This is sad. Is it not possible any more for any athletes to compete fairly?

I watched the 30 for 30 last night on the 1988 Seoul Olympics 100m race and it appeared that the true competition wasn't between the athletes but rather each countries drug program.

I don't believe Hincapie ever tested positive. And yet you have his statement today. Is there anyone left saying he didn't cheat, other than his lawyers?

That's the last 20 years of professional cycling as well, in a nutshell. Except it was about whose drug program could avoid detection.

Exactly. Everyone in professional cycling dopes to some degree or another. Anyone who knows anything about cycling is aware of this. It's not even a well kept secret, dirty little secret, or any kind of secret. It's just a known part of the sport.

The evidence is coming that will show the UCI (Governing Body of Pro Cycling), hid positive results from Lance Armstrong.

It was fixed. You could test him a BILLION times and he woulda came up Negative with the UCI covering your back!

He is so ****ed!

Not sure if anyone is getting those titles, most of the riders who finished behind him are now known to have cheated. If the sport was clean, he probably would have been one of the greatest cyclists in the world. Maybe not 7 titles, the US team had a better doping program than the competition, but everyone was cheating so it was kinda sorta a level playing field.

The titles still have to be stripped obviously, but Armstrong is mostly being condemned and criticized for defiantly continuing his lie to the grave. He would have been forgiven long ago had he just explained that they really had no choice, they could either cheat or finish well behind all the other cheaters.

No positive test results? Sounds like all they have is a bunch of sour grapes from those who couldn't be Lance so they want to teal Lance down.
Why do they continue to pursue this? What can you do to him now? Strip his victories? No you can't, he already won. BFD. Move on, spend all that $ where it will do some good.

First of all, yes, they did have positive results. Its kind of hard to be caught when the UCI is completely, utterly in the tank to protecting you. A big chunk of the report was actually dedicated to strong criticism of the UCI.

Second, the new names we learned today that we didn't know about before are not random cycling nobody's that can be hand-waved away. George Hincapie was probably Armstrong's best friend in cycling and the only rider who ever raced on his team for all 7 titles. He's never spoken before and Armstrong has never spoken of him in anything but glowing terms. Also like Armstrong, Hincapie was never caught, he successfully cheated his entire career and - "officially" - passed every test. Yet now he's willing to admit everything.

Thats kind of a big deal in today's report, Lance cant just say THIS guy is also lying and expect us to believe it.

edit: not sure if its behind a paywall, but this is a pretty good article on Hincapie.

My mistake. Where were the positive results published and why wasn't he suspended or penalized at the time the positive results came in?

Other than a verifiable positive test result there is only hearsay, no matter who is doing the saying.

There are blood samples from 2009 and 2010. He decided not to fight them. It's like charging "no contest" to a crime. "I'm going to say I didn't do it, but you have overwhelming proof, so **** it - here's my public relations team."

For those defending him, there is going to be a big dump of information in a few hours. It might be best just to sit back and wait.

The french test (alluded to in the OP) absolutely nailed Armstrong beyond any doubt whatsoever. He got off that on a technicality. A couple of the other tests are mentioned in the report.

Aside from that, you almost don't need the testimony to know Armstrong cheated unless you are emotionally invested into Armstrong hero-worship. The most damning evidence is the Alpe d'Huez. During the Armstrong cheater era, the best cyclists turned in times climbing that mountain that are now thought of to be physically impossible for a human. As soon as testing improved and taking EPO became harder and the sport was mostly cleaned up, race times up that mountain ballooned enormously. Aside from that, we KNOW that all his major competitors cheated. We know this. it is simply not reasonable, at all, to believe that Armstrong could have beaten an entire competition full of cheaters, clean.

Oh, also I don't think you know what hearsay means. This is not hearsay, it is testimony from literally dozens of direct eyewitnesses. Hearsay is when you heard someone describe what someone else did. If you didn't see it, we generally don't accept it. This is like having over 24 people say they saw you shoot someone, and you coming back with "they are all lying!"

People are executed in this country from eyewitness testimony, much less have race results invalidated.

I was getting ready to post this too. Well said.