What Will Lance Armstrong’s Legacy Be Now That We Know His Career Was Based on a Lie?
via Lance Armstrong banned from cycling for life and stripped of Tour de France titles | Mail Online.
American anti-doping officials plan to strip Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and impose a lifelong ban from cycling — the sport that made him an American hero and a sports icon, it was revealed on Thursday.
The announcement from the US Anti-Doping Agency effectively destroys his legacy as one of the greatest cyclists in history and rubs a black smudge on a story that inspired millions of fans, drawn to his story of returning to glory after recovering from horrific cancer.
The USADA acted within an hour of Armstrong’s announcement that he would stop fighting charges that he used blood doping to illegitimately enhance his performance.
Despite the action, Armstrong maintains his innocence and called the USADA’s case a ‘witch hunt.’
The battle over his Tour de France wins is likely not over. USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said the agency has the authority to remove the titles from the 40-year-old athlete — and would act promptly to do so.Armstrong says only the International Cycling Union, which oversees the Tour de France, has that power.
‘USADA cannot assert control of a professional international sport and attempt to strip my seven Tour de France titles,’ he said in a statement. ‘I know who won those seven Tours, my teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours.’
USADA maintains that Armstrong has used banned substances as far back as 1996, including the blood-booster EPO and steroids as well as blood transfusions — all to boost his performance.
‘It is a sad day for all of us who love sport and athletes,’ Mr Tygart said. ‘It’s a heartbreaking example of win at all costs overtaking the fair and safe option. There’s no success in cheating to win.’
Armstrong, who retired last year, declined to enter arbitration — his last option — because he said he was weary of fighting accusations that have dogged him for years. He has consistently pointed to the hundreds of drug tests that he has passed as proof he was clean.
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More Biking at PJ Lifestyle:
Will someone please explain to me exactly who/what the “US Anti-Doping Agency” is? It appears to be a private company. What authority do they have? What stake do they have in alleging that so-and-so is “guilty” of doping? In what sense is so-and-so “guilty” of anything? What laws/rules/regulations are being “broken”. Who made those laws? Etc.
http://www.usada.org/about : “The U.S. Congress recognized USADA as “the official anti-doping agency for Olympic, Pan American and Paralympic sport in the United States.”
While the USADA isn’t an “offical” agency of the US government, Congress has supported them and assisted with grant money for years.
So they’re a group of private individuals who have a vested interest in going after famous people who THEY allege have broken THEIR rules. Otherwise, the gravy train stops.
Do I have it right?
(Full disclosure: I don’t follow biking or any other sports. I had some minor interest in the Floyd Landis story, for personal reasons.)
All the various sports tours subscribe to various anti-doping agencies. Now, you could go out on your own and start your own steroids Olympics, the question is, are advertisers going to pony up money, are fans going to buy tickets. In order to get PEDs out of sports, USADA and WADA (world anti-doping agency) were created. In order to appear “legitimate” the sports circuits enlist these agencies (don’t know how private vs. government they are in the rest of the world) to police the athletes.
At least some of his new accusers are facing long term bans of their own, that magically got reduced to six month bans in exchange for testifying against him. Lance passed his drug tests. Problem with USADA you are presumed guilty until proven guilty.
How do we know Greg LeMonde (American, 5 consecutive year winner) wasn’t doping?
One last interesting tidbit, is that while most of the bike riders were competing in various tours around the world during the year, Lance stayed in France and trained on the Tour De France roads. He was specifically training for this one race which gives him a huge advantage over everyone else.
Now, you could go out on your own and start your own steroids Olympics
Why would anyone want to do that when there already IS a steroids Olympics: the current model that just concluded in London. Anti-doping agencies and sports officials are always fighting the “last war” when it comes to detecting performance-enhancement substances.
LeMond has never credibly been accused of doping; indeed he has been one of the most outspoken opponents of doping and his conflicts with Armstrong and Floyd Landis over this issue have been well-reported over the last decade. LeMond also did not win five Tours; he won three in five years.
Professional sports “tours” (by which I suppose you mean “leagues”) do not “subscribe to various anti-doping bodies.” American professional sports are monitored by the leagues themselves (ie, the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS); the same applies to international professional soccer (ie, FIFA). Which explains why doping positives are rarely reported: the several players associations wouldn’t allow rigorous testing because the requisite unannounced screening would catch too many athletes. In other words, it wouldn’t be good for business. Also, testing for human growth hormone, the preferred ergogenic aid for strength sports, is still in its infancy. (The NFLPA already balks at future testing.) My educated guess is that a majority of pro football, basketball, baseball, and hockey players would flunk the kind of drug testing cyclists and track & field athletes regularly undergo. I don’t know whether Lance doped or not – I suspect he did – but I do know the USADA overstepped its bounds in the Armstrong matter, recognizing that Lance had only two choices: bad or worse. That is, any athlete who goes to arbitration has almost no chance of receiving a favorable verdict and that by bringing hearsay testimony, rather than a doping positive, to light, the USADS could hang the biggest catch in sports on its wall. (One doesn’t win 58 out of 60 hearings unless the odds are stacked in one’s favor, after all.) Question: if the USADA is concerned with punishing users of performance-enhancing drugs, why grant various forms of immunity to those “dopers” who agreed to testify against the Boss? Shouldn’t all be placed in the dock? Lance, along with US Federal Judge Sparks, suspects the doping authorities are motivated by something other than an altruistic desire to “clean up sport,” and it’s hard to disagree. It’s time for Congress to pull the plug on the USADA.
BTW: While it’s true that Lance targeted the Tour, so did all of his major competitors – Ullrich, Zulle, Beloki, Kloden, Basso and the rest. So, no advantage there. In fact, Lance competed in more spring classics than the average Grand Tour rider, in fact, especially during 1999-2003.
Yep. That seems to be the story. And according to Armstrong’s statement, this outfit is giving breaks to people who actually are doping in exchange for their claims against Armstrong.
Where is the evidence? From what I’ve read so far, it sounds like the USADA is the problem.
Quasi-governmental organizations seem to generally be a bad idea.
It’s a general farming out of tough responsibilities in order to CYA.
How can credit ratings be legal? They obviously aren’t perfect measures, since they differ widely between agencies. They are not governmental, yet they hold the power to destroy someone without any real recourse. Who the hell are they to hold such power?
They came about because bankers are the laziest human beings on the planet. It’s so much easier to just look up a number, consult today’s cutoff number, and viola! yes or no, and noone can question your decision, because you had nothing to do with it!
Health care privacy laws are so ridiculous that you can’t even see your own results without first giving yourself permission, but somehow these credit agencies know all kinds of stuff about you, and tell anyone who asks. Some employers and renters use them as a basis for agreeing to do business with you, since it would be illegal for them to pry the way the agencies do.
So, the agencies screw up, which they do, all the time, and you can’t even rent a home, or get a job, without a credit rating from these shadowy people.
It’s just wrong, and is just one more reason why we have so many people on welfare. Can you imagine how hard it is for some poor guy with a DWI to ever recover from that? Government is out of control, and they employ these quasi-governmental bodies to enslave us even further. That way the governmental slave masters can’t be held responsible.
Who the heck is the TSA and what the heck gives them the right grab our crotches without a warrant, for that matter? Americans dislike abusive and arbitrary authority, always have.
USADA just decided it wasn’t fair Armstrong won too much and, so, he MUST be cheating somehow. The heck with due process or actual proof… they just jump in grab his wins when he get tired of arguing about it. And, isn’t the Tour de France a FRENCH thing anyway so what they heck does their getting some money from the AMERICAN congress give them any authority to do anything? Did Armstrong agree to let them be God or did they just feel they didn’t need his consent?
It seems that those responsible for deciding who should replace Armstrong after his victories are revoked will have a hard time because ALL of the runners-up have already been identified as dopers themselves! Those who are supposed to be screening for doping should admit defeat and find new jobs, perhaps predicting the weather. Given that everybody was doing it, they should leave Armstrong alone, since, after all, he was competing against nothing but fellow dopers. Then start all over again, when they figure out how to really detect doping, or else just admit that some forms of doping are too hard to detect and let it be. Or maybe another solution is to award the trophies (and prize money) to the bikers’ doctors, or the pharmaceutical companies that provide the dope, instead of the bikers!
The headline to this article is misleading. We don’t know it was a lie. We will never know if it was a lie or not, or a case of bureaucratic bullying… In legal terms “no contest” is not an admission of guilt. Justice is not served when supposedly responsible media sites like PJ Media don’t keep the facts straight in the headlines to their articles.
Thank you. What about innocent until proven guilty. The man is tired. I hope him the best.
Yes. That was going to be my comment as well. The headline should be changed, it does not match the story at all and is unworthy of PJM.
Dreadful headline, story badly bolted together.
Not only is the headline a misleading lie, there’s no attempt anywhere to deal with Armstrong’s objections — on the surface, all reasonable. And yes, it’s a French event, so the assertions of USADA — plugged into the Federal tit and, it seems, based on no credible evidence of either doping or standing — are worthless.
I don’t buy the fallen hero implication either, but this article has more than a whiff of Salem about it. Armstrong actually comes out smelling better than anyone, which is certainly not what the author/PJM intended.
He was never a hero of mine, I’ve always known he’s an adulterer and his livestrong scam gave very little to cancer research, most of the money was pocketed and went to “awareness” which means absolutely nothing. He’s a fraud, and a cheater in more ways than one and now it’s just common knowledge.
You write “What Will Lance Armstrong’s Legacy Be Now That We Know His Career Was Based on a Lie?”
What drug test did Armstrong fail? Until you can provide us that evidence, then his career is not based on lies. I expect better logical thinking from PJM.
For example, even though I am a big SF Giants fan, Melky Cabrera is guilty of doping cause he failed a drug test.
“now that we know his career is based on a lie”
excuse me? i know no such thing. i know only that he never failed a test, admits no guilt, but has been worn down to the point where he chose to get on with his life.
The fact that he didn’t fail a drug test merely points to the high level of the doping cover-up. We know he was doping and the lack of proof proves that he was doping.
And if we think this story is scary just think what will happen when the same “advocates” get control over our lives via ObamaCare.
You have to wonder if there are any elite athletes in any top sports who don’t take performance enhancing drugs. Even after all the publicity in baseball, a top baseball player for the Giants received a 50-day suspension recently.
I view it like Congress. There is just too much money in sports and politics too resist. My going-in assumption is that every member of Congres is a crook, and that every athlete uses drugs. Occassionally, there will be somebody who seems clean, but even then, it’s best to remain sceptical.
like most criminal decisions – the penalties are less than the gains
until baseball has the entire team forfeiting games in which the doped player participated this will continue – sort of similar to a drill sergeant who punishes the whole squad for the foulups of one dunderhead
Already you can’t have a glass of milk or eat a poppy seed bagel for fear of being thrown out of sport for life.
I’m sure “drugs” are used very widely among all elite athletes, but Armstrong got through his years clean for what was known at the time. You can’t ask any more than that, have to call statute of limitations.
Using (purported) science to promote moral outrage is a different game than policing the sport.
I stopped watching MLB. It is obvious they are almost grotesquely puffed up bio-men. I have no interest in such things. The fun used to be imagining what hard work and skill could accomplish, not science-fiction scenarios.
“What Will Lance Armstrong’s Legacy Be Now That We Know His Career Was Based on a Lie?”
Your headline is working from a false premise. Lance Armstrong has not been found guilty of anything. His refusal to knuckle under to a flawed and blatantly unconstitutional system is admirable. The fact is that the USADA will not let Armstrong view evidence or confront witnesses prior to the arbitration. This is both unfair and against any normal rules of procedure. He is being railroaded. He knows it, and is not playing anymore.
The USADA has had a hard-on for Lance for years. They’ve violated their own internal rules and processes to get him and he’s refused to keep playing the game.
I would expect a better balanced article from a PJ Media contributor. I’m disappointed.
What if he never had cancer?
Is it really possible to have cancer in your brain and lungs and still survive, let alone do the Tour de France?
Really? You’re one of THEM now?
And you impressed me so much with your queen for a day article.
Scram…..
Kathy,
Where were you in 1996? I can assure you the jerk had brain surgery and all of his hair gone. Does that (his personality) make him guilty? No. Does that make him a worthy political target? After a while, apparently so.
How much of your life is based on emotionally-driven decisions where rational thoughts are dismissed and ignored?
What a stupid thing to say. It makes perfect sense what happened. The guy had clear athletic ability with a slightly heavy body weight that enabled success at a fairly high level. He then lost so much in physical therapy and decided to exploit that. It happened to me too. I just didn’t win the Tour.
Ask any medical doctor to review his medical case or his athletic career and they won’t have any of the attitude that his critics have. The only medical doctors that attack him are those who are paid “experts” used exclusively to prosecute and they use language like “blood chemistry consistent with doping” which means that his blood chemistry alone (according to his arbitrary evaluation of statistics) doesn’t point to probability of innocence based on statistics gathered from average humans and a few select athletes. Oh no!
Forget it. I’m sure you stopped listening. He sucks as a person, I know. This case from the USADA is asinine.
Excuse me, but USADA doesn’t have the authority to strip Lance of anything, except, praps, a good chunk of his bank account spent defending himself from Travis Tygart’s obsession. What a pathetik spectacle USADA is making!
His name – they stripped him of his good name.
All the headlines all over the entire world are screaming that Lance Armstrong has been striped of his titles and is banned for life.
In year to come that is all anyone will ever remember.
That’s what the USADA is hoping, but I think this may backfire on them. Armstrong has called their bluff, and my view is that he has a good enough reputation to cause people to wonder. When I heard the news, I thought at first that it meant he was guilty, then I looked at his statement and I looked at the USADA website and now I have a completely different view.
This article should be withdrawn right away.
Just because you give up fighting a lawless and unjust extralegal inquisition doesn’t mean that “we know his career was based on a lie.”
It might be, it might not. Nothing on that score has changed.
The editor and writer of this piece should be worshipped in the same Star chamber they brewed this balderdash in.
Worshipped is supposed to “horsewhipped”.
Greetings:
And somewhere, in the deep, dark depths of the City of Angels, which are very, very deep and dark, a smile begins its sickening crawl across Sheryl Crow’s aging face.
I agree, nothing proven so what are you blathering about.
For some odd reason he has decided that his name is not worth any more lawsuits. Which is odd. I guess the “cross any bridge” does not apply in his case. If my name was being unjustifiably defamed, I would spend every penny I have to reclaim it. Yet he won’t. Hunh.
And he said why, believably. Believe him or not.
It’s not just a matter of money, it’s a matter of time.
Committing to endless lawsuits means giving up a big chunk of your life.
I commend Armstrong for caring more about his family, and his foundation, than his reputation.
Really? You’d spend **13 years** of your life continually fighting the same charges, the same lack of evidence, the same knuckleheads?
BS title. Where’s the lie?
If they suspected him of any sort of injectable drug habits, experienced phlebs, or even pathologists, would have combed his body for injection sites. The inspection can get very personal, since any tech, anywhere, knows that people hide injection spots between their toes, or in their hairline- up to, and including, their genital hair. Very, very, very, very, very thorough inspections….
Nobody has ever seen an extraneous injection site. Nobody has ever even reported a boil or a mosquito bite in unusual places. Nobody has ever seen a mosquito bite or boil that involves more than it ought.
Unless he were getting drug enemas, and even then I’d have questions about changes in sphincter-tone, he hasn’t any visible means of getting these drugs into his system.
No back acne, no rages, nothing. testicle cancer is associated with high-heat and bike-riding. I’d say “shrunken testicles” except he hasn’t got any. And he has children from resections from before surgery, so they were functional…
Why not just talk smack about Usain Bolt? or Mr Phelps? They are outstanding physical specimens as well. Mr. Armstrong has been a self- centered, incredibly driven, angry bike-riding jerk his whole life. That’s his drug- anger, solipsism, rage, pride. He’s been riding competitively, and angrily, longer than anyone else has even thought about competing.
He was continually receiving medical treatment. He must have had hundreds of injection and infusion sites. That was his cover.
When people first started accusing him, it was pointed out that if someone were doping, having cancer treatment would be the perfect cover, espcially cancer treatment in Africa, where the records are shady, to say the least. He often had “false” positives which were explained away by that method.
Anyone can shave their head. Recovering cancer patients hardly ever win the Tour.
This fish has always stunk, big time, and being a scummy individual should always make one lose the benefit of the doubt. The “Well, THIS time, he’s not lying” defense is just stupid. It sickens me when it’s applied to Obama or Armstrong, or Roger Clemens.
And Lance Armstrong is a scummy individual. The whole race is about stamina, and even tiny, tiny improvements in one’s hemoglobin levels would be a great advatage. If he had cancer treatment, it most assuredly involved epogen. Need I say more?
I’m totally confused about the headline:
“What Will Lance Armstrong’s Legacy Be Now That We Know His Career Was Based on a Lie?”
Are you implying that Lance Armstrong was lying? Because that’s completely crazy. Everyone knows that the USADA and the French Tour de France officials have a personal vendetta against Armstrong. What they don’t have is any evidence that he took steroids or any other banned substances. The cycling officials’ entire legacy is based on a lie, not Lance Armstrong’s.
All Armstong announced today was that he was going to stop participating in this charade and stop wasting his time and his life combatting obviously false charges. He didn’t admit guilt — quite the opposite. He admitted that he is being tried in a kangaroo court in which he is predetermined to lose.
Athletes who take steroids have a certain ” ‘roid” look to them — and Armstrong never had that look. You can tell just visually that he was not doping.
But more importantly, he took HUNDREDS of urine and blood tests DURING, BEFORE and AFTER the races and PASSED ALL OF THEM. That’s irrefutable solid evidence right there.
The accusations against him are coming from OTHER cyclists who WERE caught doping and who were offered deals: We’ll go leniently against you if you publicly accuse Armstrong of being as corrupt as you.
Outrageous.
The Tour de France is now based on a lie, not Armstrong’s career.
As a Canadian, I’m reminded of the actions brought against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn a few years ago. It seems like there is a proliferation of agencies (the Anti-Doping Agency and the Human Rights Commissions, respectively) that have the ability to prosecute people and apply harsh penalties (albeit falling short of custodial sentences) while functioning outside of the official justice system. And, most critically, without the Constitutional and Common Law protections mandated in the official justice system:
* No presumption of innocence
* No juries
* No right to cross-examine your accusers
* No statute of limitations
* No immunity from double jeopardy
* No protection from ex post facto rules
“The process has become the punishment” ~Ezra Levant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzVJTHIvqw8)
Doesn’t really change anything. He passed the Tour’s tests when they mattered. This doesn’t matter. It is a witch hunt. They don’t like Armstrong, Armstrong doesn’t like them. It stinks of politics. He won the races, stayed within the rules of the race, was constantly tested.
It was a fairly grotesque troll for traffic on PJM’s part.
But hey, it worked.
This might work in Lance’s favor. If the USADA does strip him of his medals, this will then give Lance the legal standing necessary to sue them in civil court for their actions against him; which is a legal standing that he does not now have.
And if this does go to court, then the USADA will be forced to produce whatever evidence they allegedly have against him. Which is again, something that they have, to date, refused to produce.
I’m not buying it. There’s NO physical evidence to support it. And the shifting standards of the “anti-doping” supervision delegitimizes it.
What the USADA has done is to delegitimize the anti-drug jihad in endurance sports itself. IT is a purity war where there purity is impossible: without chemistry, life itself would be impossible. If there are no open, easily understood standards to apply, (and there aren’t), the USADA and its international authority.
A Armstrong’s statement asserts, this investigation ” about punishing me at all costs. I am a retired cyclist, yet USADA has lodged charges over 17 years old despite its own 8-year limitation. As respected organizations such as UCI and USA Cycling have made clear, USADA lacks jurisdiction even to bring these charges. 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. And as many others, including USADA’s own arbitrators, have found, there is nothing even remotely fair about its process.”
On arbitrary and inconsistent “rules,” Armstrong continues, the “USADA has endlessly repeated the mantra that there should be a single set of rules, applicable to all, but they have arrogantly refused to practice what they preach. On top of all that, USADA has allegedly made deals with other riders that circumvent their own rules as long as they said I cheated. Many of those riders continue to race today.”
So, I’m not buying the fallen hero narrative being sold here.
If you think Lance Armstrong won because of doping and steroids, a challenge: go do some ‘roids, get some extra blood, and then go to France with a bicycle and beat his time on the Tour route.
He worked his ass off and put up superior times. A nannying bureaucracy with unclear jurisdiction retroactively declares, without due process, that history doesn’t exist. Only fools would listen to that BS.
And furthermore, is it really appropriate to say that Tiger Woods “won” golf tournaments when he engaged in demeaning sexual behavior with women who were victimized by the porn industry? That history should also be rectified.
And Babe Ruth ate a very inappropriate diet that doesn’t reflect the USDA’s “food pyramid,” or Michelle Obama’s nutritional guidance. The history books should be rectified to avoid giving honor to this person’s inappropriate behaviors.
We have a lot of history to fix to make the past match the ideals of our bureaucrats.
The fact that Woods was a rotten man in no way means he cheated at golf. The same can be said about Armstrong if the reports are true about his alleged sexual escapades.
Let’s get ‘em all! Let’s strip Babe Ruth of his records; he did drink too much and ate a lots of hot dogs.
How ’bout Yogi Berra? His gramatical errors should have him stripped from the Hall of Fame!
Toss all those great athletes in the trash heap with Jim Thorpe. They stipped the wins the Penn State football team memebers earned by their victories on the grid iron a decade ago because of a scandal the players knew nothing about.
Is that fair?
It burns me to see athletes impuned by air-chair administrators who were never good enough at any sport to make it professionally.
Oh, yeah, I’m a Penn State Dad AND ANGRY AS HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BTW: Seriously, Yogi Berra is the greatest baseball catcher EVER, one of the greatest team managers EVER and beloved of all of us who ever had anything to do with the sport.
So they strip the titles from Lance and award them to the second place finishers, who were probably also doping. How far down in the order would they need to go to find a racer that wasn’t doping? Were any of them not doping? Most of professional sports are a farce. It’s all about money, prestige, sex, and drugs. Stop watching other guys ride a bike and go ride one yourself, people.
Maybe they could just give it to one of the spectators. Makes as much sense.
Looks like the evidence against Armstrong will be released, but there are still related charges against others pendind; the release will happen, but not immediately.
http://www.businessinsider.com/lance-armstrong-evidence-will-be-released-2012-8
So at some point, the back-and-forth name calling can stop and we’ll have the facts to judge for ourselves. But not yet. Circumstantially, the case against Armstrong seems strong (and even Armstrong almost seems–to me, my impression–to be hinting at his defeat with his “what I may or may not have done 10 years ago” language), but that’s assuming one trusts the USADA people, which obviously many here do not.
It’s important to get to the truth of this matter, unless we are to admit that the rules in sport don’t really matter if they get in the way of victory (which cynical attitude would prevail if either Armstrong is guilty and got extraordinary fame and fortune as a result, or if he is being unjustly railroaded by unaccountable authorities).
Better, tar, feathers and a rail. For bureaucrats, in general.
Lance was the most tested athlete in history. French authourities tried everything to discredit him and failed.
Looks like the only hero allowed to endure is the dear leader Obama.
His Career Based on a Lie??? Armstrong has passed every single drug/doping test they’ve given him.
By the ‘Preponderance of Evidence’ standard he’s innocent.
By the’Innocent until proven guilty’ standard he innocent.
This is yet another example of the garbage that seems to be taking over PJM these days. Which is why I’m spending less and less time here.
Well said. Just about sums up my own opinion on this whole debacle (including the sorry state of PJMedia).
This is a bunch a crap! Nobody can take his titles away.
To the author of this article: Can you point to even a SINGLE test that Armstrong failed to pass, or to which he refused to submit?
This has been a prolonged WITCH HUNT.
I doubt that anyone on that Agency – the miscreants that have so relentless PISSED AWAY TAXPAYER DOLLARS trying to destroy ONE MAN – could go through a decade and more of such intrusive and mean-spirited inspection without having their lives destroyed.
This is outrageous. But sadly, it has become ABSOLUTELY the MARK of this GOVERNMENT and its pernicious, out-of-control agencies.
Who appointed these people?
To whom are they accountable?
Who sets their budget?
Who sets their priorities?
What an utter sham! The Olympic Games are not made wholesome by any act of these monsters. It is the ATHLETES and their dedication, and persistence – NOT the vicious POLICING by these petty dictators – that lend the Olympics any morsel of authenticity.
It seems that the process is unfair and corrupt, innocents are punished and the guilty profit and escape. Or, being arbitrary, the guilty are sometimes punished as well. Having said that, in this case, Lance Armstrong is guilty. How do I know? I don’t know for sure. But if I had to wager my life, I’d wager that every rider in the Tour this year used a banned pharma at some point in his preparation during the year rather than making the alternative bet that there was at least a single truly clean rider in the race. I suspect this goes back a good two decades at least. If you have any doubt, think about a sport like bodybuilding. Could any professional, or high amateur, or even good local competitor look like that without PEDs? Unequivocally, no. Endurance sports like cycling are different physiologically and the effects are not visually obvious, but the principle is the same: the drugs give such a marked advantage that a clean competitor is no competition at all. Small muscle, finesse sports may be different (golf, billiards, violin), but not sports where raw power or cardiovascular efficiency are decisive. Sad to say, but that’s reality. I don’t blame Armstrong. It’s a bit of a quandry.
I refuse to pay any attention to this. I’m still annoyed that Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.
haha me too
Do we know Armstrong’s career was based on a lie?
Where’s the evidence?
I hope this headline isn’t indicitave of the quality of commentary on the rest of PJ Media.
Well, he certainly qualifies for the White House.
What will PJM’s legacy be, now that we know that its pretended opposition to liberal fascism is a lie?
The evidence against Armstrong does not consist of explicitly failed tests–that was the whole point of his now banned-for-life specialists, after all–but of numerous defectors from his cause spilling the beans, combined with highly suspicious but NOT over-the-line test results. (Again, the reason for the now-banned A-team of doping specialists was to keep things from going over the line, the idea being that it’s not cheating if they can’t _absolutely prove_ it. So Armstrong’s blood results are extremely suspicious _and_ he’s hired expert dopers for years–that proves nothing! etc. etc. But the many leakers are now making that case hard, and so Armstrong is changing tactics.)
Witnesses Made Case Against Armstrong Potent
http://nyti.ms/OBL1Gs
It’s still conceivable that Armstrong will come out of this on top, but the circumstantial evidence against him seems pretty strong. But hopefully we shall know the details sooner rather than later.
The witnesses are being given light punishments for their own certains sins in exchange for their changes stories.
Bought testimony has no credibility.
changed stories
They had 10 cyclists ready to testify to his drug use, and Armstrong had lost his last attempt to stop open-court testimony.
“Where’s the lie?” Please.
It is not Armstrong’s good name which has been ruined nor his victories nullififed. It is the USADA which is despicable and will therefore be held in absolute contempt.All of this is exactly as it should be. Armstrong was tested and tested and tested some more. People can and will say anything-especially if seeking to settle a score or save their own skin. If Armstrong’s tests do not provide legal evidence of doping then he is clean-might have, could have, etc. is irrelevant.