as per the title.. what do you think....

Is lance a doper or is Floyd just pissin' in the wind ( as apposed to a little cup )

I guess only Lance knows and close people around him. My guess is that most top cyclists are on something. That said Landis was acting all innocent for years and now owns up so hardly someone I would trust.

Floyd's a loser.....denied it for years, wrote a book denying it, now owns up to it.
And he's attacking those that funded his original defense when they believed in him.
How can we take anything from him seriously.

Carl Lewis def took drugs and I'm still bitter about that as a Canuck.

Sorry, off-topic.

The proof is what ?

Re Armstrong ... the French keep on goading him about drug taking but have no evidence, so it could all just be sour grapes from a National body who have been unable to control their sport.

Landis has proved he is a liar. He denied taking drugs, even started a fight fund. Now, he admits it.

So who would rather believe, the person who has been consistent and who's knockers have a motive, or the loser doper, who has lied consistently and wants to make a quick buck?

I am sure most of the top cyclists dope in one way or another. It has been made perfectly clear in many many reports that the testing cannot detect half (or more) of the ways to dope, and that there are many ways around the tests, just in general.

Is Floyd a liar? Absolutely. But is he pissin in the wind about how easy it is to dope in cycling and that most of the athletes at the top do it in one way or another? probably not... Did Lance dope? probably... Mostly because of the "if everyone does it, why shouldn't I" mentality that dominates all (ok, most) of the top athletes in many sports. Gotta join the masses to stay on top...

You don't always need "proof" to know it is true.

I can't seriously believe that Lance is doping. To have evaded detection for so long is near impossible. He would have been 'randomly' tested on every stage of the tour due to his high profile nature. The French have been out to get him for years now and havn't found anything so we can only believe what evidence there is, the literally hundreds of clean tests. If we believed all successful sportsmen were doping then it would be a disaster to ever be a winner. Noone accuses Steve Redgrave of doping, or Tyson Gay/Usain Bolt. Just accept that these people are genetic freaks who are superb at their chosen sport and leave them to it.

EDIT: JLF do you not believe in innocent untill proven guilty? Just because there is alot of doping in cycling doesn't mean everyone is doing it

IMHO, all pro cyclists dope..Its an open secret.

on a long enough time line, many of them are caught ( most make good money before that)

One needs to see cycling with a pinch of salt, its a formula one of sorts..one needs to drive good even if he is on fast car.

I was shocked when Linford Christie tested positive for nandrolone. He never once mentioned that he had been drug taking in his auto-biography.

I'd wish they'd lay off Lance Armstong and all other atheletes until they have positive proof through testing or an admittance.

I believe in innocent until proven guilty... absolutely. I am not saying there is or ever will be proof that what Landis is saying is true or not. It is a long and well-known secret that the top cyclists dope; do some research, it is true. And most of the drugs that are suspected for doping in cycling (and many other sports) still do not have accurate tests for detection. So your assumption that it would be a near impossibility for him to evade detection is just plain wrong because the tests can't detect these drugs in the first place. Plain and simple.

I would love to believe that Lance is an anomaly and that he is an amazing athlete without the help of PEDs, but I live in the reality that when it comes to money or success, the competitive nature of athletes will lead them to doing any and everything to be one step ahead. And most of the time, it involves PEDs.

I'm not an armchair expert on this subject, but any human that can cycle the TdF and stay alive is super human in my opinion. How they do that, only they and their medical posse will ever know. I can't add anything useful to the debate.

HB - I'm less worried about what Carl Lewis did, rather how great Ben Johnson was. Just so happened that he was coached to medicate to his winning ways, but the guy was an awesome athlete. Canada was cheated, Ben Johnson was a decent man.

The timing of this announcement is important: Landis is very upset that he and his current team wasn't invited to ride in the Tour of California this year.

Apparently he's been threatening to say these sorts of things for years (although admitting his own guilt was possibly a bit of a surprise). It appears that when his team was not invited to the Tour of California this year, he was sending emails to the event's organizers, sponsors, Lance, Trek, and everyone else, threatening to stir things up like this. After his team were still not invited, the only surprise for the people whom he had contacted before was that he didn't go public with his accusations on the first day of the Tour (last Sunday).

Landis says that his motivation for making this announcement is to clear his conscience, but the history behind it all and the timing doesn't match up with that - it seems more that he is behaving like a bitter child trying to get some attention.

As Lance has stated, Landis has now lost the last shred of credibility that he had left, so it's hard to put any trust in anything else Landis says, especially when he has zero evidence to back up his words with. Hopefully people have learned their lesson to not simply take Landis' word for anything. I'm not saying that the cyclists that Landis has accused did or did not dope. I'm merely saying that I think that Landis' opinion on this is worth absolutely nothing - I wouldn't trust anything that he says after he's just admitted to lying to everyone for four years and taking money from the general public based on those lies (i.e., the fund-raising for his legal defense & appeal and the sales of his book of lies).

Here's Lance's response to the whole thing, in which he talks quite a bit about the background. He mentions that the emails that Landis wrote before going public will eventually come out, and it looks like these will show that Landis' motivation was not very conscientious but more malicious and out of vengeance - which also won't do anything for Landis' credibility.

Anyone who thinks Armstrong didn't dope is seriously sticking their heads in the sand.

Yes Floyd is bitter and twisted, yes he has an axe to grind, this does not mean what he said isn't true. What he says makes far to much sense for there not to be any truth in it.

Fact: The vast majority of the top 10 in every tour during the Armstrong era have been subsequently caught up in a dope scandal. Its also a fact that very few of them ever actually tested positive. They were mostly caught be legal means. This proves that evading the drug tests is 100% possible. It's a bit of a tall order that he successfully trounced all these people on the sauce so convincingly for so long if he wasn't charged up himself)

Fact: Armstrong did test positive for Cortisone in the '90s and had a retrospective TUE issued.

Fact: The vast majority of USPS/Discovery riders who went on to leave the team have subsequently been caught for doping. (Hamilton, Landis, Heras etc. etc).


If you take the current scandal and look at the defences that Lance and the UCI are using its bull. They are going after Landis's statement by saying the dates are incorrect because Lance was not in the 2002 Tour of Switzerland. If you read the letter carefully you'll see that Floyd says that Lance told him about this positive test after the Dauphine in 2002. AFAIK this was even before the 2002 Tour of Switzerland, but either way he was talking about the 2001 Tour of Switzerland... Which LANCE WON!!! This accusation points to corruption at the highest levels of the sports governing body.

There have been numerous reports of 6 retrospective positive tests for EPO on Lances 1999 Tour samples.

Frankie Andreu has gone on record saying that he was in a room with Lance when he admitted to using performance enhancing drugs prior to Cancer.

There is too much circumstantial evidence to believe that Lance is without fault. I've maintained all along he was autologous blood doping, there is still no test for this and Athletes are still getting away with microdoses of EPO and HGH. Tales from Bernard Kohl and the whole Humanplasma scandal prove this.

Lance doping in itself is not so much of a problem, in my opinion it was hardly cheating. Its not like he had an unfair advantage since everyone else was at it too. It just evened the playing field. Its the deception that gets to me, and the fact that whenever anybody tries to tell the truth they are ridiculed. Look at Paul Kimmage, Willy Vogt, Jesus Mazano, Bernhard Kohl and now Floyd Landis.

Cycling has a serious drugs problem and the UCI needs to stop covering for the dopers and take a real stand against it before there can be any change.

I still remember the day Ben Johnson was stripped. Heartbreaking. However his 'starter-pistol' incident later on also left an impact.

As for pro-sports doping, I'm gonna have to side on the 'everyone does it', doping/science/medicine will always stay a step ahead of the tests.
The question is where we will draw the line of historically-human accomplishments and what irrelevant comparitive goal modern science can make a person achieve. Opens up the the Semenya box again.

You can't count caught cheats testimonies as evidence tho. The drugs testers are constantly developing new methods of detecting cheats and they don't publish a list of what they can detect. To have been taking drugs for over a decade as you suggest Lance has, he would have had to have been very very very lucky to have stayed ahead of the testers for so long when many other high profile stars have tried and failed. I am fiarly up to date with the testing process having been through it as recently as last year and I am aware that people do slip through the net but for someone who has been as tested as many times as he has it just isn't possible.

Lets move to athletics too, again it is an 'open secret' that the top guys dope. But again it doesn't mean that everyone does. Take Bolt for example, he has been steadily improving for years and now he is coming into his own and is blowing the field away. Much in the same way Lance winning his first tour wasn't a massive surprise, he competed for many years before untill he finally got the first win under his belt. Confidence is everything to an athlete and can have strange effects on performance.

Also on the doing research front how can you? Just because people at the top have been caught doesn't mean that everone does it. And quite frankly I can't bring myself to believe the testimony of someone who got busted. Its an easy way to make more money during their suspension through interviews. Quite frankly we will never know if he has never cheated 100%, but I choose to wait untill some actual evidence is presented other than the French drumming up constant accusations or disgraced cheaters claiming they saw it.

I am just going to defer to Eire here... Seriously. It is not hard to 'stay ahead of the testers' as you say if you employ the right people. Drug companies will always be a step ahead of the tests... always developing new drugs after the testing companies determine they can detect the old ones. So in order to test clean, you have to be smart, not lucky. It is also not a matter of drug testing companies publishing what they can and can't detect (*of course* they would not publish a complete list); it is a matter of experience, word of mouth, and known methodology for getting around the tests. When one person gets caught, the rest of the sport knows and makes changes accordingly. It literally happens every single day in many different sports. Football, for example, won't employ blood testing, even though they know it is the only way to detect HGH.

And, for the record, I never said everyone does it. I also specifically said that there will most likely never be definitive proof of Landis's accusations (for any of the top cyclists not just Armstrong). In fact, I never said I believed him specifically. I think he is shining a new light on how widespread doping is in cycling, regardless of who it is he is accusing.

Again, most of the top, professional athletes in many sports will do any and everything to stay on top. And *most* of the time, that means injecting themselves with something synthetic (ie-PEDs) as long as they can get away with it (and even when they aren't sure they can). And again, read Eire's post. It really says it all.

didn't the french re-test armstrongs previous samples a couple of years ago, with modern methods, and they failed. but by that time he had retired.

Afraid I'm in the "all the top sportsmen are doing" camp, the winners are the ones with the best drugs and doctors, and are willing to do the most extreme things to avoid detection, like blood transfusions.

Yes, that's the 6 positives I refereed to above.

Regarding being one step ahead, sometime the testers do get it right. i.e. They had a test for CERA very early and caught out a number of riders two years ago. Riders who thought that they could use this new generation EPO and get away with it.

If Landis's statement is true then Lance has also been caught out, despite having been warned by Ferrari that there was a test for EPO in 2001.

Despite all of this it is going to be very difficult to come up with the test for Autologous blood doping. Well prepared and meticulous riders can get use this method and laugh in the face of the rules. The fact that athletes are fooling the drug tests is no surprise. Read Kimmages book or Willy Vogts book, read the confessions of Mazzano they have always had ways of getting around being tested for things that there is a test for. Getting away with things that there is no test for is just a matter of organisation.


EDIT: Armstrong just released the mails from Floyd, Dr. Kay and the ToC organisers. His intention is to try to make Floyd look bad. In my opinion it actually serves to boost Floyds credibility!

The mails can be read here

"JLF would like to thank Eire for his useful posts"