Lance Armstrong set to lose his seven Tour de France titles after giving up USADA fight

Some truly comical posts here. This is my favourite:-

I feel cheated by how this entire affair has been mishandled by USADA.

If ever there was a chance to lay the cards on the table, USADA has seen to it that it never happens.

Let's see now, who decided that this case shouldn't go to arbitration? Oh, that would be Lance Armstrong then! Lance Armstrong made a deliberate decision to duck the arbitration process. It was the decision of...Lance Armstrong to take the least-worst option and avoid having his extensive collection of dirty laundry aired in public.

Title says "set to lose his....titles". Question is to who? In his 7 "wins" the rest of the podium in each case had either subsequent doping offences proven or they were implicated in actions like Operación Puerto.

What a mess. In the TdF period 1996 (Riis) to 2010 the only riders on the podium never to have any allegations against them or failed tests were: Bobby Julich; Carlos Sastre; Cadel Evans; Andy Schleck; Denis Menchov. That's it just five riders. How depressing.

It is debatable whether the TdF or UCI will do anything other than enter another asterisk on their records. Riis' 1996 TdF win was ratified despite his EPO confession and if the same moratorium applies then chances are Armstrong will remain untouched otherwise they will have to unpick everything which will be very ugly and probably more destructive than leaving alone. Sad but true.

Only 2 possibles here

1) Lance knows the game is up and the USADA has evidence of his doping that he can't defend against. He therefore decides to spin it as the 'Martyr' - to a cause we can't understand.

or

2) The USADA want to expose something MUCH WORSE than simply Lance's alleged doping. So to admit defeat early and only be seen as a possible cheat is the lesser of two evils.

Either way, show me a man who won't defend his lifes work and I'll show you a guilty man - it's almost a shame that we may never know what of. I say this because I know that if I was in his shoes and knew I was innocent, even if it was futile I would fight tooth and nail to the bitter end. He is a lesser man in my eyes for not doing so.

As the most tested athlete in history who never showed a positive we need to know how he did it to close the loophole.

As far as the 'we're not going to hear the evidence', unless there's been a change then:

"Tygart had previously been tight-lipped on the US Postal Service investigation but with Armstrong’s process now officially over, he was able to answer a number of questions put to him by VeloNation. He said that the evidence in relation to the case would emerge once the other arbitration hearings concluded, and that he had expected Armstrong to choose his current course of action rather than fight the charges."

and:

"VN: There was reportedly a lot of evidence in the case, there was witness testimony and presumably more…do you expect any of those details to emerge?

TT: Yes, absolutely…at the right time. Obviously there are other cases that are alleged to be involved in the conspiracy. Their cases are still proceeding, so it will be in due course.

VN: So there is no impediment to USADA releasing the evidence?

TT: No, no."

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/12712/Travis-Tygart-Interview-Armstron...

So it sounds like the evidence will appear at some point, just not yet..

Whatever side of the argument you take, cycling loses out.

I'm pretty devastated that someone who inspired me looks guilty of doping and is prepared to dodge and evade rather than do the honourable thing and make a full confession.

I also hope USADA publish the evidence they have proving Armstrong's guilt and that their efforts are as focused on doping today as on decades ago. It also leaves a sour taste that USADA seem prepared to offer some less successful dopers immunity for providing testimony against Armstrong. It hardly seems a principled position to take.

This is how the tour's would look should Lance be struck form the records

1999 Alex Zulle (after coming back from the Festina saga)
2000 Jan Ullrich (known doper but only d/q'd from 2005 onwards)
2001 Jan Ullrich
2002 Joseba Beloki (implicated in Puerto but cleared)
2003 Jan Ullrich
2004 Andreas Kloden (caught in 2006 tour)
2005 Ivan Basso (another one implicated in Puerto)

Let me ask a question...If Armstrong was clean, then how the hell did he out climb and compete with Pantani in the mountains?!?!? Pantani was a natural born climber AND up to his eyeballs on whatever he could get his hands on yet Armstrong mananged to beat him! Clean? I dont think so!

I believe that Johan Bruyneel is taking the allegations against him forward to the Court of Arbitration where all evidence will be heard and cross-examined and can be made public. Hopefully that will give some insight into accusations such as, for instance, Armstrong paying off the UCI after the Tour of Switzerland positive test.

Also, there are a number of ex-US Postal riders who - if the grapevine is to be believed - testified to USADA that they participated in doping practices along with Armstrong during their time at USPS. Surely some kind of sanction will be coming their way soon even if they don't have to take the stand in court now.

Lance's statement is interesting from a lawyer's perspective (Sorry).

1. Instead of saying that he never took drugs and always rode clean he actually says that he passed the tests at the time and that there is no evidence from those tests that he cheated:

"... there is zero physical evidence to support his outlandish and heinous claims. The only physical evidence here is the hundreds of controls I have passed with flying colors. I made myself available around the clock and around the world. In-competition. Out of competition. Blood. Urine. Whatever they asked for I provided. What is the point of all this testing if, in the end, USADA will not stand by it?"

If you really believe that Lance road clean, ask yourself, why can he not bring himself to actually say so? He had the chance to do so, but seems to have chosen not to in a statement that shows every sign of having been carefully thought about and put together from a PR point of view.

2. Lance complains that the charges are over 17 years old. It is correct that some of the charges are 17 years old, but this conveniently ignores and trys to deflect attention from the fact that some of the charges relate to matters from just 3 years ago. These more recent charges are important too. There are others still involved in pro-cycyling today who are involved in those charges.

3. As others have pointed out, Lance's legal efforts have been focussed on trying to prevent or frustrate a hearing. Now that the court has thrown his arguments out, Lance had the chance to argue his case at the hearing when the evidence against him would be produced, but he has chosen to withdraw. One has to ask why? The suggestion that he is too weary of the process is hard to believe given the combatitive nature of a man who is still actively competing (and winning) Triathlons. It is not credible to categorise this as anything other than an effective admission of guilt.

4. Finally, a slightly more contentious point. Lance has always seemed to me to be a bit of a bully. See for example his treatement of Christophe Bassons in 1999:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Bassons

Now Lance seeks to portray USADA as a bully, commenting that “USADA has played the role of a bully, threatening everyone in its way and challenging the good faith of anyone who questions its motives or its methods”.

Your view of the man may differ but it really does seem to me that this has been exactly waht Armstrong has been doing to others for years.

I keep coming back to this BBC article, which speaks for itself :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18921784

In any event, the way Armstrong has conducted himself in this whole affair is undignified. As is the likely pissing contest between the UCI and USADA.

Good interview about the above with David Walsh on cyclingnews.com his comment about Christophe Bassons in the article is especially true. For those who are too young to remember Christophe Bassons and his stand against drugs read his wikipedia entry especially the bit about the conversation with Armstrong.

Plenty of Armstrong apologist sock-puppets crawling out of the woodwork today - question is, have they been ignoring the evidence piling up over the years and do a good impression of three wise monkey's bleating "he never tested positive" "where's the evidence" and "USADA don't have juristiction"....

As said, he's tested positive a few times, but conveniently was able to 'pay-off' the UCI and testers to make them go away.

Evidence - how about witness testimony from some of his closest team-mates given under oath?

USADA juristiction - as a registered US rider he'd have signed up to their anti-doping charter every time he signed the renewal on his race licence.

Finally he denied many honest pros a career, fuelling the drug campaign - many teams wanted to go clean after Festina, but he denied them the opportunity. There's also a huge difference between individual riders taking drugs and an orchestrated campaign to defraud the sport by colluding with the sports governing body and drug-testers to even avoid being tested. Finally, all those unwitting fraud victims who gave money to LiveSTRONG to continue to fund the myth...some people are too uncomfortable to accept the truth.

hi for what its worth. read the books, loved'em.
winning seven times is hard, drugged up or not but they
do give an athelete a big unfair advantage. mainly recovery.
But the past is gone. Celebrate a clean future - using legal
sports science not pharmacology. Upsetting as it may be
lance is the past. Wiggins and others like him are the future.
celebrate them.

On a positive note (no pun intended, well...) does that now see Sir Bradley Wiggins now elevated to 2nd in the 2009 TdF?

I will be the first to admit i don't know all the facts on this, and no doubt never will.

The biggest problem i have is that so many things in the prosecution seem to go asinst the rules.

Personally i'm a huge Armstrong fan, he gave me inspiration when i used to race, i looked at his technique and hoped i could learn from it, and most importantly his story let me know that when my mother got cancer, there is hope!

Today i feel like one of my heroes has been killed, the same feeling i get when someone i admire dies.

Maybe i just don't want to believe it, but Lance Armstrong has saved lives, has retired, and probably done more for the sport of cycling in the USA than any one else, have they really done the right thing, who actually gains from this??

I don't believe any racer can be totaly clean and win the tour de france but from what i have seen they have tried time and again to prove lance had taken banned substances but from what i remember they have never been able to actually prove anything. Now you come through battling cancer training for the hardest sport in the world divorcing from your wife and living your life in the media spotlight would you not think there comes a time where you say enough is enough and stop fighting people just intent on bringing you down.

Like Mr Leemur I don't anything is being gained here.
Whether he doped or not, nothing has been proved in all of the test done previously over the years. The USADA charges appear to rely on other cyclists testimony overly much - the same cyclist who were competitors against LA - and who either dislike, disrespect or have something to gain if they point the finger. Additionally UCI don't want accept that USADA have jurisdiction to strip LAof any of his TDF titles. So tell me - apart from trashing someone's reputation what is the point of this? Bigging up USADA's right to challenge anything whilst hiding behind an opaque smokescreen of quasi legalness.
Nothing is being gained in this shityness. Go on USADA get the evidence out there - prove to us you've got something or shut the fuck up. The whole thing makes me sick. My childhood heroes are being killed off and whilst cycling is becoming much more popular in the UK than ever before - it seems to be going backwards in the US.
Cyclings loses - and so does everyone else. Why can't the past be left alone and the USADA tackle the here and now.

it's lance's actions that have suppressed the evidence here, not USADA's. lance chose not to hear the evidence. it'll come out anyway through the other cases.

not everyone who was lined up to testify has any particular beef with armstrong. it's george hincapie's testimony that would be most damaging, i would think. if his 'best bro' is prepared to implicate lance – and himself, he's never failed a test either – where's left for him to go?

The time bomb in the wings is USADA claim of evidence of two failed tests in the past and Armstrong insistence that he has passed all tests.

Whoever is right (unfortunately fudging is possible) the implications for cycling administration are massive. USADA pursuit of Armstrong, just or otherwise, could well come to be seen as the snow flake that caused the avalanche.

Maybe by then we will be so sick of this case we will just want to berry our heads in the resulting snow drift, but hopefully not.

Lance is blatantly lying when he says he's never failed a test. It's an indisputable matter of fact that he tested positive for a corticosteriod in the '99 tour - this is part of the UCI records. His samples (and his predominantly) from '99 also tested positive for EPO when a test for EPO was developed and carried out retrospectively - these are part of the WADA records. There is also a director of a testing lab who says they found EPO in his Tour de Suisse samples - for some strange reason, UCI says this never happened.

Lance *has* tested positive, several times. He just has never been *sanctioned* for any of these positives, mostly because of technicalities. The corticosteriod positive, he got a doctor to write a back-dated prescription for a saddle sore cream. The '99 EPO positives couldn't be used because at the time there was no disciplinary protocol for retro-spective testing of B samples (there is now), and also UCI did its best to frustrate WADAs' desire to use these results. The Tour de Suisse case, well either the director of the testing lab is lying or UCI covered up that positive.

So, even before this USADA case, Armstrong was at a minimum being "economical" with the truth, if not plain lying, whenever he said he'd never failed a test. Sadly, some in the media repeat this falsehood without question.

Edit/correction: The 2001 Tour de Suisse EPO result had been a "suspicious" result rather than a clear positive, according to the director, Saugy.

If they have the evidence, then publish it for all to see and if its untrue Lance can sue them. Its a pity if true for all he's done for cycling.

As posted by (Josh74c) the whole case should be given out, so everyone can see what was taken & when! A bad day for the sport i love though...

Innocent till proven guilty - isnt that how it goes. I will reserve my judgement till the papers are released to see what they say.

If it shows he blatantly cheated so be it, if not what then ?

I see the anti-Armstrong cycling media have forgotten to publish the news on Landis. On the same day that Armstrong refused to go to the kangaroo court, Landis was in court and struck a deal with the US Attorney, whereby he would not be sent to prison for 20 years! for fraud by using $2million given by his supporters to prove his innocence of not doping in the TDF. Not only was he given a suspended sentence but the court also paid the $2million back to his supporters, which Landis has to try to pay back based on his earnings over the next 2yrs.

So in other words he has been paid $2million dollars and let off from going to jail for 20 yrs to provide "evidence" against Armstrong. I think the Usada should be investigated for corruption.

Can't wait to see what "evidence" Usada have when it has to be submitted to the UCI as only the UCI can strip Armstrong of his titles.

monty dog - who says that the UCI can be "struck off" as the governing body for cycling? As I understand it they agree to the WADA code, but I don't believe that WADA has the power to remove them as a governing body. Can you cite a reference for this?

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