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Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2012 4:52:36 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2012 18:04:41 GMT
It would probably surprise a lot of people to discover that this Lance Armstrong business was relegated to the depths of the news in France today, because -- as sometimes happens anywhere in the world -- today's big news was the death of a top television personality (Jean-Luc Delarue) at age 48 of stomach cancer.
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Post by onlymark on Aug 24, 2012 22:36:30 GMT
I'm afraid I just cannot believe that he remained clean all the way through his successful years.
It reminds me of an American sprinter, Marion Jones, who denied and denied she used any enhancements and whilst always testing negative continued her denials until for some reason I can't remember she suddenly admitted lying about it.
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Post by bjd on Aug 25, 2012 7:55:35 GMT
In today's IHT there was a front page article about legendary sports figures who have become legendary for cheating. It mentioned some American baseball players I had never heard of, but also Marion Jones. The article also called cycling "the dirtiest sport".
Jean-Luc Delarue? Who?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 25, 2012 10:17:42 GMT
I doubt if any other sport was ever so extreme as to use le pot belge.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2012 18:04:50 GMT
This article is extremely interesting for anybody interested in Lance.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2012 19:10:40 GMT
This BBC article is quite clear about this whole sorry mess.
Lance Armstrong: Usada report reveals doping evidence
Cycling legend Lance Armstrong's team ran "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme the sport has ever seen" according to a report by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
Usada says it will deliver the full report in the doping case against Armstrong, 41, later on Wednesday.
It contains testimony from 11 of his former US Postal Service team-mates.
He has always denied doping allegations but has not contested Usada's charges.
Usada chief executive Travis T Tygart said there was "conclusive and undeniable proof" of a team-run doping conspiracy.
The organisation will send a "reasoned decision" in the Armstrong case to the International Cycling Union (UCI), the World Anti-Doping Agency and the World Triathlon Corporation.
The UCI now has 21 days to lodge an appeal against Usada's decision with Wada or they must comply with the decision to strip Armstrong, who now competes in triathlons, of his seven Tour de France titles and hand him a lifetime ban.
Armstrong, who overcame cancer to return to professional cycling, won the Tour from 1999 to 2005. He retired in 2005 but returned in 2009 before retiring for good two years later
In his statement, Tygart said the evidence against Armstrong and his team - which is in excess of 1,000 pages - was "overwhelming" and "and includes sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team and its participants' doping activities".
Tygart revealed it contains "direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding".
He also claimed the team's doping conspiracy "was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices".
Among the former team-mates of Armstrong's to testify were George Hincapie, Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for failing a dope test and was recently found guilty in a Swiss court of defaming the International Cycling Union for alleging they had protected Armstrong from doping claims.
Tygart said: "The riders who participated in the USPS Team doping conspiracy and truthfully assisted have been courageous in making the choice to stop perpetuating the sporting fraud, and they have suffered greatly.
"I have personally talked with and heard these athletes' stories and firmly believe that, collectively, these athletes, if forgiven and embraced, have a chance to leave a legacy far greater for the good of the sport than anything they ever did on a bike.
"Lance Armstrong was given the same opportunity to come forward and be part of the solution. He rejected it.
"Instead he exercised his legal right not to contest the evidence and knowingly accepted the imposition of a ban from recognised competition for life and disqualification of his competitive results from 1998 forward."
Usada confirmed that two other members of the US Postal Service team, Dr Michele Ferrari and Dr Garcia del Moral, also received lifetime bans for their part in the doping conspiracy.
Three further members, team director Johan Bruyneel, a team doctor Dr Pedro Celaya and team trainer Jose Marti, have chosen to contest the charges and take their cases to arbitration.
Tygart also called on the UCI to "act on its own recent suggestion for a meaningful Truth and Reconciliation programme".
"Hopefully, the sport can unshackle itself from the past, and once and for all continue to move forward to a better future," he added.
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Post by onlymark on Oct 10, 2012 21:34:55 GMT
Further from the BBC -
Usada say it has "found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Lance Armstrong engaged in serial cheating through the use, administration and trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs and methods that Armstrong participated in running in the US Postal Service Team as a doping conspiracy".
It adds: "His [Armstrong's] goal [of winning the Tour de France multiple times] led him to depend on EPO, testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his team-mates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own.
"It was not enough that his team-mates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping programme outlined for them or be replaced.
"He was not just a part of the doping culture on his team, he enforced and re-enforced it.
"Armstrong's use of drugs was extensive, and the doping programme on his team, designed in large part to benefit Armstrong, was massive and pervasive.
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Post by mich64 on Oct 11, 2012 2:20:55 GMT
I do not condone any type of drug or illegal treatments being used for sport, but, I do believe it is used by almost every high level athlete in almost every sport. The successful athlete has the best mask and the best trainers/co-athletes at keeping secrets.
The last sentence of Mark's BBC report solidifies this for me as the words "extensive", "massive" and "pervasive" could not be reserved for only one team. The Tour has had other disqualified champions and were their team mates also disqualified? I do not know, but would you not think at least one or two of them were involved as well?
Perhaps his team had members who were more hurt (physically/emotionally/career) than other team members, perhaps his team is the worst abusers, but his team is one of many doing the same thing to win. Not stating it is right, just commenting that this is the real problem.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2012 5:27:51 GMT
Yes, one of the Spanish winners, Alberto Contador, was stripped of his title a few years ago. During every single Tour de France, some of the riders get caught doping. They are not very bright -- or else Armstrong's impunity for so long when everybody knew what he was doing made it seems as though certain products can still slip through the system.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2012 17:34:42 GMT
I keep reading the reports about Lance Armstrong's downfall, and it is such a relief. So many of us were convinced for years that he was cheating, but he had such a "perfect" system that nothing could be proven. If he had not been so arrogant on all of those races, it would have been less galling, but there was the perpetual smirk and the "master of the world" behaviour. I am frankly very pleased to see him trampled now after he trampled so many others with his lies.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2012 19:40:25 GMT
I am somewhat relieved in that I never got on the Lance Armstrong hero worship wagon for whatever reason, I can't really identify exactly except to say that I tend to innately stay away from that stance in general with few exceptions.
It does dishearten me though, to know that someone representing the USA on such a grand scale would go that length at fraud and deception.
It's very demoralizing.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2012 19:37:45 GMT
Lance proved that he is still in denial by posting this photo today.  |
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Post by onlymark on Jan 5, 2013 15:02:03 GMT
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Post by htmb on Jan 5, 2013 15:08:04 GMT
Selfish, self-serving, and untrustworthy are just a few of the words that come to my mind when I hear Lance Armstrong's name.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2013 16:24:26 GMT
He deserves everything that is happening to him, but I certainly understand his dilemma now. I imagine that just about all of his revenue has suddenly dried up unless he made some good investments, and even then, I imagine that there is the prespective of being sued by his former sponsors and others to pay back the money they gave him. However, he is still only 41 and has a bunch of kids, so I imagine he is weighing the consequences of continuing to hunker down while being in disgrace and being banned from sports versus confessing, paying out most of his money in penalties but then being able to work and slowly rehabilitate himself and his reputation (at least for the second part of his life).
Worse case scenario -- he suddenly finds religion and becomes a preacher. That always works.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2013 6:13:37 GMT
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Post by nautiker on Jan 15, 2013 7:37:11 GMT
quote from the link above: "In an interview [...] that is scheduled for broadcast [...] on Thursday"
I'm not that familiar with US media: is the delay due to Armstrong's lawyers finecombing the content before release or just to chum fish the audience?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2013 6:41:56 GMT
It is to heighten the buzz for people to watch the show -- which has been split into two parts.
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Post by htmb on Jan 17, 2013 11:10:03 GMT
And the help improve the ratings and bring in advertising revenue for Oprah's struggling O Network.
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Post by htmb on Jan 17, 2013 23:44:29 GMT
Armstrong has been stripped of the medal he won in the 2000 Olympics.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2013 19:01:06 GMT
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