Lance: "Enough is enough..."

Nick Morris wrote:I am not doubting that Lance is a talented athlete. I just wonder how many TDFs he would have won clean...4??

If everybody else out there decided to race clean too......probably still 7. The hypocrisy in this is just ridiculous. Singling out Lance because he won and not going after every other rider out there who doped is just ludicrous. USADA is just way out of line here. They might as well just not acknowledge pro cycling if they're really going to take a stand.

I don't acknowledge pro cycling or body building or football or baseball or for that matter any organized professional sport. Even running has its offensives. I prefer self-sporting events. We're I know that when I perform its drug free.

I consider those sports nothing short of WWF. Entertainment nothing more.

They should create clean drug free cycling drug free football drug free baseball just like they have drug free natural body building. That would be a novel idea that just like natural body building it would fail.

Nick Morris wrote:I am not doubting that Lance is a talented athlete. I just wonder how many TDFs he would have won clean...4??

The question is this: how many riders had the talent, determination, and perserverance to train at the level necessary to dominate the TdF for 7 years? Seriously... with or without the doping issue, Lance had to stay at the top of his game for damn near a decade. He didn't have to. He could have been satisfied with 1 win. He could stopped after beating LeMond's record... but he didn't. He came back year after year. That's why I say that doping will never define Lance Armstong. It may have helped him, but without his drive and dedication, the doping wouldn't have mattered... he wouldn't have won anything.

As to the other point raised, I agree. What if the 2nd and 3rd place finishers were also doping? Strip Lance of his wins and what does that do? You don't know who was, or wasn't, doping. Who should have won?

Lance never had a 'Floyd Landis' moment, where he suddenly did something great after a bad day. Lance was a workhorse, day-in and day-out. He was a steady strategist who knew how to win. He never failed a drug test. That is fact. It may be controversial, but it is fact. While I personally believe he was doping, my personal opinion shouldn't matter. He was tested... a lot.

I think that the USADA is trying to justify it's existence. Nothing more.

Mr MattM wrote:

Nick Morris wrote:I am not doubting that Lance is a talented athlete. I just wonder how many TDFs he would have won clean...4??

The question is this: how many riders had the talent, determination, and perserverance to train at the level necessary to dominate the TdF for 7 years? Seriously... with or without the doping issue, Lance had to stay at the top of his game for damn near a decade. He didn't have to. He could have been satisfied with 1 win. He could stopped after beating LeMond's record... but he didn't. He came back year after year. That's why I say that doping will never define Lance Armstong. It may have helped him, but without his drive and dedication, the doping wouldn't have mattered... he wouldn't have won anything.

As to the other point raised, I agree. What if the 2nd and 3rd place finishers were also doping? Strip Lance of his wins and what does that do? You don't know who was, or wasn't, doping. Who should have won?

Lance never had a 'Floyd Landis' moment, where he suddenly did something great after a bad day. Lance was a workhorse, day-in and day-out. He was a steady strategist who knew how to win. He never failed a drug test. That is fact. It may be controversial, but it is fact. While I personally believe he was doping, my personal opinion shouldn't matter. He was tested... a lot.

I think that the USADA is trying to justify it's existence. Nothing more.

I agree with what Matt is saying but all of the same could be said about Barry Bonds. I'm amazed at how vilified Bonds is for...well, what exactly? Its just my impression but there are a ton of people who seem to have a very negative opinion about Bonds and yet are far friendlier in their conclusions about the Lance legacy. I don't get that. Performance-wise, you might be able to argue that Bonds EXCEEDED what Lance was able to do versus his peers. At the very least, Bonds and Lance both were utterly dominant. And yet, I guarantee that if you took a poll now, 70%+ of people have a positive impression of Lance and a similar nunber or higher have a negative impression of Bonds. Why? Is it really just the Livestrong stuff? There's plenty of stories about both guys being a bit intense and maybe not the nicest guys. But performance-wise, they are so similar....both likely doing what they did with PED help but CRUSHING the field and setting a bar that will likely never again be reached. I find it very interesting how differently these two athletes are viewed right now by the American public.

Chris M wrote:

I agree with what Matt is saying but all of the same could be said about Barry Bonds. I'm amazed at how vilified Bonds is for...well, what exactly? Its just my impression but there are a ton of people who seem to have a very negative opinion about Bonds and yet are far friendlier in their conclusions about the Lance legacy. I don't get that. Performance-wise, you might be able to argue that Bonds EXCEEDED what Lance was able to do versus his peers. At the very least, Bonds and Lance both were utterly dominant. And yet, I guarantee that if you took a poll now, 70%+ of people have a positive impression of Lance and a similar nunber or higher have a negative impression of Bonds. Why? Is it really just the Livestrong stuff? There's plenty of stories about both guys being a bit intense and maybe not the nicest guys. But performance-wise, they are so similar....both likely doing what they did with PED help but CRUSHING the field and setting a bar that will likely never again be reached. I find it very interesting how differently these two athletes are viewed right now by the American public.

I think there's a couple things at work here. First, Lance didn't turn into a complete freak show like Bonds. Chris, he wasn't much bigger than you or me when he got to the majors and when he was done, he looked like an NFL linebacker. Second, while Lance is a jerk in private, his public persona is very friendly and he seems to do (did) well enough with the media that they didn't crucify him. Another thing is how it's nearly a certainty that pretty much all the elite riders were on something and we really don't know how many baseball players (surely a lot) were taking something because while Lance was passing all those drug tests, Bonds never had to take one. And the Livestrong stuff definitely plays a part in it.

I would say the same of Bonds (or McGwire, or Sosa)... as far as athletic ability in baseball, doping doesn't help you hit the ball. However, it does help you hit the ball farther.

The difference is that in other sports it's over the course of a season, and in MLB they weren't doing a lot of PEDs testing (at the time). For the TdF, it's one race, once a year, and the testing is very detailed. But in the end, who hit the most HRs in a single season of baseball? Exactly.

I just don't understand how the USADA has any right to strip a title won on foreign land as well as his Olympic bronze won on foreign land. What does the IOC have to say about that.

The whole pelaton was using back then. All you have to do is look at the average times for the race and how they've come down. Giving his titles to someone else is just ridiculous because whoever they give them to were using to.

Mr MattM wrote:

Nick Morris wrote:I am not doubting that Lance is a talented athlete. I just wonder how many TDFs he would have won clean...4??

The question is this: how many riders had the talent, determination, and perserverance to train at the level necessary to dominate the TdF for 7 years? Seriously... with or without the doping issue, Lance had to stay at the top of his game for damn near a decade. He didn't have to. He could have been satisfied with 1 win. He could stopped after beating LeMond's record... but he didn't. He came back year after year. That's why I say that doping will never define Lance Armstong. It may have helped him, but without his drive and dedication, the doping wouldn't have mattered... he wouldn't have won anything.

As to the other point raised, I agree. What if the 2nd and 3rd place finishers were also doping? Strip Lance of his wins and what does that do? You don't know who was, or wasn't, doping. Who should have won?

Lance never had a 'Floyd Landis' moment, where he suddenly did something great after a bad day. Lance was a workhorse, day-in and day-out. He was a steady strategist who knew how to win. He never failed a drug test. That is fact. It may be controversial, but it is fact. While I personally believe he was doping, my personal opinion shouldn't matter. He was tested... a lot.

I think that the USADA is trying to justify it's existence. Nothing more.

Well said, Matt.

Whatever you think about Lance, can we please stop promoting the myth that "he never failed a drug test."? He failed on 6 B samples in 1999, he failed another test and then had a doctor write a back-dated note about it to justify the failure, and apparently they had information about failed tests that was about to come forward if he hadn't back out of the fight.

Personally I don't like the guy and think he's guilty as hell, but who cares what I think and what does guilty even mean when everyone was probably doing it in the sport. Despite that, I think the truth should come out if possible, and the truth is, Lance DID fail drug tests, and then found legal means to get them not counted against him.

Ken Mello wrote:Whatever you think about Lance, can we please stop promoting the myth that "he never failed a drug test."? He failed on 6 B samples in 1999, he failed another test and then had a doctor write a back-dated note about it to justify the failure, and apparently they had information about failed tests that was about to come forward if he hadn't back out of the fight.

Personally I don't like the guy and think he's guilty as hell, but who cares what I think and what does guilty even mean when everyone was probably doing it in the sport. Despite that, I think the truth should come out if possible, and the truth is, Lance DID fail drug tests, and then found legal means to get them not counted against him.

He has no 'official' failed drug tests. How's that? For whatever reason, he never had an A and B sample both test positive. I believe that he was doping, along with everyone else who was in competitive cycling... but he never had a failed test in competition. Now, years later they went back and tested some of his stored B samples (which they were not supposed to be able to do) to test for things that they could not detect back when the samples were taken... and supposedly some showed PEDs. Still, it's all a big worthless scandal that won't change a thing. With big money and short windows of opportunity, elite athletes will look for an edge... just look at the recent MLB suspensions, a sport that has just been through Congressional scrutiny and headline news, and tightened testing and sanctions. Did it matter? No... the cheaters' gonna cheat.

I couldn't care less about what happens with Lance, but I also don't believe that the amount of effort spend trying to take him down was worth it.