Lance folds on drug charges

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  • If this didn't involve LA would it have made such news?

    In every sport the teams, players, coach's, doctors are trying to invent the next best way to win and then governing bodies, drug testers, rule makers are always playing catch up.

     

  • If it didnt involve Lance? You mean if it didnt involve a decade of negated race results? If it didnt involve federal, and national crimes? If it didnt involve systematic bullying and the ruination of several people's careers? If it hadnt been denied over and over and over? If it hadnt come down to lawsuits? If journalists weren't sued over it?

    Well, no, then probably not. If he hadnt doped, you probably wouldnt know who Lance was - pre-cancer he wasnt really all that hot. 

  • VERY well said Flyers!

  • Feck Lance and feck the horse he rode in on image
  • Not very adult i know image but i remember all the times i defended him to the non cycling numpties in the office doh!
  • Bassie - not everyone at USPS was taking stuff.  Brian Smith has said that he didn't.

    Mind you - he never got to ride the Tour for them....

    I think the cost and the dangers of testing positive meant that it was essential for lances team for the Tour (and any riders hoping to support him in the Tour) but if you weren't that good  - then you could well have been cut out of the loop ?

  • 'Brian Smith has said that he didn't.'

    Take out Brian Smith and re-insert any name* (even Lance) and then think about it.  Now in this instance I'm saying nothing about Mr Smith but FFS after the last 2 days let alone the last 2 decades aren't we past the 'he said he didn't' excuse being anything but water tight?

    As we were? 

    * except the very few with zero suspicious performance spikes or dubious associations (unless of course you're Michael Rogers and you only got 'training plans' from Dr Ferrari - FFS so you really think anyone is thick enough to buy that anymore?  Cyclists with doping questions is akin to footballers with Twitter.)

  • flyaway wrote (see)

    Well, no, then probably not. If he hadnt doped, you probably wouldnt know who Lance was - pre-cancer he wasnt really all that hot. 

    Apart from winning the world champs and TdF stages, obviously, although he was doping then too, supposedly.

    I guess we'll never know what difference the doping made, but I'm not convinced it would turn an otherwise also-ran into a 7 time winner who never really looked like losing.  I suspect he'd have been the Cadel Evans of his day - close but not quite there for years until he sneaks a TdF win when no-one's looking.

    It made him a stack more money than he'd have had otherwise, that's for sure.

    I see Spartacus is thinking of leaving Radioshack because Bryneel's been named in the report.  A bit late Fabien, I can believe (just about) that it's now possible to get to the top in cycling without doping, but don't pretend this is all news to you.

  • just read that piece by Spartacus on CN - sounds a bit of a toy/pram/floor interface from him.  it's not as if he hasn't been around these guys for a few years - he was with Riis at CSC for 4 years and I do believe Riis confessed to a bit of doping during his time as a pro during this period.

    sounds like he's brown nosing the team owner and trying to protect his corner 

     

  • Spartacus may want to get out of the team as it seems to have fallen to pieces ? 

    Maybe he should go to nice and clean Astana run by Mr Vino....

  • FC has been looking to bail on NRS for ages. They dont have a team to deliver anything. Andy is crocked Frank is doped, the rest are rubbish. This is just a useful way to get some leverage to get out.

    He should go to Katusha. They are a clean team. Even if you are found guilty you are then found innocent ala Kolobnev

     

  • I see that Bruyneel has just been handed a large hessian bag to climb into by Radioshack. Let's hope the purging carries on for a while yet.

  • Let's hope. Like I said, time for Brailsford to walk his fancy talk...
  • I sent an 'Incensed from Tunbridge Wells' type email to Brailsford yesterday in a most uncharacteristic fit of peak pointing out a few things that people may justifiably be sceptical about. Fortunately enough I'm not holding my breath for the response.  The guy's heralded as some sort of genius so he can't be so dumb as  not to be aware of stuff or unable to join the dots and at least realise after 2 decades of smoke generally indicating a fire (and of late a raging effing inferno) that there's a few things (performances, decisions, staff) that might be on the hickory smoked side of raw.  Anyone read the USADA stuff or Tyler's book and not retrospectively do the Roger Moore over Rob Hayles' high haemocrit reading a couple of years ago and DB's defence of it. Imagine he was a Johnny Foreigner and you'd maybe less likely to accept it?

    Fabian's clean - he's got a motor on his bike remember.  That said you couldn't descend like him if he's not on something!

    As you were. 

  • Scott Mercier, I salute you sir.
  • God, this is depressing. Andy trots out the old rubbish about moving forward and things being better these days:

    http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/andy-schleck-cycling-needs-to-focus-on-the-future

    I'm particularly disappointed in Cav.

    We had the "that was the old days, cycling is much cleaner now" way back in 1999, FFS!

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/tour_de_france/397095.stm

  • "The 27-year-old (Andy) added that he thought stirring up cycling's past was not a useful way to clean the slate." 

    Has he never heard of learning from our mistakes? If we don't highlight them how on earth is it EVER going to change? 

    Basson hits the nail on the head when he says,

    "One problem in cycling is the doping. The other is the code of silence."

    Pro cycling seem to be a bunch of ostriches with their head stuck in the sand!

  • Of course Schleck said that - remember his big bro was implicated in Puerto back in 2006 - paying 7000 Euros to Fuentes - for 'Training Plans'......

    That's a lot of training manuals - when he'd have been better off listening to Barlos. 

    And Schlecks - FFS - learn to time trial. You're as aero as bricks. Numpties.

  • Well seeing as his brother tested positive this year and has previous - showed to have paid many thousands of euros  to a doping doctor for "training plans" - what do we expect ?

    All this has been obvious for years - as long as I've been into cycling anyway.   I did a quick search on here and some of us were saying Armstrong was nailed on as a doper 6-7 years ago.  I honestly think the only people who haven't assumed exactly what has now been proven were those who had only a passing interest in the sport.  

     What it needs is for those In charge to want to change the culture - but in reality Verbruggen and now McQuaid aren't that interested - they are more interested in their own careers.   Where are British Cycling in all this - why aren't they making public statements that the people at the top have to change.  It actually makes me feel that the amateur side of the sport should break away and leave the rest of them to it - road cycling is a great sport or hobby irrespective of what the pros get up to - I don't really want to have to have a uci racing licence (via BC) or organise races under UCI rules when they are headed up by this bunch of crooks.      

  • maybe he'll update and re-release Inside the Postal Bus.

  • it looks as if the LA legal backlash has started - News International (*spit*) are considering legal action against him for fraud over an out of court settlement they made in 2006 after an article accused him of doping and he contested it and won.

    http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sunday-times-pursue-fraud-case-against-lance-armstrong

  • Did anyone catch the 5 live piece last night?

    Why weren't they brave enough to broadcast before? My knowledge is thin on all this and it does appear that all the facts have been known for a while.

  • Didn't hear the 5Live thing but you're 100% correct. Anyone with more than a passing interest (like for more than 21days each July) knew pretty much everything that's come out in the past few months.  I think it would be fair to include journalists in that category.  Where was Roger Cook when we needed someone like him?  The BBC don't rely on advertising revenue so they IMHO are more culpable than most.  Hiding cheating isn't a public service in my book.

    As for Barry.  WTF? What is it with everyone's been at it for a couple of decades but everyone stopped in 2006? Are we really supposed to buy that?  So the liers and cheats all stopped voluntarily in 2006...except the ones who didn't stop but the benefit just disappeared overnight meaning people could win clean?  I've checked and I can't see any ProTour parcours including a cobbled section of the Road to Damascus around that time.

    Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth* or shut the fck up.

    As we were. 

    * oh and preferably BEFORE you're outed involuntarily and retired.

  • A lot of this stuff has been known for years - but Lance had very persuasive lawyers. 

    However now USADA have said it - I guess its fine to repeat it.

    I dont think I heard anything new - but then again I follow the sport. To a lot of casual sports fans - a lot would have been new.

    Barry left USPS in 2006 so he would have left their doping plan.

    Oh - then it was T Mobile in 2007 but didnt seem as successful there ? He may have been clean - I've no idea. 

  • I gave up smoking regularly in 1983 and told everyone including the missus, that I'd packed in.  but I hadn't really as I still had the odd few sneaky fags between 1985 and 1987

    but then I gave up for good.  1987 coincided with me packing in corporate employed life for the life of self employment so I had no need of the fags any longer as my stress levels went plummeting downwards.

    I'm still off the fags.

     

    sounds familiar???  image

  • That's the fags what about the epo ? Teehee
  • I listened to the whole of the 5 live show. Made Lance out to be a nasty  monster. And as for the bit (can't remember which of them who said it) about them sneaking around like in a bad spy film with hat, scarf and dark glasses on  to pick up supplies - good grief! So which is worst - blood doping, EPO or testosterone? Be interesting to see if any suffer long term effects from taking all this crap. And the blood-doping doctors were referred to as vampires!

  • It seems to me that without all the recent admissions from Hincapie etc, there was very little that hadn't already been dragged through the courts (LA Confidential), could be written off as false claims from banned former team mates or otherwise wouldn't stand up in a court of law.  And there was Lance pointing out he'd never failed a test all the time.  Easy to say now that a journalist could have got further than David Walsh did, but I'm not so sure.

    fat buddha wrote (see)

    I gave up smoking regularly in 1983 and told everyone including the missus, that I'd packed in.  but I hadn't really as I still had the odd few sneaky fags between 1985 and 1987

    If you confessed that your illicit supply of cigarettes was delivered to you personally by a young masseusse halfway up a pass in the French Alps, the fags would be the least of your worries. image

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