Lance Armstrong's Statement
lancearmstrong.com
lancearmstrong.com
He's still a hero of mine - he's the consummate professional, checking every tiny box that could possibly affect his performance, despite having some serious physiological advantages that might have left others feeling confident that they had it in the bag. He rode in the worst weather, just because he might compete in that weather. He lived for his life's work like most of us never will.
I believe he simply competed in a time where many really good racers were doping, and if you want to check all the boxes, that was one you had to seriously consider.
This is not he-said-she-said rumours. It includes 2009 and 2010 blood samples consistent with blood doping. Witnesses aren't enemies, they are some of his closest allies, people who he relied on for tens of thousands of kilometres. At some point the weight of evidence starts to mount up.
Keep in mind that the doctors (like Ferrari) who (allegedly) helped him, were experts in their field. They would have known every technique used to catch doping, and would have tested their methods against them. That's how you beat testing - you do your own testing, and if you can mask doping well enough, you use it on your top athletes.
Armstrong says he's willing to take people to court for this. If so, he's not only interested in moving on with his life. Moving on with his life would be ignoring it, and moving on.
So: still a hero and one of the most amazing athletes ever, but guilty.
You need to back that up with some data. Especially when the agency that refuses to accept his 'hundreds' of previous tests says this.
Besides your proof is:
a. Team mates that say he was doping. Must be taken at face value.
b. Doctors who are super experts and might be supplying drugs which no body else can detect.
Regarding b)- If its true then dope testing is seriously broken. And with that now everybody who has every played a sport needs to be rechecked again.
I think all the man is asking is to give him evidence based on tested samples. And why is it so difficult for the test agencies to disclose those reports when they claim to have found it in 2009-2010.
And, no, I don't need to prove it, the USADA does. And the only person currently standing in the way of proof being submitted is Lance. Google armstrong "fully consistent" "blood doping" and you'll see the USADA is widely reported as having this evidence. There's no doubt that they would bring it to court. And how would they convince 10 ex-teammates to testify against him if it wasn't true? Why would 10 different cyclists all decide now's the time to make up a story, if it meant their victories were also nullified?
If you want evidence, pressure him, not me. It's his legacy that's at stake here.
I've got all of his books, have followed him since forever, still have his victories on tape. I'd love, love for him to be innocent.
Or in other words guilty unless proven innocent?? Sorry I don't think how standard justice system works any where in the whole world.
>>No smart doping doctor would employ a technology that was detectable, and from what we know of Lance, he sure wouldn't use it unless he was absolutely sure.
So we first totally convince ourselves that he is a cheat and then set up a game totally designed to prove that. Again presumption of guilt is not compatible with natural justice.
>>and you'll see the USADA is widely reported as having this evidence.
This is like person A accusing person B of being a thief. When asked to provide the proof- person A says he won't. But rather we must first decide that B is actually a thief and must prove his innocence other wise he is guilty by default.
I don't think his legacy is at stake here. It was clear that if USADA had any proof they would not be holding it since past 3-4 years.
>>Or in other words guilty unless proven innocent??
Would you not put words in my mouth, please? Here are the facts:
1) You can't prove innocence, you can only prove guilt. 100 tests that fail to prove guilt do not prove innocence. That does not make him guilty, that just means the burden of proof is still on the accusers.
2) They say they will bring forth evidence that proves guilt. Their case rests on 10+ witnesses and blood tests.
3) He's stopping the process, which prevents them from submitting the evidence.
4) His current behaviour is not consistent with his previous behaviour. He's never given up without a fight before.
Sorry you can. A person is either innocent or guilty. Never both. So as long you don't prove him guilty he continues to remain innocent.
>>They say they will bring forth evidence that proves guilt. Their case rests on 10+ witnesses and blood tests.
'They' should! Seriously. What are they waiting for, from the past 3-4 years?
>>He's stopping the process, which prevents them from submitting the evidence.
No body is stopping anything. All they have to do is give out their proof in open which can be validated.
>>His current behaviour is not consistent with his previous behaviour. He's never given up without a fight before.
That basically happens when you torture and trouble a person for years without proof, the person realizes that the other side has gamed the system to beat him hence playing more only means legitimizing their staged game.
In a legal sense this is true under most jurisdictions, but it isn't true in any absolute sense. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all that
"The international bodies governing cycling have ordered USADA to stop, have given notice that no one should participate in USADA’s improper proceedings, and have made it clear the pronouncements by USADA that it has banned people for life or stripped them of their accomplishments are made without authority."
Perhaps he was advised that these guys can't do anything because they don't have the authority, so stop fighting them. I can declare that I strip Armstrong of his titles, but nobody will listen to me, so what would be the point of him fighting me? I guess we will find out what authority USADA really has now that Armstrong has quit fighting them.
This. I've personally always suspected he was doping. Not because of any complaints about his character (I always did and continue to admire him) but because I just have a hard time believing anyone could make it so far in this sport without using performance-enhancing drugs.
It's a big part of the reason why stage racing is not my favorite cycling event.
And.
>>Tygart and the antidoping agency were basing their case not on a positive drug test but rather on other supporting evidence. (From http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/sports/cycling/lance-armst...)
Well I don't know the complete story of what tests and when he passed them.
But what are the odds of 'hundreds' of tests turning out out to be false negatives? And I suppose these tests are carried out all round the world in various competitions in various countries, in various labs, by hundreds of people over the years?
Its like their only evidence is he-said and she-said rumors over the years combined with the perceived impossibility of a cancer survivor making it through that high levels of endurance required to make it where Armstrong has made it.
>>The idea that athletes can be convicted today without positive A and B samples, under the same rules and procedures that apply to athletes with positive tests, perverts the system and creates a process where any begrudged ex-teammate can open a USADA case out of spite or for personal gain or a cheating cyclist can cut a sweetheart deal for themselves. It’s an unfair approach, applied selectively, in opposition to all the rules. It’s just not right.
If what I'm reading is true. This is something like a murder happens at a lane, then you and your enemy pass by that lane. Now your enemy complains to the police that you did it. And now the system has all rights to punish you on that statement alone.
This agency looks like to formed to increase their kill ratio. And to some how punish a few famous athletes so that they can justify their own existence and show the world why they are so important.
The Tour is one of the most heavily drug-tested events in international sport, and yet it's still notorious for rampant doping. (About half of people who have finished in the top 10 in the Tour over the past decade have also been caught doping.) The odds that thousands of drug tests can be false negatives is virtually zero. . . but it's certain that they regularly fail to catch doping.
Doping is harder to catch in the Tour, because doping in multi-stage bike racing is very different from doping in most sports. It's not about taking anabolic steroids to give you the physique of a pro wrestler, it's about very carefully tweaking your metabolism to help give you just a bit more endurance than you would have otherwise, or to help you recover from the exhaustion of the previous day's stage just a bit more than you would have otherwise. There are lots of ways to do this, and many of them don't even involve drugs. For example, a nightly blood transfusion will give you more red blood cells with which to keep your muscles oxygenated.
Another popular agent, EPO, is a natural part of human metabolism that plays a part in red cell production - and it's impossible to distinguish EPO that a person's body produces from EPO that's been injected. So instead officials have just set an upper limit on how much EPO can be detectable in your bloodstream. Which essentially codifies doping as just another part of the strategy of winning the Tour: The goal is to skirt as close as you can to that limit without going over.
I assume the USADA is stating that all these tests we wrong ? Or that his 'doping' technique was too advanced ? Seems a pretty long stretch of the bow in my mind.
Secondly the sheer count of its numbers in occasions, places, people, labs, qualification of testers all turning out to be false negatives over the years is impossible.
A new process made EPO widely available in the late 1980s. But because EPO is chemically similar to substances the body produces naturally, nobody was able to come up with a way to test athletes for EPO usage at all until the year 2000 (http://www.wada-ama.org/en/Resources/Q-and-A/EPO-Detection/), and it took a few more years after that for anti-doping agencies to have confidence in the accuracy of the test. So there was a 10 to 15 year window of time where athletes could use EPO with a degree of confidence that no contemporary test would be able to definitively prove they did so.
The result was that many of the results of cycling's top races during the 1990s and 2000s had to be re-examined when it finally became clear that many of the contenders had been blood doping during that period (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France#Do... for examples from the Tour de France).
So the "hundreds of controls" defense is a bit weasel-wordy. It doesn't mean so much to pass hundreds of tests if those tests were given at a time when the testers didn't know how to catch the thing you're accused of doing.
It doesn't mean so much to for testing agencies to collect those samples when they themselves know they cannot test them. And then certify them to be clean.
The proposed punishment is stripping Armstrong of his cycling titles and barring him from participating from the sport in the future.
EDIT: HNers might enjoy this [0] relevant Wikipedia article
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling...