting to see…It’s great that all these guys are coming forward admitting their PED use, but a full confession must include the who’s, where’s and how’s…just saying you doped doesn’t cut it. Rick is admitting to assisting TWO riders…so WHO was helping the REST of the peleton get their PED’s?
There’s a WHOLE-LOT more room for confession I think.
Oh…and Rick only confessed that his job was to “source, provide and mail” the EPO…but he didn’t say where he actually got it…and from whom…that’s always been one of my questions…WHERE did all this EPO actually come from? Was there an employee at a factory skimming the production line somehow? Liscensed Dr’s getting it via bogus prescriptions? When you think of the entire peleton of users, that would be a LOT of EPO.
(As to the “how”, he did say he shipped it thru the US mail …wonder if that opens him up to any sort of legal issues…tho I’d think the statute of limitations is way past by this point).
Matt,
Good question about EPO production.
Donati, who has written a report about doping a few year ago, stated that around a quarter of EPO production didn’t enter in health circuit (hopital,…).
No one believe that only cyclists use a such amount.
Of course there is some chinese, russian production, but what about other famous companies ? Accomplices or not ?
Many years ago I interviewed with the DEA for a position which, as it was explained to me, involved monitoring pharmaceutical companies manufacturers to see that all their production was properly accounted for. Of course, such monitoring could not account for unscrupulous doctors who might obtain seemingly legitimate amounts of some drug and then make such available for non-legitimate purposes, although I suppose that doctors who might order an unusually large amount of a drug might come under question. I didn’t get the job, but I wonder if such a program continues today and what, if anything, it might be doing about PEDs today. The emphasis at the time I applied seemed to be directed towards “recreational” drugs, although stimulants can be used as PEDs as well as for “recreational” purposes.
Certainly this could be a valuable line of enquiry and potentially a way to cut down on the amount of EPO available for nefarious uses. But such is beyond any of the ADAs.
I think this article covered some aspects of supply, and flooding the market with EPO:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/armstrongs-fraud-paralleled-epo-makers-feud
If you thought it was years and years too late to make any attempt to go after Postal, get a load of this:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uk-anti-doping-agency-investigating-linda-mccartney-team
I knew they fell apart, but it’s news to me they existed long enough to work up a doping program. (P.S. Is it a bigger scandal that the riders could have — eaten meat?)
Interesting article related to the possibility of the Feds joining the Landis Whistle Blower Suit:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323339704578171551137193218.html
Very interesting, indeed. BTW, in case anyone’s wondering, the relative paucity of posts on my part is due to a fair amount of overtime I’ve had to do for my day job.
Not to worry, Rant. You got any easy gig here: just post something every once in a while and we do the rest”
MikeG, thanks for that link…I had NO IDEA about the history of EPO…very scary stuff that the big pharma companies are more interested in profit than helping people…that they were pushing up the recommended dose into the ‘ludicrous’ zone is just outrageous. Makes you wonder about ANY drug…how safe is it REALLY? (and is the dose you are taking both safe and effective?) The black market cost is (was?) staggering…gotta wonder what it is now? I have to imagine there is still a huge market in the endurance sports world.
Curious – so much effort has been expended towards bringing down LA…but begs a huge question – how many other samples taken over the years are still frozen and will soon be analyzed with or without the rider’s consent? And if they are not analyzed – why not? A smart response to bring the whole system to its knees would be to put forth a push for all samples – A and B to be analyzed. The results would not be pretty. Even in the 80’s – doping was known…
Possibly, but remember that many tests were done on LA and except for that cortisone positive in 1999, never “tested” positive. Same for other riders we now know doped.
It is possible that improvements in testing might allow detecting levels that once were undetectable, but it is also possible that long term storage has degraded the samples.
The day that SPAIN allows any old blood samples of THEIR riders (ummmm, like Prince INDURAIN for just 1 example) to be tested by outsiders will be the day PIGS FLY. Ditto for Italy unless those riders are not viewed as “stars” & they are offered up as “compliance”. Same for Belgium, Russia (as IF!), & even France.
Euro countries have no desire to throw all the babies out with the bathwater. And just remember where cycling’s version of OMERTA originated.
The only Euro country I could see doing this is Germany because they’re still trying oh-so-super hard to get everyone to forget their DECADES of doping every athlete they could get their hands on, whether the athletes knew it or not.
But it’s probably irrelevant as the ONLY rider’s blood they’ve kept for a decade is Lance. Hmmmm, I would think some smart lawyers could file lawsuits on this “unequal treatment” alone.
Two things –
(1) Did you read the Vaughters piece (via interview by Joe Lindsey) on ESPN.com? My “fave” part is where he says he “anonymously confessed in NY Times in 2006”. ANONYMOUS CONFESSION? Is that ‘almost exactly’ a joke? Hmmmm, let’s see, if we were all ‘alone together’, I bet we could come up with some ‘awfully good’ examples in ‘random order’ of , oh I don’t know, OXYMORONS. Do I hear ‘deafening silence’? Thanks Vaughters – “arrogant humility” sums you up perfectly.
(2) Levi’s old coach’s confession. The part that fascinated me is that Levi DUMPED this guy as soon as he got a big contract with Rabobank, who assumedly paid his doping costs. So, let me get this straight, Levi used this guy & then TOSSED him aside when someone/thing better came along that could help him reach his goal? Hmmm, WHO KNEW how much Levi & Lance had IN COMMON? And yet virtuous Levi is to be admired for “coming foward” & Lance is the scumbag/user/doping mastermind? Got it now. May the ‘REAL PHONY’ please stand up?
You know, I think those of us here ought to concentrate more on the positive aspects of performance enhancing drug use. For instance, it extends the life expectancy of Thoroughbreds who have raced in the United States by six months. Fact!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/sports/drugs-injected-at-the-racetrack-put-europe-off-us-horse-meat.html
MattC, no drug is safe. The best we can hope for, if all parties are honest, is that a drug is declared to be safe and effective for a particular intended use – for example, EPO for those undergoing chemotherapy. Understanding this should put to rest any talk of allowing athletes to use controlled amounts of PEDs – that’s an unsafe use of a drug, by definition.
Robert, I cannot comment on whether the ADAs will start testing frozen samples without athlete consent – it happened to Armstrong in 2005, so it could happen to others. But your question “why not” is easy to answer: we do not have validated lab procedures in place for such testing. We don’t know if the tests work on long-frozen samples. We can guess that they MIGHT work, but labs don’t guess. Labs use procedures that have been tested in controlled experiments to show that they work. Until someone does the controlled experiments on long-frozen samples, you simply cannot take a test method validated for samples stored for a few days, and reliably use that method on samples stored for a few years.
susie b, let’s just name it. They threw the book at Armstrong, and when they were done they punished Armstrong with stuff that’s not even in the book, and they did it because the cycling community had grown to hate him. During his career, Armstrong had pissed off just about everyone. Once the cycling community realized that they COULD throw Armstrong under the bus (and for many reasons, this realization was a long time coming), that’s what they did. No one cared, because no one in cycling really likes the guy. We can debate forever whether Armstrong really doped more than any other top rider (my take is that Armstrong is different not because of how much he doped, but because he could have done more than any other single rider to combat doping), and whether his punishment (in particular, the decision to ignore the WADA statute of limitations) can be justified. We can also argue how self-serving Armstrong’s punishment is working out to be – I won’t deny that once the cycling world realized that Armstrong could be brought down, there were some who realized that doing so was in their best interests. But let’s not kid ourselves about WHY this has happened. The reason why is that cycling hates Armstrong, not simply because he doped and won with better results than anyone else, but because he was by all accounts an arrogant s.o.b.
The difference between Armstrong and Ullrich, or Armstrong and Riis, or Armstrong and any other doper you could name who ever stood on a cycling winner’s podium, can be understood only in terms of depth of hatred.
Larry – I have to disagree with you a little bit. It wasn’t just that Lance discarded ‘friends’/teammates as seemingly easily as some of us change shoes on his, er, ride to world domination, which lead to hurt feelings (see Frankie), jealousy, anger, hatred. And it’s not just because he IS the world’s most famous & most successful cyclist (to the outside world, who knows nothing of Merckx). And its not just that Lance was a driven, relentless, do-whatever-it-takes achiever on a grand scale who alienated friends & enemies alike & yes, was an s.o.b. on many an occasion. And it’s not just that he beat cancer & came back to win the world’s hardest endurance event, not once, not twice, but 7 times in a row, giving thrills, hope & inspiration to MILLIONS. It was ALL those things but it was ALSO that he was the BIGGEST SCAPEGOAT of all time that everyone ran to “expose” all at once becuse it would SHELTER them from blame. Levi actually admits in his interviews that well, hell, he couldn’t come forward before NOW because his career would have been OVUH but HEY, now that we can BLAME IT ALL ON LANCE, here I IS!
It makes me SICK!
And btw, if being an arrogant s.o.b is grounds for discarding/trashing a great achiever & his accomplishments, by all means, SELL APPLE STOCK NOW!
I just can’t abide the INJUSTICE. The HYPOCRISY. The sniveling cowards that try to convince the ignorant American public that “Lance made me do it!”& ‘I was but an innocent lad til I hooked up with Dr Evil.’ I mean, #%!^@^*!#%!
And I tell you what this pathetic, HYSTERICAL witch hunt as done for me – every single day I HATE cycling a little bit more. I hate that I spent 28 years watching it, specifically the last 9 where I’d enter the ‘Tour Tomb’ every July & watch nothing & read nothing but Tour de France for 3 straight weeks. I hate that I wasted hundreds if not THOUSANDS of hours trumpeting & defending the sport. I hate that I watched in 1st dread, then horror as one of the greatest athletes of all time was DESTROYED. And I hate that his destruction is STILL not enough for the bloodsuckers & leeches of the world.
And most of all, I HATE that Floyd Piece of Sh*t Landis STOLE MY MONEY! (Come on, you knew I’d have to get that in there! 🙂 )
Liggett junkie – ESPN advertises the “positive aspects of PERFORMANCE enhancement drugs” every damn day, all day – ‘Ageless Male’, ‘Nugenix’, & various other Testosterone boosters scroll by almost every hour. That this network takes the money from such companies to shill their products all the while TRASHING athletes who endulge in the very same thing is ESPN’s version of MIND-BODY disconnect. Or HYPROCRISY. Your choice.
Oh & Rant – we miss you here dreadfully, but on the bright side, with all that OT moola, you’ll be able to buy yourself cases of PEETS AND have the funds to pay off your losing bet to ME. 🙂
Aw, come on Susie…you KNOW that Lance is THE DEVIL! Why, I’m sure someday tapes will come to light exposing the TRUTH: that Lance advised George Bush that there were WMD’s in Iraq. And I’m pretty sure he can be directly linked to Greece’s financial problems, as well as the rest of Europe. And hey…it turns out that he was the TRUE behind-the-scenes power at Fanny-May/Freddie-Mac, and had been advising Worldcom, Lehmann Brothers, AND Bernie Madoff on good business practices. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of the worlds problems can be directly attributed to him if you dig deep enough. We sure are lucky he’s been banished and had his name stricken from the English language!
susie b, I’m not sure you disagree with me even a little bit. I DID acknowledge the self-interest of those who threw Armstrong under the bus. You are right: the vast majority of Armstrong’s opponents in this matter were people who either (1) took no personal risk to see him brought down, or (2) benefitted personally from Armstrong’s fall. (I do not deny that Armstrong’s earliest opponents, people like Emma O’Reilly, may have suffered as a result of their taking a stance against Armstrong.)
As far as scapegoating goes … yes, there is some of that going on, and I don’t blame you for being angry about it. Armstrong did not tie riders up and shoot EPO into their veins, and he did not spike anyone’s orange juice with steroids. I’m repeating myself, but if Armstrong had not returned to cycling post-cancer, the level and extent of doping in cycling would have been exactly the same. It was simply a matter of having to cheat in order to win, and (in all likelihood, for most riders) having to cheat in order to ride as a pro. The cyclists that were willing to pay that price were the ones riding the Tours. That was the reality, at least up to the time of the imposition of the biological passport, and it may continue to be the reality. The most frustrating thing about the Armstrong case is that it tells us nothing of interest about doping in the peloton after 2005. The Armstrong case is a lesson in ancient doping history, nothing more.
But as a longtime Armstrong supporter, I can’t deny the amount of power Armstrong wielded in this sport. No, Armstrong is not the guy portrayed by Tygart and the other inquisitors. But Armstrong could have been a unique force for clean cycling – he could have made a positive difference in cycling culture in a way well beyond what any other cyclist could have accomplished. The converse also must be noted: given Armstrong’s power, he WAS a uniquely negative figure if what you care about is clean sport. So, yes: I think the extent of Armstrong’s punishment is grossly unfair, and I don’t care a whit that he’s being punished to that extent. Most riders had a choice of cheat or quit. Armstrong had other choices.
I long ago stopped watching cycling. It became obvious to me years ago that cycling’s fan base was filled with bitterness. I had a bit of an inside view into one pro cycling team, and learned that from a team’s standpoint, it was assumed that anyone who could pedal faster than the team’s best rider must be doping. I’d look at cycling forums and read the Euro press, and came to realize that the doping story had become more important than the sport itself. I figured out that, for all of our concern about false positive tests, the REAL problem in doping testing are the false negatives – the cyclists caught doping may have been the ones doping the most, but in all likelihood they were just the unlucky victims of a system that (probably unintentionally) selectively punished only a handful of the cheats. But what caused me to change the channel was the realization that anti-doping was becoming a police activity rather than the purview of the biochemists.
I follow doping in cycling because there are other sports I still care about, and I hope that these sports do not follow cycling’s path to self-destruction in the name of clean sport.
I’m going to question Larry’s contention that LA was in a uniques position to clean up the sport, or at least give it a good push down that road.
While after 1999 he did have a considerable amount of juice in the sport, to a large extent that juice came from his performance, which I turn came via chemistry. What would have happened if, after recovering from cancer and showing up at Disco to discover a doping program, he had said “this is not the way to win”, and tried to shut down the doping there and/or go to UCI/WADA and spilled the beans? My guess is that, at best, he would have been allowed to ride clean, with far less results than what he did get, or at worst, he would be tossed off the team and find it hard if not impossible to get a ride.
By the time he became to peloton power he did, he was already well done PED lane and at the peak of his career. As much as some of us would like to have these guys confess, it just isn’t realistic to expect that LA would throw it all away. I’m not defending him here, just trying to state what is realistic.
Much the same would be true at the time of his first retirement: had he confessed then, his TdF victories would all have been vacated in all likelihood, and I doubt that he would have been willing to toss all that aside in the interest of the sport.
Furthermore, what did he really know about doping in cycling, from firsthand knowledge? He knew, of course, of what was going on at Disco/USPS but did he really know much about what was going on at Phonak or Rabobank, etc.? Sure, he might of had some suspicions: “Hey, Jacques is riding a whole lot faster this year, he must be on something.”. And maybe when his team hired someone who had ridden on another team, that rider might talk a bit about what haf gone on with his old team. But such isn’t really much more than what we do here: speculate what might be going on based on various bits of what is at best, circumstantial evidence, and at worst, mere rumor and suspicion.
Had LA not come out of retirement, and then waited until the statute of limitations kicked in (ignoring for the sake of this argument the creative overturning the SOL that USADA did), and then spilled all the beans, he would have basically just done what USADA has done: clean up the previous generation with little of any effect on what is going on now.
But all this is directed to. UCI at the past, IMO. We need to focus on the future.
William,
1999 was the year after Festina, and the riders that attended to 1999 TDF were much cleaner as precedent and following years. That can be seen by the results of EPO retesting done and by the drop of performances measured (power, climbing time and ITT).
Most of riders agree about that, and confess that they had no refuelling of EPO on that Tour, even if most of them came in France loaded at maximum for the frst day.
The “gentlemen agreement” behind the closed door, (no drugs on that Tour, police is watching ) that had been made between teams and organisers, has been broken.
This isn’t (mostly) about our usual topic but I just wanted it somewhere besides my FB page –
Things I’ve learned this week :
(1) That High Definition, advancing age, & a 55 inch TV screen are NOT Mick Jagger’s friends.
(2) That you will never go broke betting AGAINST the self-professed “experts”of the sports media & the stock market. You will however experience hour upon hours of neverending laughs.
(3) That it’s true – even when you give a frenzied mob a man’s blood, they will want more. Perhaps to distract one of the failures in their own lives? Eventually they will become satiated until the next exciting thing once again stirs their blood…
(4) That if you’re African American & an employee of ESPN, you can apparently say ANY derogatory/racist thing on air & not lose your job. BTW, if you’re black, what IS “the cause”? Lemme tell ya, “I know some people in Washington, friends of mine” & we ask each other – “Is Rob Parker an ass or a cornball ass?”
(4) And finally, that there’s such a thing as “fake” Twitter followers!
It’s been an EDUCATIONAL week! 🙂
William, you’re right that coming into the 1999 Tour, Armstrong was not the figure he would later become. If memory serves, few thought he’d finish that Tour, let alone win it. If it took PEDs for Armstrong to compete and win in 1999, then you could say that he gained his power to combat PEDs in part through his use of PEDs.
So, maybe Armstrong’s opportunity to be a force for clean sport came at some point after 1999. But it did come. Also, remember that Armstrong could have become a force for clean sport without confessing his past use of PEDs – just look at the example of Vaughters, who formed his clean team many years before he ‘fessed up. Indeed … if Armstrong had merely endorsed Vaughters’ model after Vaughters created it, that would have been a huge step in the right direction.
OK, sure, there were limits on what Armstrong could have done. But to be sure, there came a point when Armstrong could have done one hell of a lot, and the best you can say for him is that he did nothing. Probably a more true statement is that Armstrong became not a force for clean sport, but an obstacle in its way. OK, sure, Armstrong didn’t do anything worse than the other guys on top of the peloton … but as he did those things as a uniquely powerful person in cycling, the EFFECT of what he did (and didn’t do) was bigger. With great power goes great responsibility.
That’s a tough one Larry…on the one had I can agree that LA was in a very powerful position to be a force for change…however on the other hand he also had the most to lose of any athlete in history. Vaughters was able to pull off his quiet ‘change’ mostly becasue he was not in the spotlight and hated by so many. I don’t think LA could have pulled that off…too many people would have been pointing fingers and dredging up any speck of dirt that was available (and turns out there was a fair amount of dirt to be dredged).
And quite honestly I don’t think anybody could have changed things just by stepping forward, even with his clout. It takes time for real change to occur…HOPEFULLY some good comes out of this ordeal, but I’ve yet to really see much substance. I’m pretty sure the dopers are still a few steps ahead of enforcement, and they always will be.
And on a side note, I think it was on CSPAN Friday night that I caught a little bit of a House oversight comittee taking testimony about HGH in the NFL.
Coming to a bookstore near you : ‘The Devil Wears Out USADA’…..OR….’USADA Wears Out The Devil’?
😉
BTW, did ya’ll read Horner’s “interview” on cyclingnews? What I find fascinating is that over the last 15 years of American top level pro cyclists, there was one guy who had one, ONE redneck guy who had two, & the rest who had NO BALLS AT ALL. I like Horner even more & hope he & Jensie duke it out for title of World’s Oldest Male Pro Cyclist for another decade. As for Horner’s interviewer, the guy is a complete tool.
Yes, indeed, Ms. b, but that’s exactly what I’ve come to expect of cycling journalists. It makes it easy for them. They just copy and paste the same ominous hints in every damn piece. “Had he but told all he could ….” They are the Mary Roberts Rineharts of the, uh, non-fiction brigade. (Note: to mystery devotees, MRR is invariably called the chief exponent of the ‘Had I But Known’ school of writing, because, passim; just pick up one of her books. Oh it’s so irritating.)
I am reminded of a ProCycling interview a few years ago that was even worse. This guy followed Ivan Basso (coming off suspension) all day and kept asking variations on ‘How can I ever believe/trust/admire you again?’ Honest, it was like reading the diary of a soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.
And in entertainment news, for THIS she left her sickbed?–
http://www.eonline.com/news/371951/kate-middleton-makes-first-appearance-since-announcing-pregnancy
As expected, the cycling “media” CABAL is trashing Sally Jenkins for her recent gutsy piece on Lance Armstrong. I thought it was FABUTASTIC, even if I don’t agree with all the opinions (not sure if I want PEDS completely allowed in sport). She had to have known she would be shredded by the current ravenous mob of Lance Haters (whipped to a frenzy by that most HYPOCRITICAL group on the planet – her fellow sports “journalists”), not just because she still supports Lance & thinks he was the hardest working AND BEST cyclist during those 7 Tour winning years, but because she “dares” utter an opinion AT ALL after co-writing 2 books with him & apparently (SACRE BLEU!) profiting. Er, WHERE in the Constitution does it ban one’s FREEDOM OF SPEECH if that one profited from a relationship? If this were true, sports “journalism” would not exist at all as all they DO is “profit” from relationships with athletes. The IRONIC thing is that the entire sport & ESPECIALLY the cycling “media” PROFITED from Lance Armstrong. That Sally Jenkins is the ONLY one to still state her admiration for him & his accomplishments reveals more about the petty jealousies, bitterness, & overall failings of the rest of the cycling “media” than it does about Sally or Lance.
Hey Susie…how about a link to that article PRETTY PLEASE?
uhm, err..never mind Susie..(I’m such an idiot)…googled it and found it. LOVE that lady! She is my new hero! (here’s the link for those who don’t want to search):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/othersports/why-im-not-angry-at-lance-armstrong/2012/12/15/5802bcce-460e-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html
I think we tend to give Armstrong too much credit and/or blame. As has been mentioned here many times, PED usage was going on before he showed up and it certainly is going on today. I’m not sure that the idea that he could have come back in 1999, rode and won a few years to build up his name, and then gotten religion and come out against doping would have worked. There were at that stage of his career already the rumors and allegations of drug usage and he would have been perceived by many as a hypocrit. I suppose that if he confessed, took the hit of a 2 year suspension and having his wins forfeited, he might have had some credibility as an anti-drug spokesman. But could have really changed things?
One big problem I see is the perception (which may or may not be reality, but that’s a different issue) that most pro cyclists dope and that the only way you can compete is to dope. Riders are reluctant to stay or go clean fearing they would be at a severe disadvantage. It’s kind of like two people each holding a gun to the other’s head: if put put my gun down the other guy just may go ahead and blow me away, so I keep my gun up and so he does too.
Should I remember you that Bassons-Armstrong incident happened on 1999 TDF?
With his cancer Lance has had a serious reason not to dope, or at least to be kind with people fighting doping.
Sally Jenkins seems out of way.
William, I’d say it was more than a perception that you needed to dope to compete (during ‘that’ era, can’t say what’s happening now as we don’t really know). Just look at all the depostions…they all talk about the fact that they couldn’t even keep up, letalone win anything until they started doping (and this was BEFORE Lance).
And Jean…I’d say Lance (and pretty much EVERY cyclist that came to the pro ranks during the EPO era) had every reason to dope. It was that or go home to race in the lower echelons. Everybody keeps acting like Lance and the Americans brought this problem to the peleton, but it was the other way around. When you show up at someone elses game, you need to learn and play by THEIR rules if you want to have ANY chance at winning. And that’s exactly what the American’s did…and now they’re being destroyed for it (well, at least one of them….the rest seem to be getting a hand-slap…which is the problelm).
Matt,
You see it as an American problem but few people see it like that in Europe. They just see Lance as a major problem, not for his boping but more likeky for his bully behaviour and how he acted with people.
For the fun, during 1999 TDF Lance was questionned about doping, and his reponse to french TV reporter was: “Only France has a doping problem”. His answer was referring to Festina.
Matt:
You’re probably right, but I used the term perception deliberately, as I wished to avoid a debate about what extent doping was actually going on. There is also a question of whether any given rider’s lack of results is because he is clean or whether it’s simply a case of not being good enough. Athletes all the time fail when they step up a level. So it could have been that Discovery might not have done that well even if most everyone else was clean. How much of the excuse”I doped in order to keep up with the dopers” is true and how much is it simply a cover for “I doped because I thought it would give me an edge”. Who knows?
Here’s. An interesting article on how big pharmas are making big bucks off the illicit use of HGH:
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20121221/DA3A43101.html
Some of this illicit use is non-sports related, but some of it is and this tends to point to the pharmas at the very least not taking a close look at where their products end up. I wouldn’t be surprised that an similar article could be written about EPO, except I doubt there is much demand for non-sporting uses.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/spanish-supreme-court-restores-2005-vuelta-victory-to-heras
This is what happens when fat a$$ed bureaucrats attempt to change the result of races, post competition.
Sadly we’ve seen far to much of this, and we’ll see plenty more of the same.
Not our usual subject, but I felt like putting this here (bigger readership than my FB page) :
Some of you may know that the looong-awaited for musical movie version of ‘Les Miserables’ opens Xmas Day. Fittingly/funnily/ironically enough, the Republicans say that describes their past & future four years. Well, in the spirit of the season, the once, current, & ALWAYS fabulous JOHN WALTERS on his blog/website MEDIUMHAPPY gave the ole tip of the hat to the GOP’s Man of the Ticking Count-down Hours :
“Speaker of the House
Nothing up his sleeve
Gonna keep us Cliff’in
Up to New Year’s Eve”
(LOVE this! 🙂 )
Y’know, now that I think about it, the actual lyrics of the 1st chorus describes EVERY politician –
“Master of the house
Doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake
And an open palm
Tells a saucy tale
Makes a little stir
Constituents always appreciate a bon-viveur
Glad to do a ‘friend” a favor
Doesn’t cost me to be nice
But nothing gets you nothing
EVERYTHING has got a PRICE”
Happy Holidays to one & all! And this year it’s a DOUBLE celebration as we all made it thru the End Of The World! WHOO-HOOOOO!
The Sunday Times is suing Armstrong to recover payments made as result of LA’s libel suit:
http://espn.go.com/sports/endurance/story/_/id/8774651/lance-armstrong-sued-sunday-times-libel-settlement
And in an other development, a Seattle Seahawk player suspended for adderal is claiming the sample was contaminated when the collector used a second cup to contain the first cup, which had sprung a leak:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8774723/richard-sherman-seattle-seahawks-cornerback-claims-drug-test-was-contaminated-broken-seal-cup-source
Here’s hoping all here have happy holidays!
Happy Christmas to all my fellow Fiscal Cliff divers! Gosh Rant…do you still do anything over at Rant 2.0? Fiscal Cliff diving would surley be cause for a good long RANT!
And Sooz…I agree…that verse is applicable to pretty much ALL politicians. Seems NONE of them are doing their JOBs anymore. It’s all about taking care of themselves…(ie: getting re-elected). I’m quite tired of the whole bunch (state and fed).
And William…that makes me chuckle (the guy claiming the 2nd cup contaminated the sample)…IF the 1st cup did actually leak, my first thought is what kind of lame-ass sample cups are they buying these days? Then my only other thought is that ALL the cups are supposedly sterile and sealed in a bag, ready for use…what’s the diff between the 1st one and the 2nd one? I’d think that argument will be thrown out with the bathwater.
Anyway…can you BELIEVE that 2013 is just DAYS away? Stay warm everybody…and hold onto your hats…I think 2013 will be another tumoltulous year. Buckle up…it’s gonna be a wild ride!
Merry Christmas to all! Now that I have a few days off, I may actually have time to write a new post. I’ve got an idea churning around, based on one of the links William provided a few days back.
Mike, Rant 2.0 has been on hiatus for about three years now. Writing about politics gets me too riled up inside (as if I need more stress…)
Oh, and Susie B., I do vaguely remember a wager a while back. Guess I’ll have to make good on my end of the bargain. 😉
If everything goes as planned, I’ll be back with a new post before the new year … just in time to head back to the salt mines. 😀
Well, that Seattle player won his appeal:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8783832/richard-sherman-seattle-seahawks-wins-appeal-suspended
Hope all here have a Happy New Year!
http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/13576/Armstrong-nominated-for-Texan-of-the-Year-award.aspx
LA nominated for Texan of the Year:
“The Armstrong brand will forever be that of a fighter, a survivor and a cunning, steely-eyed liar”
“The Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year is a distinction we bestow for impact, be it for better or for worse. It reflects the prominence of what Texans do, not what we’d prefer them to do.”
Nice !!!
Disclaimer: I lived in Texas for 10 years, just an hour from Austin. However, I most assuredly am not a Texan. That being said, nothing that happens in Texas surprises me.