Trouble ahead for Lance Armstrong

[rachel]

I inadvertently deleted my message before BruceH's.

What I was saying was that Armstrong was using topical Aristocort with a doctor's prescription. Only miniscule amounts were found. Topical Aristocort isn't performance enhancing. In fact some of the side effects in larger doses over long periods of time are fatigue, muscle weakness, dizziness, etc.

[brownie]

This is getting beyond boring

Let me just refer to an interview with one of the authors of the book 'L.A. Confidential' which I brought attention to in the opening post of this thread.

http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/6295.0.html

The book is still on sale in France despite Armstrong's attempts to have the book banned or at least to have denials inserted in copies.

[P.L.M]

I inadvertently deleted my message before BruceH's.

What I was saying was that Armstrong was using topical Aristocort with a doctor's prescription. Only miniscule amounts were found. Topical Aristocort isn't performance enhancing. In fact some of the side effects in larger doses over long periods of time are fatigue, muscle weakness, dizziness, etc.

So, RACHEL, explain us why it's a ban substance by the rules of the UCI if it's not a "performance enhacing" substance?

[rachel]

*sigh* Boring, indeed.

P.L.M.~

It's not a banned substance with a doctor's prescription.

As far as it being performance enhancing, topical corticosteroids are not performance enhancing; at least not in the same way/to the degree of anabolic steroids.

Edited June 6, 2006 by rachel

[couw]

so now Ullrich, Basso and Sevilla are out of Le Tour!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_spor...ing/5132320.stm

[tonym]

so now Ullrich, Basso and Sevilla are out of Le Tour!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_spor...ing/5132320.stm

Shit, at this rate I'll be riding

This is not good for the sport; starting a witch-hunt only weeks before it's most publicised race.

What do they hope to achieve? Even if they end up down the bottom end of the UCI rankings they'll still be finding riders who are linked in some way with these doctors. At least in the 'old days' of providing a test, you knew where you stood.

[David Ayers]

so now Ullrich, Basso and Sevilla are out of Le Tour!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_spor...ing/5132320.stm

Shit, at this rate I'll be riding

Me too! I'm ready!

[Claude]

Big names out suggests cycling admits to doping problem

Sat Jul 1, 2006 11:01 AM BST

By Julien Pretot

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticl...LING-DOPING.xml

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Cycling has eventually admitted to a major doping problem when Giro d'Italia champion Ivan Basso and former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich were kicked out of the world's greatest cycling race on Friday.

Both riders, who were the hot favourites to fill the vacuum left by Lance Armstrong's retirement last year, were suspended by their teams on the eve of the Tour de France prologue in Strasbourg because of their involvement in an investigation on a doping scandal in Spain.

"It is a huge blow for everybody," said CSC team manager Bjarne Riis, a surprise Tour de France winner in 1996, after announcing Basso's suspension.

"I think this is normal. I think it is a brave move (...) Today, we can do only one thing: be brave," said Tour de France director Jean-Marie Leblanc.

The affair is reminiscent of the Festina case, which brought to light the use of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO) in the bunch in 1998.

Seven-times polka dot jersey winner Richard Virenque was handed a nine-month ban after confessing he was guilty of doping offences.

The following year, American Lance Armstrong, who survived a testicule cancer in 1996, opened the longest winning streak in the Tour de France when he brought back to Paris the first of his seven yellow jerseys.

CONTROVERSY

However, there was controversy over the Texan's honesty, with French daily Le Monde reporting earlier this month that Armstrong, at the time he was treated for his cancer, admitted he was taking banned drugs, including EPO.

The former Discovery Channel leader issued a strong denial, just as he did after sports daily L'Equipe claimed last August that it had access to laboratory documents and six of Armstrong's urine samples collected on the 1999 Tour showed "indisputable" traces of EPO.

Armstrong was cleared of any wrongdoing last month by Emile Vrijman, a lawyer appointed by the International Cycling Union (UCI) last October to investigate the allegations.

With Roberto Heras, who won the Tour of Spain last year, banned for two-years in November after testing positive for EPO, Ullrich and Basso brushed aside, cycling is now without three former stage race winners.

This year, just like in 1998, police has had a leading role in the fight against doping, suggesting cheaters were now unwanted disregard for their status.

In 1998, the scandal broke when the French customs officers seized a large supply of drugs in a car driven by Festina's soigneur Willy Voet.

Last month, the doping scandal erupted after the Spanish Civil Guard raided a number of addresses to find large quantities of anabolic steroids, laboratory equipment used for blood transfusions and more than 100 packs of frozen blood.

Doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, who has worked with a number of cycling teams, and Jose Luis Merino, the head of a clinical analysis laboratory, were released on bail after being questioned by Spanish police.

UCI'S DECISIVE MOVE

Fuentes's involvement suggests cycling has had a special relationship with doctors as Armstrong has also often been tickled about his links with Michele Ferrari.

The assistant director of the Comunidad Valenciana team Jose Ignacio Labarta and the sporting director of the former Liberty Seguros team Manolo Saiz were also detained for questioning by Spanish police and then released.

Both men have since left their posts. Comunidad Valenciana have had their invitation to take part in the Tour withdrawn. Insurance giants Liberty Seguros withdrew their sponsorship of the team who have now changed their name to Astana-Wuerth.

It was not enough, however, since five riders of Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov's team were involved in the "Operacion Puerto" with Astana-Wuerth deciding late on Friday to pull out of the race.

Astana have tried to delay the decision, hoping a minimum of six riders would be allowed to start. But UCI, who had been very discreete on Friday, made a decisive move.

On Friday evening, Jean-Marie Leblanc thanked the sport's governing body president Pat McQuaid for his contribution in Astana's late withdrawal.

The team's retirement means that the Tour prologue will start without last year's top five riders.

However, AG2R team manager Vincent Lavenu, who decided to withdraw Mancebo from the race, believes the sport is far from being clean.

"Some cheaters have been caught but there are certainly other networks which have not been broken up yet," he said.

"Even if such crackdowns are scary, the problem is far from being solved."

[Claude]

2 Ex-Teammates of Cycling Star Admit Drug Use

By JULIET MACUR

Published: September 12, 2006

Two of Lance Armstrong’s eight teammates from the 1999 Tour de France have admitted for the first time that they used the banned endurance-boosting drug EPO in preparing for the race that year, when they helped Armstrong capture the first of his record seven titles.

Their disclosures, in interviews with The New York Times, are rare examples of candor in a sport protected by a powerful code of silence. The confessions come as cycling is reeling from doping scandals, including Floyd Landis’s fall in July from Tour champion to suspected cheat.

One of the two teammates who admitted using EPO while on Armstrong’s United States Postal Service team is Frankie Andreu, a 39-year-old retired team captain who had been part of Armstrong’s inner circle for more than a decade. In an interview at his home in Dearborn, Mich., Andreu said that he took EPO for only a few races and that he was acknowledging his use now because he thought doping was damaging his sport. Continued doping and denial by riders may scare away fans and sponsors for good, he said.

“There are two levels of guys,” Andreu said. “You got the guys that cheat and guys that are just trying to survive.”

The other rider who said he used EPO spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he did not want to jeopardize his job in cycling.

“The environment was certainly one of, to be accepted, you had to use doping products,” he said. “There was very high pressure to be one of the cool kids.”

Neither rider ever tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but both said they felt as if they had to take EPO to make the Tour team in 1999. Andreu would not say specifically when he took the drug, and the second rider said he did not use EPO during the Tour. Anti-doping experts say the benefits of taking EPO, the synthetic hormone erythropoietin, which boosts stamina by bolstering the body’s production of oxygen-rich red blood cells, can last several weeks or more.

Both of Armstrong’s former teammates also said they never saw Armstrong take any banned substances.

Armstrong, who turns 35 next week, has long been dogged by accusations that he doped before and after his remarkable recovery from cancer, a comeback that made him a transcendent cultural figure and a symbol to cancer patients and survivors worldwide. He has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has aggressively defended himself in interviews and through lawsuits, even more than a year into his retirement.

Multiple attempts to interview Armstrong for this article — through his lawyers, his agent and a spokesman — were unsuccessful. His agent, Bill Stapleton, wrote in an e-mail message yesterday that Armstrong would not comment because he was attending a meeting of the President’s Cancer Panel in Minneapolis.

Armstrong once said that cycling had no secrets and that hard work was the key to winning. Recent events and disclosures, however, demonstrate that cycling does, indeed, have secrets.

Dozens of interviews with people in the sport as well as court documents in a contract dispute between Armstrong and a company called SCA Promotions reveal the protective silence shared by those in professional cycling. A new picture of the sport emerges: a murky world of clandestine meetings, mysterious pills and thermoses that clink with the sound of drug vials rattling inside them.

This year’s Tour began with a doping investigation that implicated nearly 60 riders and ended with Landis’s testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He became the third of Armstrong’s former lieutenants to fail a drug test after setting off on his own career as a lead rider.

“There’s no doubt that cyclists have bought into the institutional culture of cheating, and that’s a big, big problem for the sport,” said Steven Ungerleider, a research psychologist, antidoping expert and consultant for college, Olympic and professional sports organizations. He described that culture as “a mob psychology.”

A Widespread Problem

In his 12 years as a professional cyclist, Frankie Andreu was a domestique, a worker bee whose job was to help a top rider like Armstrong win.

He said his introduction to performance-enhancing drugs came in 1995, when he and Armstrong were with the Motorola team. He said some of the team’s riders felt that they could no longer compete with some European teams that had rapidly improved and were rumored to be using EPO.

Motorola’s top riders asked their doctor, Massimo Testa, about the drug’s safety because more than a dozen young riders in Europe had died mysteriously of heart attacks. Some cyclists had linked those deaths to rumored EPO use.

Dr. Testa, now a sports medicine specialist at the University of California at Davis, said in a telephone interview that he had given each rider literature about EPO, in case any of them decided to use it on their own.

Dr. Testa said he urged the riders not to take the drug, but he wanted them to be educated.

“If you want to use a gun, you had better use a manual, rather than to ask the guy on the street how to use it,” he said. “I cannot rule out that someone did it.”

One of Armstrong’s teammates, Steve Swart, has admitted using EPO while riding for Motorola. He discussed his time with the team in the book “L.A. Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong,” which was published in 2004, only in French.

The book’s allegations that Armstrong doped prompted the lawsuit between Armstrong and SCA Promotions, which was settled out of court in February. Because of Armstrong’s suspected drug use, SCA withheld a $5 million bonus after he won the 2004 Tour de France. Armstrong and Tailwind Sports, the company that owned his cycling team, sued SCA for the money.

Testimony in the case was never supposed to become public. A confidential settlement awarded Armstrong and Tailwind Sports the bonus, and $2.5 million in interest and lawyers’ costs. The Times obtained the legal documents in July.

In testimony in the case, Swart, a retired rider from New Zealand, said top riders on Motorola discussed EPO in 1995. He testified that Armstrong told teammates that there was “only one road to take” to be competitive. In a sworn deposition, Swart said the meaning of Armstrong’s comment was clear: “We needed to start a medical program of EPO.”

EPO, cortisone and testosterone were common in European cycling, Swart said in a telephone interview. He said using cortisone, a steroid, was regarded as “sucking on a candy stick.” Cyclists acquired the drugs from European pharmacies and took them in private, Swart said. “You basically became your own doctor,” he said.

He said signs of drug use were widespread at the 1994 and 1995 Tours, when there was no testing for EPO.

“Everyone was walking around with their own thermos, and you could hear the sound — tinkle, tinkle, tinkle — coming from the thermoses because they were filled with ice and vials of EPO,” Swart said. “You needed to keep the EPO cold, and every night at the hotel, the guys would be running around trying to find some ice to fill up their thermos.”

‘It Was for Lance’

In the weeks before the 1999 Tour, Andreu’s wife, Betsy, found one of those thermoses in her refrigerator. She was furious.

“I remember Frankie saying: ‘You don’t understand. This is the only way I can even finish the Tour,’ ” she said. “ ‘After this, I promise you, I’ll never do it again.’ ”

Betsy Andreu said she grudgingly watched her husband help Armstrong traverse the mountains at the Tour that year. Later, she said, she was angry when her husband said he had once allowed a team doctor to inject him with an unidentified substance.

To this day, she blames Armstrong for what she said was pressure on teammates to use drugs. Her husband, she said, “didn’t use EPO for himself, because as a domestique, he was never going to win that race.”

“It was for Lance,” she said.

Three years earlier, she and Frankie, who were engaged at the time, visited Armstrong at an Indiana hospital after he received his cancer diagnosis. Last fall, under court order to testify in the SCA Promotions case, the Andreus said that they had overheard Armstrong tell doctors he had used steroids, testosterone, cortisone, growth hormone and EPO.

Armstrong testified that no one at the hospital had asked him if he had used performance-enhancing drugs. He testified that Betsy Andreu had lied because “she hates me,” and that Frankie Andreu had lied because “he’s trying to back up his old lady.”

Frankie Andreu, once Armstrong’s close friend and roommate, testified that he never knew if Armstrong was doping. But once, he testified, he saw Armstrong sorting “little round pills” on his bed before a race. “He talked about that he would take these at different parts during the race,” Andreu said under oath, adding that he did not know what the pills were. Armstrong testified that they were caffeine.

Johan Bruyneel, the longtime director of Armstrong’s team, did not respond to an interview request through a team spokesman.

In a news conference he held at this year’s Tour, Armstrong said his opponents in the SCA case were “crushed — totally crushed” upon cross-examination.

Sean Breen, one of Armstrong’s lawyers, said the opposing witnesses were not credible. In the case of Betsy Andreu, Breen said, “Like her testimony, I think her motives are completely unexplainable.” He added that Frankie Andreu’s dismissal as a rider on the United States Postal Service team after the 2000 season might have been one reason for their testimony. (Andreu returned to the team the next year as the team’s American director.)

Armstrong has said he never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. He tested positive for cortisone at the 1999 Tour, but he was not penalized after producing a doctor’s prescription for a skin cream he said he used for saddle sores.

At this year’s Tour, Armstrong said he was tired of dealing with doping accusations.

“Why keep fighting lawsuits when my time needs to be spent being a dad, being a philanthropist, being a fan of cycling, being a guy that just wants to have fun?” he said.

Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body, said the union’s lawyers would review the SCA Promotions case after they prepared files on the riders implicated in the Spanish doping scandal that preceded this year’s Tour. In May, the Spanish police raided several apartments in Madrid and seized steroids, hormones, EPO, nearly 100 bags of frozen blood and equipment for treating blood. The Tour began in July with nine riders being barred from the event after they were implicated in the investigation.

Cleaning Up the Sport

Armstrong has kept his distance from cycling’s recent troubles.

He is training for the New York City Marathon in November. In a few weeks, Armstrong will celebrate the 10th anniversary of his cancer diagnosis, and he has a new line of apparel from Nike commemorating the date.

At the same time, some of his former teammates and rivals are struggling.

Ivan Basso of Italy, Jan Ullrich of Germany and Francisco Mancebo of Spain — who finished second, third and fourth when Armstrong won the 2005 Tour — were all implicated in the Spanish scandal. Government and sports authorities continue to investigate them.

One of Armstrong’s former lieutenants, the 2004 Olympic champion Tyler Hamilton, was also named in the Spanish investigation. His two-year suspension for blood doping in 2004 ends this month, but his future remains uncertain. The cycling union said it would seek a lifetime ban for Hamilton if he were found guilty of wrongdoing in the Spanish case.

Another former lieutenant of Armstrong’s, Roberto Heras of Spain, tested positive for EPO last year. He is serving a two-year suspension.

Landis, meanwhile, could be stripped of his Tour title. The United States Anti-Doping Agency is expected to decide whether to charge Landis with a doping violation sometime in the next week, according to Landis’s lawyer, Howard Jacobs.

All of those cyclists have denied using performance-enhancing drugs, but antidoping officials hope that will change, if those athletes have, indeed, doped.

Travis Tygart, general counsel for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, says he encourages athletes to be honest. “Those who stand up will hopefully influence other competitors in the sport to be clean,” he said.

Ultimately, Frankie Andreu said, only riders can clean up cycling.

“There’s always going to be the guy who denies and denies that he’s ever used something,” he said. “Nobody really knows what that guy is really doing when he goes home and closes the door.”

Edward Wyatt contributed reporting from L’Alpe d’Huez, France.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/sports/o...amp;oref=slogin

[brownie]

Plus ça change...

From AFP today (other medias report the same):

PARIS (AFP) – The Astana team of Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and third placed Lance Armstrong were given an easy ride during dope tests at the 2009 event, two leading French newspapers said Monday.

They quoted a report by the French anti-doping agency AFLD accusing the International Cyclist Union (UCI) of failing to apply the rules properly to Astana, Le Monde and the Figaro said.

"For some teams, the unexpected nature of anti-doping tests did not exist on the Tour," the Figaro said, adding that the 10-page AFLD report was to be sent on Monday to the UCI and the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).

The website Le Monde.fr gives details of how Kazakh-backed Astana was allowed to "always have the last tests in the morning, more time to go to the tester."

The AFP story

[brownie]

Truth is slowly marching in...

Not that it matters so much these days now that Lance Armstrong is (cycling) history!

Story in The New York Times today.

[Cliff Englewood]

Truth is slowly marching in...

Not that it matters so much these days now that Lance Armstrong is (cycling) history!

Story in The New York Times today.

I was suspicious of him when he came out of retirement and did quite well, when was that, the year before last???

[brownie]

Lance Armstrong retired after winning the 2005 Tour de France.

He returned to competitive cycling in 2009!

He shouldn't have...

[David Ayers]

I find it bizarre that Armstrong is being pursued with such zeal. Yeah cheating is sport is bad, but it isn't like organised crime. They seem to be treating this like an anti-mafia trial with the henchmen cut deals to testify against the big boss. But Armstrong isn't a big boss, he's just a better cyclist than the other guys who are admitting cheating. It's great that Federal authorities don't need money for homeland security and other frivolous stuff like that and can afford to put so much effort into this. All those forensic and investigative skills that would just be wasted tracking down non-celebrity terrorists and murderers. The statute of limitations on these charges is ten years? For cheating in a bike race? No they just want a celebrity scalp. If they were serious they'd pursue all cyclists in this way. By all means let race authorities catch someone with a test on race day, but a ten year crusade? That's more than both World Wars combined back-to-back (and not just measured from the half-way points when you guys chipped in). Be serious.

[brownie]

The problem is mainly Lance Armstrong's own fault.

If he had admitted several years ago that he was using non legal performance-enhancing substances - like so many riders have - all this would be a thing of the past. Or almost! And he would not be at the center of the current investigation.

He has been too proud and too stubborn to admit drug violations.

Now he has to deal with the current attacks.

[clifford_thornton]

You've got a point, sure, but it all seems like a witch hunt to me.

Aren't there more pressing issues in the world today?

Is anybody investigating Contador?

[brownie]

Aren't there more pressing issues in the world today?

Is anybody investigating Contador?

More pressing issues? Yes, yes yes...

But I have dealt with these more pressing issues in my professional career for years and I'ld rather stick here with more mundane subjects.

Beside I don't see any discussions on this Board about tragedies like the Pakistan floods, the heat wave in Russia, etc... to mention recent news.

As for Contador he has been investigated a number of times. Nothing incriminating has been found yet.

[David Ayers]

It has been mooted that cyclists, runners, anyone who ever went for a long walk etc. shouldn't hope to escape doping charges through death. To save on exhumation costs, anyone who ever went on a vigorous stroll or biked to the end of the street unaided will soon be cryogenically preserved so that as and when new tests become available they can be promptly applied. By that time it is earnestly hoped that Gatorade will be a classified substance. Once guilt is established, back in the freezer with Walt until developments in technology enable revivification, which will be swiftly followed by charging, expedited conviction and - since the future will be even more grimly po-faced about such matters than the present - execution. The corpse will then be once again cryogenically preserved to await its final destruction on the Day of Reckoning.

In other news, professionals found to have ever gained advantage through prodigious caffeine intake will soon have their professional accreditation rescinded and be permanently removed from Facebook. Judgement Day my ass.

Edited August 11, 2010 by David Ayers

[Cliff Englewood]

I think the point about going after Lance is that for so long he and his team have painted him as some sort of super-being and all round good guy/angel come down from heaven to live amoung the mortals, when all the time he was possibly just a big fucking cheat, who made a shit load of money from that cheating. Fair play to him for all the "Live Strong" yellow wrist band malarky, raising money for cancer research is all good, but lots of other people do that as well you know.

I mean look how well he did in this years Tour as opposed to last years, call me a suspicious-aloiciouis if you want but....

[Dan Gould]

Going after Armstrong for being such a strong supporter of cancer research is one gigantic pile of shit but unfortunately its also come to be expected from "Cliff". As for this year's Tour, taking what, four years off, then coming back at 39 - is that generally a recipe for a great performance?

[Cliff Englewood]

Going after Armstrong for being such a strong supporter of cancer research is one gigantic pile of shit but unfortunately its also come to be expected from "Cliff". As for this year's Tour, taking what, four years off, then coming back at 39 - is that generally a recipe for a great performance?

If you're that dumb to read into what I posted as "Going after Armstrong for being such a strong supporter of cancer research" than I am probably more dumb to respond to you.

Even a angry loner, shut-in type such as yourself should be able to read a sentence like "Fair play to him for all the "Live Strong" yellow wrist band malarky, raising money for cancer research is all good" and understand that I am actually praising praising him, that's what "fair play" means.

Try leaving the house once ia a while, or do the fairies and ghosts that live there with not let you go.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Cliff Englewood

[mjazzg]

Going after Armstrong for being such a strong supporter of cancer research is one gigantic pile of shit but unfortunately its also come to be expected from "Cliff".

What? How explicit do you need someone to be? Cliff clearly makes the distinction between what he feels about Armstrong's fundraising ("is all good") and his suspicions about his performances. Maybe he should have tried words of fewer syllables, although that'd be difficult with the phrase "is all good".

I suspect people will be asking questions of Contador when, and if, he gets to five straight wins. Because of the doping history there'll always be suspicion about Tour racing now and suspicion will fall heaviest on the most successful (i.e. Armstrong). It might not be fair but it'll be there.

[David Ayers]

Isn't the point that the whole of professional cycling was likely relying on doping and on blood transfusions until at least very recently? Which (if correct) would mean that Armstrong was doing the same as everyone else and was still the best cyclist. This is about going after the best, not going after the 'cheats'. In any case it's all in the past.

In other news, Charlie Parker has been found to have 'cheated' when inventing bebop and the whole of subsequent modern jazz history has now been declared invalid.

[paul secor]

"Isn't the point that the whole of professional cycling was likely relying on doping and on blood transfusions until at least very recently?"

Do you know this for a fact? I'm sure you don't, unless you were there. And I guess you don't know that this is true, since in your next sentence you write "Which (if correct).

"Which (if correct) would mean that Armstrong was doing the same as everyone else and was still the best cyclist."

Even if everyone was blood doping or juicing, some people (possibly the guy you're defending) might have access to better methods. A guy with access to more $ surely has an advantage.

"This is about going after the best, not going after the 'cheats'. In any case it's all in the past."

It's not in the past. Lance Armstrong has built himself up as a golden boy who beat cancer and came back to win. If it can be proven that Armstrong used non-legal substances to increase his performances, he deserves to be gone after, and he deserves to be disgraced. Otherwise, let's do away with competitive cycling and all competitive sports - perhaps not a bad idea.

"In other news, Charlie Parker has been found to have 'cheated' when inventing bebop and the whole of subsequent modern jazz history has now been declared invalid."

In my mind, jazz isn't a competition. And if anyone has ever proven that heroin use increases creativity, I don't know about it. There have been a lot of heroin addicts in the history of the world and not many have shown creativity. I know you meant your last comment to be sarcastic, but it came off as dumb rather than sarcastic, at least imo.

[Cliff Englewood]

Going after Armstrong for being such a strong supporter of cancer research is one gigantic pile of shit but unfortunately its also come to be expected from "Cliff".

What? How explicit do you need someone to be? Cliff clearly makes the distinction between what he feels about Armstrong's fundraising ("is all good") and his suspicions about his performances. Maybe he should have tried words of fewer syllables, although that'd be difficult with the phrase "is all good".

Well it's difficult for him, he has to watch out for faries and elves hiding his wallet and keys, while at the same time wondering if his dogs are communicating with him, he leads a full life.

I suspect people will be asking questions of Contador when, and if, he gets to five straight wins. Because of the doping history there'll always be suspicion about Tour racing now and suspicion will fall heaviest on the most successful (i.e. Armstrong). It might not be fair but it'll be there.

I'm not sure that it's actually about going after the best, it's more just a simple fact of suspicious activity, IMHO. For years in Italy, people wondered why the big clubs in Serie A like Juve, Milan etc, always seemed to get the rub of the green, always got the big decisions in their favour, then when they looked into it, it turns out there was a perfectly good reason for this, they were cheating. The games/results of the big teams were pretty much decided in advance. With Lance, I think it's down to the simple fact that with professional cycling, how well you do is simply down your physical fitness, at a guess I'd say it's a 95% physical sport, there isn't all that much skill involved and there is really only so much a body can do at certin ages. That's why I said I was more freaked out by his performances when he came out of retirement than before. I mean how can you compete with guys who are what, at least 5, if not 10 years younger than you?? And beat then them??? I mean it has happened in various sports for sure but not often and in a sport that is almost purely physical it happens rarely if at all, that's why people retire in the first place. So for him to come back and actually do ok that's odd to say the least, I mean if he had been finishing 50th or 60th ok, I'll cut him some slack, but still in the top 10?? Then there's the whole thing about him being a cancer surviour and doing so much charity work, both of which are really amazing and very positive examples for humanity, but the perception of those supporting him seems to be well nobody who survived cancer and does charity could ever do anything bad.

And I'm not sure the argument that this happened in the past so let's forget about it works either, to take that to it's extreme would be that if you get away with murder initially, then the law is powerless to go after you ever again.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Cliff Englewood