USADA strips Lance Armstrong of all TdF titles; banned for life

[mooby]

US Anti-Doping Agency to ban Lance Armstrong for life, strip Tour de France titles - News | FOX Sports on MSN

Sad end to the career of a man who a lot of people looked up to. Of course that seems to be a common theme in sports these days.

[HailGreen28]

What can the UADA prove now, that they couldn't prove years/decades ago?

[mooby]

Originally Posted by HailGreen28

What can the UADA prove now, that they couldn't prove years/decades ago?

I don't think it's about what they can prove, it's more about the fact Lance Armstrong gave up his fight against them. So naturally their reaction was to "crush" him. Honestly, if he was doping, and it was as widespread as we are led to believe, I think that's more of a systemic problem than it is the fault of one man. I mean, what are they going to do? Promote the 2nd place winners to winners now? What if they were doping too? Give it to the 3rd place guy? What if he was doping too? It's an endless cycle.

I'm not saying I approve of Armstrong doping, but I think there's fault on both sides of this. I think the USADA needs to do a better job, and I do think Armstrong was doping.

[Dirtbag59]

Originally Posted by mooby

I don't think it's about what they can prove, it's more about the fact Lance Armstrong gave up his fight against them. So naturally their reaction was to "crush" him. Honestly, if he was doping, and it was as widespread as we are led to believe, I think that's more of a systemic problem than it is the fault of one man. I mean, what are they going to do? Promote the 2nd place winners to winners now? What if they were doping too? Give it to the 3rd place guy? What if he was doping too? It's an endless cycle.

I'm not saying I approve of Armstrong doping, but I think there's fault on both sides of this. I think the USADA needs to do a better job, and I do think Armstrong was doping.

Obviously that rarely works with the lone exception forcing Penn State to vacate wins and dropping Joe Pa out of first place on the all time wins list.

[HailGreen28]

Originally Posted by mooby

I don't think it's about what they can prove, it's more about the fact Lance Armstrong gave up his fight against them. So naturally their reaction was to "crush" him. Honestly, if he was doping, and it was as widespread as we are led to believe, I think that's more of a systemic problem than it is the fault of one man. I mean, what are they going to do? Promote the 2nd place winners to winners now? What if they were doping too? Give it to the 3rd place guy? What if he was doping too? It's an endless cycle.

I'm not saying I approve of Armstrong doping, but I think there's fault on both sides of this. I think the USADA needs to do a better job, and I do think Armstrong was doping.

The endless cycle was the organizations accusations against Armstrong. I think his cancer treatments gave off suspicious testing results. But he never failed a drug test, never had any evidence against him but hearsay (especially from guys who were proven dopers).

If the usada or whatever says they care about keeping the sport clean, and the tests are important, then how can they punish Armstrong when he passed every test?

I think that unless there's evidence that proves Armstrong cheated, he'll always be remembered as the real 7 time Tour Le France champion, the greatest cyclist ever.

edit: If it wasn't about proof, what was the fight about?

[BDBohnzie]

I'm not a big Armstrong fan. I admire what he's done and impressed by it, but would'nt say I'm a fan...

What I don't understand about the whole thing is...he never once failed a drug test in his career. Not once. Not one damn time did a drug test he more than willingly took came up positive. And because he's decided not to fight anymore, it's an admission of guilt and the USADA is going to run their bully flag up and slam him to the ground. You've got guys who have already been busted who have said they can testify against him...with nothing to lose and no reputation left.

It's horseshit, plain and simple.

[SmootSmack]

Originally Posted by mooby

I don't think it's about what they can prove, it's more about the fact Lance Armstrong gave up his fight against them. So naturally their reaction was to "crush" him. Honestly, if he was doping, and it was as widespread as we are led to believe, I think that's more of a systemic problem than it is the fault of one man. I mean, what are they going to do? Promote the 2nd place winners to winners now? What if they were doping too? Give it to the 3rd place guy? What if he was doping too? It's an endless cycle.

I'm not saying I approve of Armstrong doping, but I think there's fault on both sides of this. I think the USADA needs to do a better job, and I do think Armstrong was doping.

LOL. Well played sir...well played indeed

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by mooby

I don't think it's about what they can prove, it's more about the fact Lance Armstrong gave up his fight against them. So naturally their reaction was to "crush" him. Honestly, if he was doping, and it was as widespread as we are led to believe, I think that's more of a systemic problem than it is the fault of one man. I mean, what are they going to do? Promote the 2nd place winners to winners now? What if they were doping too? Give it to the 3rd place guy? What if he was doping too? It's an endless cycle.

I'm not saying I approve of Armstrong doping, but I think there's fault on both sides of this. I think the USADA needs to do a better job, and I do think Armstrong was doping.

Here's a likely truth WADA and USADA won't publicize quite as much. There is a distinct possibility the every single rider in all 7 tours Lance won doped. It has been WIDESPREAD. Multiple teams had sophisticated and coordinated programs designed to gain performance enhancement and avoid detection. If the ADAs went after everyone the same the whole sport would crumble. But they don't like Armstrong and view taking him down as symbolic so they spent years and tons of money to badger him to the point of exhaustion. And does anyone really care? I don't. He still a bad ass who won 7 tours to me.

[mooby]

Originally Posted by HailGreen28

The endless cycle was the organizations accusations against Armstrong. I think his cancer treatments gave off suspicious testing results. But he never failed a drug test, never had any evidence against him but hearsay (especially from guys who were proven dopers).

If the usada or whatever says they care about keeping the sport clean, and the tests are important, then how can they punish Armstrong when he passed every test?

I think that unless there's evidence that proves Armstrong cheated, he'll always be remembered as the real 7 time Tour Le France champion, the greatest cyclist ever.

edit: If it wasn't about proof, what was the fight about?

I think the USADA wanted to run Armstrong's name through the mud. I don't think they had the evidence needed (other than a bunch of former dopers saying he did it) and I do believe had Armstrong continued the fight, there was a realistic chance of his name being cleared. But since he decided to give it up, the USADA put the hammer down.

As far as passing tests go, I think technology exists that would allow dopers to be able to pass these tests. I mean, was Onterrio Smith ever suspended for a drug violation before they caught him at an airport with the Whizzinator? Some dopers are always able to stay a step ahead. Either way, most people have their mind made up about this Armstrong situation. Either he's guilty or he's not. I just think they're making him the fall guy on this, instead of addressing the larger problem itself.

[mooby]

Originally Posted by FRPLG

Here's a likely truth WADA and USADA won't publicize quite as much. There is a distinct possibility the every single rider in all 7 tours Lance won doped. It has been WIDESPREAD. Multiple teams had sophisticated and coordinated programs designed to gain performance enhancement and avoid detection. If the ADAs went after everyone the same the whole sport would crumble. But they don't like Armstrong and view taking him down as symbolic so they spent years and tons of money to badger him to the point of exhaustion. And does anyone really care? I don't. He still a bad ass who won 7 tours to me.

FRPLG, just in case this hasn't been made clear, I am aware and I do tend to believe the allegations that widespread doping is evident in the sport. I agree with you in that I think the USADA is only going after Armstrong because of his titles and fame. One way or another it's clear he's taking the fall for this.

[HailGreen28]

Originally Posted by mooby

I think the USADA wanted to run Armstrong's name through the mud. I don't think they had the evidence needed (other than a bunch of former dopers saying he did it) and I do believe had Armstrong continued the fight, there was a realistic chance of his name being cleared. But since he decided to give it up, the USADA put the hammer down.

As far as passing tests go, I think technology exists that would allow dopers to be able to pass these tests. I mean, was Onterrio Smith ever suspended for a drug violation before they caught him at an airport with the Whizzinator? Some dopers are always able to stay a step ahead. Either way, most people have their mind made up about this Armstrong situation. Either he's guilty or he's not. I just think they're making him the fall guy on this, instead of addressing the larger problem itself.

I agree with you. Except at least I don't think the investigations would have ever stopped. No matter how many times his name was "cleared", another investigation would pop up.

[Chico23231]

sick of Lance, sick of such a crappy sport where in the last 20 years half the past winners of Tour de Prance been like stripped now.

[Daseal]

People keep talking about evidence. Unfortunately, dopers are typically two steps ahead of those trying to regulate it. It seems as if most of what he's accused of is HGH (no reliable tests), Cortisone (That's illegal?), and Steroids. Many of his tests were suspicious with EPO, blood transfusions, etc.

When it comes down to it, you'll rarely have a smoking gun in a case like this. When it comes to evidence I feel like 10+ eye witness accounts and suspicious activity is plenty to convict someone of a crime. If 10 criminals watch another criminal shoot an innocent person, but the police can't find the gun and the accused shooter has no real alibi -- should the testimony of those ten be ignored and charges dropped? I don't think they should be. The only reason to stop fighting, in my opinion, is when they finally have you.

[HailGreen28]

Originally Posted by Daseal

When it comes down to it, you'll rarely have a smoking gun in a case like this. When it comes to evidence I feel like 10+ eye witness accounts and suspicious activity is plenty to convict someone of a crime. If 10 criminals watch another criminal shoot an innocent person, but the police can't find the gun and the accused shooter has no real alibi -- should the testimony of those ten be ignored and charges dropped? I don't think they should be. The only reason to stop fighting, in my opinion, is when they finally have you.

In your hypothetical case, if the police couldn't even find a body afterwards, or anybody missing, they'd have to drop charges against the suspect, right?

[HailGreen28]

Saw this thread, googled a little, and apparently the International Cycling Union, UCI hasn't decided whether or not to actually strip Armstong's titles. There's this poster's opinion about USDA and Armstrong:

Im_No_Expert_but___ comments on USADA to ban Lance Armstrong for life, strip Tour de France titles?

From the link:

"And yes, "franchise" is correct because this operation was run not by some officer of the law, but the CEO of USADA. Travis Tygart has had it in for Lance for a long time; when Floyd Landis was busted, Tygart offered him a sweet deal if he would dish dirt on Lance.

The Department of Justice actually ran a Grand Jury investigation for 2 years before dropping the case in February -- apparently, someone eventually realized that winning the first 6 tours in a row for the US Postal Service wasn't "defrauding" them of their sponsorship dollars. Some of the people called to testify are still active riders in the pro peloton, which are presumably in the "10+ witnesses" Tygart would call on, which means he didn't care about ACTIVE riders who were part of the same alleged doping ring; he just cared about trying to destroy public opinion about Lance, who was retired from cycling and last won in 2005.

(snip)

Besides the two expected witnesses who perjured themselves so badly that they would be completely unusable in an actual courtroom (Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton), another of the pieces of so-called "evidence" that Tygart wanted to use was 6 urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France, a case which had already been investigated by the UCI's own appointee, and it EXONERATED Lance. The investigator was the director of the Netherlands national anti-doping organization, and wrote in his exhaustive, 132-page report:

the failure of the underlying research to comply with any applicable standard and the deficiencies in the report render it completely irresponsible for anyone involved in doping control testing to even suggest that the analyses results that were reported constitute evidence of anything.

(p. 17) PDF link: http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/news/...jmanreport.pdf

It was an epic beatdown. WADA screamed bloody murder, even though under their own regulations, they had stored the samples under the agreement they would never be used for sanctions of any kind!

Since the samples were EXPLICITLY not to be used for sanctions, they didn't follow the chain-of-custody regulations, were NOT anonymous, and sat in a freezer for 6 years that was accessible like any other research materials to any number of people.

Chain of custody is ESSENTIAL to handling samples, and it is already established in every context that a broken chain of custody equals completely worthless non-evidence.

This would be like if the cops impounded your car, then sold it at auction, and then 6 years later whoever is driving it gets pulled over, cops search the car, find drugs, and then want to charge YOU. It was obviously out of their "secure" impound facility the entire time, and the drugs could have come from anywhere -- including being forgotten by the cops after using the vehicle in an undercover sting operation (which I seem to recall actually happening in a story covered by Reddit).

Moreover, the French national anti-doping lab in question regularly leaks its findings to the French paper L'Equipe, which has a notorious anti-Lance POV (they really didn't like him winning their tour every single year).

This would be something like if you went for a drug test for your job, and before anyone else got the official results, your worst enemy on Facebook posted the "results" given to him from his buddy at the lab that coincidentally showed you used certain substances that were also sitting in the lab research supplies. Let's see, people with a motive and a grudge who have access to your samples with no chain of custody and know exactly which samples are yours and suddenly find a "positive" years after the fact?

As a cyclist, Lance's Tour de France years were under the auspices of the UCI, which claimed sole jurisdiction over this case, which USADA ignored because they could use their WADA connection as a loophole. The UCI also has an 8-year statute of limitations, and doesn't vacate titles after that even if doping is ADMITTED later, as happened some years back with 1996 winner Bjarne Riis who runs Team Saxo Bank. Jonathan Vaughters just admitted to doping and he runs Team Garmin.

(snip)

Contrary to the assertion that Lance "accepted" USADA's decision, he instead refused to go into binding arbitration with Travis Tygart, refusing to acknowledge the CEO of USADA's personal vendetta as legitimate. Both Lance and the UCI agree that the UCI is the only legitimate party with jurisdiction, as the UCI has announced publicly."