Lance Armstrong cleared of doping charges (and now drops the fight)
 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...x.html?cnn=yes

The French Lose Again.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Independent Dutch investigators cleared Lance Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour de France on Wednesday, and blamed anti-doping authorities for misconduct in dealing with the American cyclist.

A 132-page report recommended convening a tribunal to discuss possible legal and ethical violations by the World Anti-Doping Agency and to consider "appropriate sanctions to remedy the violations."

The French sports daily L'Equipe reported in August that six of Armstrong's urine samples from 1999, when he won the first of his record seven-straight Tour titles, came back positive for the endurance-boosting hormone EPO when they were retested in 2004.

Armstrong has repeatedly denied using banned substances.

The International Cycling Union appointed Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman last October to investigate the handling of urine tests from the 1999 Tour by the French national anti-doping laboratory, known by its French acronym LNDD.

Vrijman said Wednesday his report "exonerates Lance Armstrong completely with respect to alleged use of doping in the 1999 Tour de France."

The report also said the UCI had not damaged Armstrong by releasing doping control forms to the French newspaper.

The report said WADA and the LNDD may have "behaved in ways that are completely inconsistent with the rules and regulations of international anti-doping control testing," and may also have been against the law.

Vrijman, who headed the Dutch anti-doping agency for 10 years and later defended athletes accused of doping, worked on the report with Adriaan van der Veen, a scientist with the Dutch Metrology Laboratory.

EPO, or erythropoietin, is a synthetic hormone that boosts the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.

Testing for EPO only began in 2001.

STICK THE FROGGIES!!

Stupid Frogs.

holy shit bowser

Ha, finally. Screw them pussy frenchies.

Lance Armstrong cleared; the French suck.
 

Too bad Frogs, it appears big Lance dominated your puny sport without having to cheat. When will the French apology be forthcoming?

Armstong cleared of doping charges
Posted: Wednesday May 31, 2006 9:09AM; Updated: Wednesday May 31, 2006 11:27AM

Lance Armstrong was cleared of all doping charges during the 1999 Tour de France.
Simon Bruty/SI


AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Independent Dutch investigators cleared Lance Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour de France on Wednesday, and blamed anti-doping authorities for misconduct in dealing with the American cyclist.

A 132-page report recommended convening a tribunal to discuss possible legal and ethical violations by the World Anti-Doping Agency and to consider "appropriate sanctions to remedy the violations."

The French sports daily L'Equipe reported in August that six of Armstrong's urine samples from 1999, when he won the first of his record seven-straight Tour titles, came back positive for the endurance-boosting hormone EPO when they were retested in 2004.

Armstrong has repeatedly denied using banned substances.

The International Cycling Union appointed Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman last October to investigate the handling of urine tests from the 1999 Tour by the French national anti-doping laboratory, known by its French acronym LNDD.

Vrijman said Wednesday his report "exonerates Lance Armstrong completely with respect to alleged use of doping in the 1999 Tour de France."

The report also said the UCI had not damaged Armstrong by releasing doping control forms to the French newspaper.

The report said WADA and the LNDD may have "behaved in ways that are completely inconsistent with the rules and regulations of international anti-doping control testing," and may also have been against the law.

Vrijman, who headed the Dutch anti-doping agency for 10 years and later defended athletes accused of doping, worked on the report with Adriaan van der Veen, a scientist with the Dutch Metrology Laboratory.

EPO, or erythropoietin, is a synthetic hormone that boosts the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.

Testing for EPO only began in 2001.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Repost

http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=141549

I think Lance is a jerk, regardless and despite his althetic feats.
His wife stood by him, when he as sick and then he dumped her.
I betcha' he coldly dumped Sheryl Crow too.

I heard this on the radio this morning. Good deal. I hate the french.

Why can't I delete this pig?
Sorry for the repost.

Actually, that's incorrect. He met Kik AFTER his cancer.

F the French....Sore losers

His wife that he had kids with?

Yes.

Lance Armstrong abandons fight against doping charges. Will be stripped of Tour de France titles and banned for life. Story to follow. —

@NYDNSportsITeam via Twitter

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Son of a bitch, does that mean I have to give up my LiveStrong bracelet?

Not necessarily. This whole USADA thing is really strange. If they have proof of positive tests, they should be required to present their evidence.

Done deal.

The French are just butt hurt that an American beat them on their own turf.

Cheater.

It was a US Agency going after him.

Sounds like he realized he was caught and is forfeiting the battle. Thought I read somewhere that they had 10 riders willing to testify against him. Not sure if they were teammates.

Really weird. Bloomberg had and article saying he will be stripped of all titles tomorrow and I went to post it and it was gone replaced by this.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...ping-case.html

Just one of your baows.

I used to believe in Lance Armstrong like almost everyone else, thinking the Euros were just jealous and after him or whatever.

However, when you really read the evidence they have against him, its pretty damning. These are the US doping authorities which have laid down the hammer, not some foreign tribunal, so from that you have to pause and wonder if there's something to it, and there is. They don't have a positive test, because what he was taking wasn't detectable at the time. The one time they did catch him, the B sample was corrupted and he got off on a technicality. Tests aside, there are a lot of other reasons to believe that he, obviously, without a doubt, cheated.

He knows he's caught, but he thinks he can go out on a high note with his reputation mostly intact in this country by repeating how he never failed a drug test, but he's done fighting, etc, and most people will probably continue to believe in him.

You almost dont even need the testimony.

The basic case against Armstrong, without witnesses, and without a positive drug test, is this:

The tour des france is an incredibly long race. Several days. Despite the race lasting several days of racing time, the winner always wins by minutes.

During Armstrong's time, we know that EVERY SINGLE ONE of his top rivals cheated. They were all caught, red-handed, no doubt about it, proven, everyone Armstrong raced against was a cheater. When cycling was cleaned up and enforcement was massively increased and cyclists had to race clean, race times ballooned to a huge extent, by several hours.

It is simply not reasonable to believe that Armstrong could have won those races, clean, against a field full of cheaters. You can say maybe he had to do what he had to do because everyone else was breaking the rules, but he's a liar.

Its going to be difficult to go down the list those 7 years and figure out which 7 guys did the best without cheating. They should probably just vacate them and award them to no one.

Here's one semi-nerdy link that gets into it a bit.

http://www.sportsscientists.com/2012...iscussion.html

People are climbing Alpe d'Huez a few full minutes minutes slower than during the 90's and early 2000's. A few minutes is an eternity in cycling, and that is just one climb.

Its now thought that the times that were turned in climbing that mountain during Armstrong's time are just not physiologically possible for a human being, even a top world-class athlete, without doping.

That's all well and good. But I don't cycle competitively for one reason and one reason alone:


1. Saddles.

Yeah, probably not your first guess huh? Have you ever sat on one of these things doing 35 MPH in France?

Sure the dude had a distinct advantage but that has been disclosed for a long time. Sheryl Crow told me in 1997. Seriously, Lance Armstrong is the king of the TdF because he has but one schwetty ball. Imagine if you will just how deeply you could thrust your wife if you dropped from a 54" waist to a 34", for instance. This is precisely the same benefit provided to Armstrong by virtue of his brave Halfstration.

Judge less, neuter more.

Lance armstrong didn't cheat where were these alleged witnesses when he was winning the races and by the usada own admission the statue of limitation is already past for these issues to be brought up all this is is a high tech lynching of a great rider.

hahahaha

thats goddamn right

Bummer to see it all go down like this.

Boxing and cycling are shady as ****.

Of course Lance doped. Everybody at that level of cycling dopes to the maximum amount they can get away with, even to this day. Anyone who knows anything about cycling is aware of this. The farce is the witch hunt of going after Lance so single-mindedly in an effort to tarnish his accomplishments in what was a level-doping field.

Doesn't change the fact he's a badass. I wish they'd just throw open a sport to whatever level of PEDs one wants to use being acceptable. If you want to cut off your legs and replace them with steroid-fueled hydraulics, go for it.

**** France.

All it takes is accusations these days. I wonder how much $$$ he's had to spend on attorneys over the years to fight this.

This doesn't exactly go along with the thread title. ooops

Who cares. It's cycling.

I don't blame him for just giving it up. At this point, it makes the anti-doping forces look like vindictive jackasses for pursuing it this hard for this long.

It also puts them in the awkward spot of, "What do they do now?" They can strip him, but they're going to be the assholes that are tarnishing the Livestrong legacy as well as cycling in general.

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This is a top shelf post.

That's odd. I remember watching Greg LeMond ride the fastest time trial ever to beat Fignon by seven seconds in 1989.

Ouch.

LMAO

I am admittedly hypocritical when it comes to Lance.

I hate Barry Bonds. Hate him. I hope he never sniffs the hall.

Yet I like Lance. I was super pissed that the World Triathlon Corp ruled him ineligible while this USADA mess is going on. I really wanted to see him race the Ironman World Championship this year.

ROFL

Apparently the USADA had more than I thought. Like I said, you almost don't need anything because its clear that Armstrong couldn't have beaten all those cheaters during his 7 wins clean.

Blood samples from his comeback attempts in 2009 and 2010 have come back showing he's still cheating. He stopped cycling and was trying to come back as a triathlete when the USADA shut him down.

And of course you have a slew of credible witnesses.

How in the heck did this guy pass over 500 doping tests? Help from the UCI?

The cheaters were way out ahead of the testers back then, taking stuff and blood doping in ways that either could not be detected yet, or by taking masking agents that could not be detected yet.

What they are doing now is clever, the ICF started something called the athlete passport, and other sports are catching on. They basically said "screw it, we're never going to be ahead of the drug companies, instead of looking for drugs we can't find, we'll just monitor the blood"

We all know about T/E ratios and how we still try to find steroids directly, but if the ratios get out of whack, we'll just assume you are on some kind of new designer steroid we cant see. They are now doing that with every biological cell, hormone, or substance that might occur naturally and which can help performance. We analyze the hell out of your blood, figure out what you are capable of naturally, then set ranges, for that specific person, based on what we've determined they can do. If they break those ranges in red blood cell production, or hormones which can improve performance, or whatever, we'll just say you cheated even though we don't know what you've done yet.

It seems to have been very effective, and race times went up after they started the athlete passports.

Those who can't will always attempt to pull down those who can.

It's part of the Current Doctrine against people who achieve great things. To allow it to be believed that they do it because of great desire, effort, or talent is unhealthy.

You didn't win those races by yourself.

He cheated.

Catch any of the Tygart intv. on Dan Patrick?
Laid it all out; transfusions, plasma and saline expanders, masking agents, prior notice to testing...

Don't bother. On a good day mikey has the mental capacity of a 2 year old.

Not realizing that doping was (and is, though the regulators have reduced it) a routine and necessary part of competitive cycling over the last 20 years is like not realizing that professional wrestling is fake (this according to a good friend of mine who raced with Lance pre-cancer and is very involved in cycling to this day).

You're doing it wrong.

So did Denver but even if they said today that their Lombardi's were removed would any of them care?

A decade of memories are immediately scrubbed from our brains?...

Exactly.

I'm still wait for them to strip the Fifth Downers of their horseshit national championship. I assume that won't happen anytime soon, either.

USADA is engaging in a dick move supreme. What is the point of this witch hunt?

If they did would it matter?

Would your hurt or their joy go away?

Nope...

That was my real question, what was the point.

The dude has been fighting the charges for years, and has always come out on top, why waste more money on a lawyer just to repeat it again next year with some other group?

If I got to watch somebody take that trophy out of the case, smash it with a sledgehammer and then piss on the fragments, yeah, it would make me feel better.

You don't know that. You may want to believe that, however, as does USADA.

I have 2.5 weeks of vacation saved up but my camera is pretty old...

And a group which doesn't have the power or jurisdiction to strip Armstrong of his TDF victories. USADA is also tax-payer funded.

Oh no. Please don't tell me that you're going to come down on the, "It's Obama trying to destroy an American icon!" theory that I've seen passed off in a few places.

As long as your out there, be sure to grab Denver's horseshit '98 super bowl trophy as well. I'd like to melt that down into a toilet seat.

Not at all. Just stating a fact.

Ok, so for all you people that think NASA is a waste of money I'm ready to take arguments on why litigation vs. a guy with one nut who rides a bicycle for a living isn't...

Yup, the whole thing is a complete head scratcher. Especially after he retired.

I wonder what the reasoning would be for their actions if he wasn't cheating.

There's only one group of people that thinks an American with one nut can't take out all of Europe.

Hint: they're pissed off and in Europe...

Travis Tygart's ego, possibly.

Yep. Lance has passed enough tests and won enough times in courts on two continents. He doesn't have to defend himself in these endless witch hunts anymore.
**** USADA. They need to focus their efforts on current athletes instead of wasting tax $$ on trying to make an example of a legend.

Yeah, whatever. The French don't control the USADA.

Kind of a sad day for the sport, nonetheless. The curtain has been pulled away, revealing the old man at the controls.

The French don't control anything. They can't even control france.

But the pressure is from the Europeans. Always has been...

Not at all. This is a non-story. Lance still won all of those tours and that will never change for Americans. What else matters?

Actually, they do. USADA works under WADA rules/authority and according to those waiving the hearing means USADA gets to make a "reasoned decision" based on the evidence they have and submit a "reasoned decision explaining the action."

UCI has to await this, then issue the formal notice. If they fail to do this, they're in non-compliance with WADA code.

UCI could take USADA's ruling to CAS, but that would come at significant cost and it seems that USADA is chomping at the bit to present the case, while I really doubt UCI want the full details of the entire conspiracy case (It's important to remember Lance isn't the only one implicated here, just the highest profile; he is, however, the only one who seems to be taking his ball and going home (heh).) to see the light of day. They have enough issues with their credibility as it is.

I know. Perhaps I should have been clearer: USADA can't, by itself, strip Armstrong of his TDF victories. UCI can.