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| My view is that LA was allways doping.
He had a quite big medical stuff with him. | |
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| I think you mean staff... One perspective is to look at the number of people that would know of his supposed doping. As the number of people increase, the probability of them leaking the information also increases. Therefore I think this argument works better in the other direction. Also, over the course of seven years, no mistake was made and nobody "in the know" leaked his supposed doping, under all the scrutiny and observation? | |
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Lets face it there were murmurs from some of his staff, these were all quashed in court cases by the Armstrong legal team. Also look at the facts that nearly all of his best domestiques have been done for doping subsequently. If Lance was clean but his team was doped when they pulled him along for kilometers on end to keep him fresh for the last climb or the next days time trial... to me thats the same as doping yourself!
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| He retired just when the new EPO test was ready. That EPO test caught all the high profile riders that came close to him ( Basso, Ulrich, Landis etc ) | |
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| Valid point; does anyone know if they have run the new tests on his old blood? | |
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Get your facts right. The new EPO test has nothing to do with this. In fact there are papers out there saying the EPO test is not valid! Also, Basso was done for association with Operation Puerto (No positive test result), Ulrich was done for association with Operation Puerto and subsequently retired with no doping conviction, Landis tested positive for Testosterone not EPO, the effects of Testosterone are very different to the effects of EPO, Hamilton tested positve for blood doping with another persons blood, not EPO. In fact the majority of EPO positives only came last year when the riders started using CERA.
Remember that Armstrongs 1999 samples did show traces of EPO, but there was no chain of custody so they can not be verified. I rekon that he did not use EPO as his main form of doping if he did dope, he is too clever he knew there would be a test for it. If he doped he blood doped. He could have taken out a pint of blood at strategic points in the run up to the tour, he would then suffer a performance loss, but then the red blood cells from his own blood are re transfused he would have the same effect as having taken EPO in the run up to the event. This method is still not detectable so he could theoretically still do this!
Also, until 2003/4 there was no test at all for Growth Hormone, subsequently there have been problems found with the test that was developed so currently there is no reliable test for it.
Anyone care to guess what a good doping programme for an endurance athlete is?
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| Do you want me to believe that he was so superior to everyone else in the field that he accomplished all this clean while all the other contenders were dirty ? | |
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| No, but I like to believe that it is possible for athletes to win without cheating, and I would prefer people don't assume guilt on athletes until the are shown to be guilty. Unfortunately it does seem somewhat rare in recent years to find clean winners. | |
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I am in two minds, part of me wants to believe that all the amazing sporting performances were clean, however the facts now show that they were not. Having not tested positive does not mean an athlete is clean, it can just mean that the tests did not detect what was being taken. Its like asking if there is a sound when a tree falls over in the woods if there is noone there to hear it.
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| Please don't be that naive.
My guess is that Lance is back, because his medical team found a new way of doping that is yet undetectable.
He'll race on that dope, win and retire on time to stay "clean" | |
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| I would be very, very, very surprised if this were the case. Why would any sane cheater with a world record 7 TDF wins come back, under the most advanced observation possible, to risk it all? And again, if he has a team of doctors comes up with this new doping technique that even the biological passport shows no changes, wouldn't some doctor, some secretary, somebody decide to leak it to the press for far more money than they'd otherwise make? | |
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His medical team would not need to have discovered anything new, in fact I think they would be stupid to use something new. Look what happened last year when everyone used the new "undetectable" drug CERA. I think if someone carefully selects races so that there are times in the run up to an important race when they can suffer a performance drop, take out some blood and reinject the red cells at an oppertune moment then they are not going to be caught by the tests, by legal means or police investigations yes (Operation Puerto!) but not by the drug tests.
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| It seem quite feasible (within the realm of possibility) that if you train all year specifically for a particular race then you might win, especially when everybody else is racing and burning out leading up to the race. Do you disagree? | |
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In the realms of possibility yes, in the realms of probablility when everyone around you is doped to the gills???