Quote:
Originally Posted by outhega
I find it interesting simply for the fact that according to the article he was tested an average of 1.5 times a month for fifteen years, and never failed. I'm not saying he didn't dope but damn, that is some dedicated doping. If true, he spent just as much time and effort beating the system as he did training.
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If you read the report (yeah its huge and takes a while), you'll find that the testing regime back then was laughably pathetic.
First of all, the stuff they were taking usually became undetectable within hours (the testers didn't know that, they were behind the cheaters in chemistry knowledge), and they knew there was almost zero chance of being woken up in the middle of the night. So, they usually doped right before going to bed.
The times when this was not an option (they needed to take something that is detectable longer than a few hours), they somehow had insider knowledge tipping them off when the "random" drug test was going to happen.
A few times when this all failed, the drug tester was so incompetent or easily-intimidated that they were able to delay him long enough to hook Lance up to a saline IV that made whatever he took undetectable.
One time when Lance was taking something that couldn't be washed out and they were surprised with a test that they weren't tipped off about, luckily for Lance, he was out of the hotel and his team was able to warn him by text. Lance, knowing he was nailed, formally dropped out of the race, then as a non-competitor he couldn't be tested.
Beyond all of that, he actually did test positive a few times and was nailed, but every time he either got off on a technicality (French test) or the UCI just made the results go away (a few results back then which were merely labeled "suspicious" would now be considered "positive" under today's standards), or the positive tests happened after 2009 where people could say "oh, who cares".
He was guilty as hell. He also can never admit it unless he works out a deal with the Feds, because he perjured himself.