Lance to lose Tour titles

Good now may be all the lance wat-to-be bikers will get off the road and go car racing,

New rules coming to the TDF next year?

The USADA would have been better signing a never prosecute agreement with Lance and then getting him to tell them how he got away with stuff. At least then they might be able to get some useful info that they could use to stop future dopers. As it is, whatever he was using, it was effective and he was brilliant about not getting caught and instead of using that information, we're just in a pissing match.

I bet he was smoking weed. Phelps proved it wins medals.

I kinda want to see the open all dope tour. How far can we go beyond "normal" human capacity?

nocones wrote: I kinda want to see the open all dope tour. How far can we go beyond "normal" human capacity?

The Unlimited class. I like it.

Probably means that I'll watch less cycling.

If after all of the negative tests, they still want to hang him by his formerly cancerous cells, whatever. The races happened, ended years ago, and now they want to cut off the best thing that ever happened to the US sport. Great. And the best thing that happened to cancer research- better. Just because there's suspicion, but not actual evidence.

BTW, any more, I don't put much onto witnesses. As has been shown many times in criminal court, people are far from perfect witnesses. The hard data has not been there, but apparently people who know people who think.. well, there you go, must be guilty. No person could do what he did... yea. that's it

Oh, Tom Christiansen- I think you've cheated in your victories at LeMans, too- there's no way you could be that much better than everyone else- it's just not possible. Jimmy Johnson- cheater for sure. Schumacher- not humanly possible to win that much, cheater, cheater, cheater.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

nocones wrote: I kinda want to see the open all dope tour. How far can we go beyond "normal" human capacity?

The Unlimited class. I like it.

No one goes to the Circus to see bunny rabbits.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

nocones wrote: I kinda want to see the open all dope tour. How far can we go beyond "normal" human capacity?

The Unlimited class. I like it.

I actually think this would be far more entertaining in the UFC.

Go up to Heavyweight, then "SUPER UNLIMITED." Any substances, any weight. Go for it. If you need to do a line between rounds as a "pick me up" then even better.

I would watch the E36 M3 out of that.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

nocones wrote: I kinda want to see the open all dope tour. How far can we go beyond "normal" human capacity?

The Unlimited class. I like it.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c53d48a4a1/all-drug-olympics

This is brilliant-instead of rehab you go into training!

alfadriver wrote: Oh, Tom Christiansen- I think you've cheated in your victories at LeMans, too- there's no way you could be that much better than everyone else- it's just not possible. Jimmy Johnson- cheater for sure. Schumacher- not humanly possible to win that much, cheater, cheater, cheater.

If those guys had done what they did against entire fields that were proven and/or admitted to be cheaters, yeah, I'd be a mite suspicious about them, too.

Actually, Lance made an interesting point on the radio this morning: he said the USADA doesn't have the authority to strip him of his Tour titles, since those were issued in France after all. We'll see how that tactic plays out.

I do think the whole thing is ridiculous and they should be treating it as water under the bridge and using it to fight doping in the future rather than trying to change the past.

I agree with the idea put forward that the focus should be on improving testing. There will always be a need for testing, and it needs to work if it's going to be effective.

With respect to just dropping it, I'm less certain. It has an appeal, but... There does have to be some kind of deterrent. Succeed enough and you're immune? That's not going to work... Lance as the rider too big to fail...

Witnesses may or may not be reliable like recording devices, but whether or not you saw your friend and team captain use EPO is not a matter that poor detail retention is going to affect. I don't think Hincapie's making stuff up. Yes, he could be lying, but I'm in the camp more or less convinced that everyone successful was juiced at that point in time.

As far as stripping the titles, I think I'd prefer an asterisk. As has been noted, you can't hand them to second place, or third, or seventeenth. It would appear the entire era was doped to the gills. He did win, and no amount of EPO could make it anything other than a stunning feat, especially against "equalized" competitors. I'm still in awe, but it's also tarnished in a very real way.

Kudos to Woody for the All-Drug Olympics link: that was right where I went, too...

As an aside, remember when there was effectively no test for EPO, and they'd just prevent people from riding if their red blood cell count got high enough to be a danger?

The whole sport of pro road cycling is slimy. I remember seeing a TV interview with Floyd Landis back when he was still trying to defend/ appeal his doping charge. He said that hehe had been approached by the TDF or antidoping authorities, and they said something to the effect of, "We will cut a deal with you, if you give us Lance".

U think that there us a good chance that Lance doped, bur the witch hunt to take him down with out the evidence of failed test results stupid and destructive to the whole sport, as is the practice of saving and retesting samples from years ago.

Oh, and I am completely pissed that my tax dollars are veing spent on this stuff....Don't even get me started on the congressional hearings about baseball!!

alfadriver wrote: Oh, Tom Christiansen- I think you've cheated in your victories at LeMans, too- there's no way you could be that much better than everyone else- it's just not possible. Jimmy Johnson- cheater for sure. Schumacher- not humanly possible to win that much, cheater, cheater, cheater.

Meh, Christiansen has been beaten before, Schumacher was great with great equipment(yet got lost on the TG test track[I know, a spoof]), and I swear Nascar is the professional wrestling of autosports.

HappyAndy wrote: U think that there us a good chance that Lance doped, bur the witch hunt to take him down with out the evidence of failed test results stupid and destructive to the whole sport, as is the practice of saving and retesting samples from years ago.

There is a large body of evidence that blood and plasma samples are stable if stored below -70C for quite some time. The possibility of retesting as technology and techniques improve is supposed to be a deterrent. They also are able to 'mine' the raw data from the old tests as software and better methods of processing become available.

I just can't help but feel this is like burning your house down to get rid of a mouse. They still can't prove he did anything wrong, they really wrecked the image of cycling in the US, and torn down a pretty well respected athlete.

Did he dope? I don't know, but I don't but I don't bet on eye witness accounts, because eye witness lie and get things wrong.

So congratulations USADA. Enjoy your pyrrhic victory.

Welcome to the future. IMHO it is going to become impossible to legislate this stuff. I do not pretend to have a solution, but cycling has not come up with one. Road Racing has absolutely cannibalized itself. Based on the recent history of the sport the results from the last 20 years of cycling would need to be thrown out in their entirety. Legislating humans engaged in the progress of technological, bio mechanical, chemical, medical, psychological race to the top is not something that is going to have an end point metric of "success".

The sports with high dollar agents and high dollar team owners seem to be having better luck at throwing some bones and getting a grip on it without wrecking their sports.

I don't have much to add other than the whole situation sucks and is very sad. :(

To me, this is ridiculous that they're going after someone who has retired and no longer competes in the sport. I really have no idea whether he cheated or not, but I believe such a large number of people on the Tour cheated in one way or another that I would guess the cheating was irrelevant. Lance was the best cyclist of that era, period.

If we're going to be spending time and tax dollars on anything, let's make sure we're spending it to keep the sport clean going forward...

Shaun wrote: Welcome to the future. IMHO it is going to become impossible to legislate this stuff. I do not pretend to have a solution, but cycling has not come up with one. Road Racing has absolutely cannibalized itself. Based on the recent history of the sport the results from the last 20 years of cycling would need to be thrown out in their entirety. Legislating humans engaged in the progress of technological, bio mechanical, chemical, medical, psychological race to the top is not something that is going to have an end point metric of "success".

Do what they do in soccer. A team recently had two players caught with PEDs in their system. The team was banned from any UEFA tournaments for 4 years and the players were banned from any games for a year. Hell one player got banned for a year for using a weight loss drug (water pill or whatever you want to call it).

yamaha wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Oh, Tom Christiansen- I think you've cheated in your victories at LeMans, too- there's no way you could be that much better than everyone else- it's just not possible. Jimmy Johnson- cheater for sure. Schumacher- not humanly possible to win that much, cheater, cheater, cheater.

Meh, Christiansen has been beaten before, Schumacher was great with great equipment(yet got lost on the TG test track[I know, a spoof]), and I swear Nascar is the professional wrestling of autosports.

You all realize I'm joking about those- it's just that they have been dominant for quite a long time, too. It seems as if a lot of Lance's attackers are ones who never did anything special, and extend their ordinaryness into everyone- that working as hard as Lance did shouldn't mean that they will win. And I also think that some attack because all he did was the Tour, no other major races anywhere. So working hard and being rested before the race shouldn't be a way to do it....

At least I won't waste any more evenings watching the Tour or any other bike racing- the US cyling program have convinced me that they are all cheaters and it's a waste of time to pay attention.

He either:

This is a great point

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: I don't understand (from a business perspective) what de-throning past champions accomplishes if a majority of the field were doping and all you are doing is erasing past race results. They should be focusing on ensuring that they have absolute confidence in the results of a race. If they suspect it after the race - too late. It's in the books. If you cannot trust your testing - get better testing. Fans AND SPONSORS need confidence you are no going to berkeley up their heros or they will not come to spend.

This. 100%. And that's basically all I have to say about it.