Lance Armstrong

^ in a previous post I mentioned Roger Clements, saying he was just as guilty as Barry Bonds.

Hopefully there will be less doping, but identifying the latest substances will be like finding the latest software viruses.

 

The reason people cheat is that it works. The moral hazard is that high school kids learn about the pros cheating and they do it too. The way they are doing this, more kids are going to say, my hero lance used substances to make it to the top, I should too, I just need to be more sneaky about it.

I don't see any problem with doctor supervised epo or blood doping on the tour de france. Make it a level playing field. The steroids are another matter. They are dangerous, but if they don't test, and you don't use them you are at a disadvantage. Baseball should have been testing, so that players would not have felt the need to use them to stay on the team. Baseball had a collusion, built in between the players and owners.

Problems come when we try to thrust people like armstrong, clemens, woods, oj, as role models then they get caught doing something they shouldn't have done. It breeds a cynicism that if you are good at sports you its ok to cheat.

Mountain stages have gotten slower since markers have been taken that can help determine doping. Since you can dope with your own red blood cells, only the changes over time of the quantity can be detected - unless your body releases some hormones when injected.

 

The reason people cheat is because only the top 1% of the top 1% is absurdly richly rewarded. Everyone else is forgotten and paid very very poorly. As a result, the ends justify the means.

 

just because 'doctors' aid, supervise or approve of chemically enhanced performance, doesn't mean it's safe for the user, or legal.

 

Cheating is like gambling: pervasive, but for the most part irrational.

 

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And didn't Lance sleep in a tent with lower oxygen to mimic that?

 

A LOT of high-level athletes these days do. Also - they live in Colorado.

 

Can It Get Any Worse For Lance Armstrong? | TIME.com

Meanwhile, cycling sponsors are pulling out in general and the UCI is being questioned on why they took so long to catch the doping.

 

A HS friend of my kids attends UT Austin, and is part of their cycling team. A year or so ago, long after Armstrong exited pro cycling, he would occasionally train with the UT group. No one could keep up with him.

The man is a cycling machine -- Epo or not.

If the TdF and UCI think it is so important to strip record holders of titles under the cloud of banned drugs, they can just go ahead and burn the record book and call it a day.

 

Did you see the louis black thing on lance?

He survived caner, lost a ball, and his body gets twice the oxygen out of every breath as a 20 year old. Donuts and bacon aren't nearly as safe as lance's training and doping regimen.

It definitely wasn't legal, but everyone that was in lances peloton was doping, we can assume. The reason all those that lost to lance accused him of doping is that they were doping, and they couldn't believe he could beat them naturally.
Lance Armstrong Had Little Choice but to Dope | TIME.com
He just doped better than everyone else. He also took it too far with 7 wins. That makes him a law breaking db, but its cycling that encouraged it. This is like baseball encouraging steroids, but cycling does it differently. If it wasn't for lance would anyone in America have watched cycling? I don't thinkso.

 

Lance's guilt (or innocence) could be proven with future test on presently stored samples. The technology of the future can reach deep into the past (e.g. Thomas Jefferson's DNA lives on.)

Stripping titles long after the events are over is theater. The currency of fame has expired, so the it's only the history books that are affected, nothing else. (e.g. If Lance was cheating and could see this future outcome, would he have not doped? If he were to have not doped, would that have been the "right" decision?)

An re-emphasized question is what is the status of every other biker in the events. Has stripping Lance of his titles ensured the integrity of the sport has been re-established? Not in my view.

 

Note that they did not award the Tour de France titles to anyone else, suggesting that the whole enterprise was corrupt for many years.

 

Good point

 

Most of the 2nd and 3rd place winners behind Lance were DQ'd for doping before he was. Considering the relatively sparse sampling of that era, it seemed likely that if the title were to be awarded, it would eventually land on the highest place finisher to not have been drug tested during the event.