Thorn Cycles Forum
Community => Muppets Threads! (And Anything Else) => Topic started by: Fred A-M on October 22, 2012, 06:03:32 PM
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Well, Fred, that just about sums it up after today's last-formal UCI action to strip Lance of his Tour titles leave the winners of 7 Tours de France...blank.
And similar results-removal for other events in which Lance won or participated.
A pretty sad chapter in cycling history, and a tribute that pretty much speaks for itself.
Best,
Dan. (...who is hoping for better days ahead in a much-beloved sport)
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ah i was such an armstrong fan didn't want to believe he cheated all these years only thing i suppose he was not the only one seems the whole bloody lot of them were at it.
few years ago my son noel was racing over the country, i got talking to Pat mc Quade asked him did we have anyone in the peleton that would give irish cycling a boost, he mentioned a young lad called Mark Scanlon best cyclist in ireland at the time he was brilliant.
anyway when he signed up with a french team he could not even get up the road with the lesser riders in his team ,he soon learne if he wanted to race in the pro peleton he had better start using ,he came home never cycled again as far as i know.
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Ah yes, Jags; that seems to be sad truth of it: Superhuman results came from superhuman drugs and if you didn't dope, you were an also-ran. In televised interviews in this country, Armstrong's teammates who later testified against him said that if one wished to have even a chance at competing, you had to join the party and dope as well.
It seems drug use was/is pervasive throughout the pro peloton. I went back through the results for the last 7 TdF years where Lance competed and cross-correlated the results for the top three places with later announcements of drug penalties and sanctions. The result? Most podium finishers had come under suspicion or sanction at one time or another in their careers, and considerable doubt was cast on those just outside the podium standings. I think this is the same dilemma facing Tour organizers and the UCI -- "If we strip Lance of the winner's title...who do we award it to, and so on down the line?" So, they vacated the top spot and let the others stand.
Reading some old accounts of the early Tours de France, the riders often derided founder Henri Desgrange for his "inhuman" course selection. I have seen accounts saying riders rubbed raw cocaine on their gums to keep going. It is somehow nice to think there are still sports that require superhuman effort -- extreme marathoning comes to mind -- but at some point when being human is not enough, then what? Will people still watch when times remain static? I would, but in a world used to ever faster/higher/longer, is that enough to sustain public interest? At what point does moneymaking corporate sponsorship take responsibility? And what about the fans? Do we live our sports too vicariously, and thus place unrealistic demands on "our" teams? American football is in full swing on this side of the pond, and I'm amazed at the way people describe how "My" team won or lost, and how well "We" did playing in last weekend's game. Is pure sport dead? Did it die a long time ago?
My vote at this point for TdF winner goes to the Lantern Rouge, the saddest, sorriest domestique who brought up the rear at the last broom-wagon, as that is surely proof he didn't dope -- or simply didn't have access to the same drugs used by the rest of the peloton.
There may be hope remaining for next year's Tour and the possibility that not everyone succumbed to temptation. In recent interviews of Armstrong's former teammates, the general view is Caudel Evans was most likely clean and came his stage and overall victories honestly. Let us hope so.
I recently read (perhaps on the Argos site, or Mercian?) an interesting scheme for leveling future TdFs. It called for throwing out all testing measures, since the system can be gamed. Then, do a pre-run of the Tour with the leaders of each team and carefully catalog the times for each stage and overall. Then, run the regular Tour and if the overall times for each winner were more than, say, 5% under (faster) than in the pre-run, those teams would fall under special scrutiny. It is an intriguing thought. Certainly, if there is a conspiracy to cheat, then nothing will work. I'm wondering also about future fallout with perhaps criminal prosecutions against the testing labs and maybe even within the UCI. I suppose it could happen, if they were in league with Lance's overall effort.
Other pundits, feeling some sort of doping/cheating is inevitable, are calling for the "Doper's TdF", where the best drugs help win and if they take a toll in rider's lives, well...that's the price of sport. Cynical!
Ah, me. Sad days, hoping for better.
Best,
Dan.
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Definetly in the minority in terms of the fact that I have never been one for watching sport of any sort. I have always enjoyed doing sports but never found watching other people doing it to be that rewarding.
That said I find it strange that cheating at one race (the tour) can have such a negative effect on a sport and a pastime as a whole.
Its not like when allergations of cheating in Formula one has made every driver on the road be suspected of cheating.
Nothing stranger thans folk though.
Andy
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@Fred,
I am in complete agreement: .. about sums it up.
My view (apologies to A. A. Milne),
'Crash, Bang ... who the h_ll cares;
Little Lance Armstrong's fallen downstairs ... '
Now, if as a result of this nonsense there's a changing of the guard at the UCI, some good may come of all this.
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Now, if as a result of this nonsense there's a changing of the guard at the UCI, some good may come of all this.
Hi Badger1!
You may be getting your wish even now, as reported in a CBC story below:
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/cycling/story/2012/10/25/sp-uci-cycling-lance-armstrong-greg-lemond-pat-mcquaid-hein-verbruggen.html?cmp=rss
American Greg LeMond has leveled accusations of corruption against two principals of the UCI/ICU, and is backing the legal defense of Paul Kimmage, an Irish journalist and Tour rider in LeMond's era. International Cycling Union president Pat McQuaid has refused to back down from suing Kimmage over accusations that cycling's leaders protected Armstrong.
Methinks larger players were involved, and the eggs are starting to hit the fan. If one accepts the verdict against Armstrong, then the validity of his negative/non-positive tests over the years is drawn into question as well, and the question becomes who knew what, for how long, and at what levels in the sporting and sanctioning administration?
Very much hoping those deserving of it get their comeuppance.
Best,
Dan. (Interesting times, these...)
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Hi All!
USADA has released the bulk of the investigation-related documents with their decision. The appendices and supporting materials including rider testimony, photos, etc. are available in PDF format from the top-tabs linked from their statement here:
http://cyclinginvestigation.usada.org/
The heart of the USADA's decision is contained under the "Reasoned Decision" tab at the link above.
Once I started reading, I had a hard time stopping. The sheer scope of the deception is the stuff of a best-selling novel...which I expect will soon be arriving, along with sale of the movie rights. I'm hoping those won't signal the emergence of Lance v.3.0, but America loves an underdog, there are still many loyal fans, and I can see him doing the television talk-show circuit in future, answering the "Lance...why did you do it?" questions and painting himself as victim of any number of circumstances.
Anyway, an interesting read awaits.
Best,
Dan.
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Some thoughts, having seen Part One of Oprah Winfrey's interview with Lance Armstrong this evening...
Am I ever glad I'm not Lance Armstrong.
Wouldn't want to be him now, or the person that brought him to this juncture in life, someone who has caused a lot of pain and anguish. Man, I'd hate to be viewed as a negative object lesson of that magnitude.
I just don't believe anything he says.
Best,
Dan.
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Further to his Oprah moment ( not exactly a court of law is it!) the conspiracy of silence from other bodies and individuals is rather obvious. This was never a one man transgression.
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My own view is that whilst I am umhappy about the prolific drug taking there is a part of me that has some understanding of the pressures at that level, not an excuse I know.
However what outrages me is the way in which Armstrong used his fame, power and fortune to break others in his pursuance of their accusations, he was relentless in his attacks on those that accused him.
At the very least I want to see him charged with Perjury for the many times he stood in court and denied taking drugs.
Oprah Winfrey interviewing is a joke, nothing more than a pantomime with Armstong and his damage limitation team pulling the strings.
And dont get me started on the amount of proper athletes that have been denied places by drug takers......
Ian ggggrrrrrrrr
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Maybe unsurprisingly, I can only agree with all of above comments. Haven't seen the interview, but reading the reaction of pretty much everyone, it's clear that he hasn't gone far enough thus far. I can't help feeling that part 2 is where he'll ultimately betray his lack of genuine contrition with a subtle emphasis on his plans for the future (and redemption), the reason for choosing Oprah in the first instance. I personally won't be satisfied until he's been sued for every cent of his wealth, amassed in its virtual entirety through acts of fraud. I also think his Livestrong charity, so glibly used as his PR badge of moral credentials from the very outset (does he really care about anyone else? I don't think so), should be folded with major donations returned and services appropriated to other charities. That the Armstrong brand (and wealth) survives in any credible form will simply send out the wrong message to cycling, sport and society as a whole.
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Hello,
On the whole, whilst the 7 years watching the Tour inspired me in my own ill health, I am simply disappointed and sad. The real reason behind all of it is that many of those that have won before the past year have in some form cheated. It is as I said on my part just very very sad.
John
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[This article is destined for my blog Kissing the Blarney.]
THE DOPING DILEMMA
by Andre Jute
You don't need to be Carl Jung to know that most people find it easier to conform, to go along.
There is no evidence that Lance Armstrong was the primary or even a main instigator of doping in top-level cycle racing. There is every evidence that he arrived in a sport where doping was already the norm — and went along with what was expected of him. Demonizing Armstrong will not change the facts.
I don't feel sorry for Armstrong. He'll be touring the talk shows, building his brand, which may now become Repentance and Redemption.
I see that picking on Armstrong and, even worse, waiting to do it until his career was definitely over, is symptomatic of collusion and incompetence and hypocrisy throughout the sport.
I feel sorrier for the fans, not Armstrong's fans in particular, but the fans of top-level cycle-racing. It seems to me unlikely that any result of the last 20 or 30 years -- and stretching much deeper than the podium -- is now above suspicion. That the UCI are not awarding Armstrong's wins to the second-place man is their admission that they know it.
As for the UCI, it is so contaminated and tarnished, it should be closed down. It's officials should be prosecuted. It is impossible to believe that they didn't know what was going on in their sport. Once that is agreed, it is impossible to believe that they didn't collude. Now, immorally, they're embarking on retrospective witch hunts, applying twenty-twenty hindsight, claiming to be whiter than white. It's immoral, disgraceful, and disgusting, the nadir of blazers covering their slack asses when the manure hits the spreader, and at the same time trying to put themselves forwards for new careers as drugs busters, the very activity at which they have already failed so ignominiously. We should start afresh with a new control body with new people, probably brought in from junior team sports, maybe girls' soccer, guaranteed to be clean because there's no money in it.
Turning now to drugs testing. I was vastly irritated during the Olympics, what I caught of it, by the constant advertising of the drugs testing laboratory, to the point where it seemed the Olympics was not so much a contest of athlete against athlete but against doping. Anti-doping has become the new Global Warming, with the same hysterical mob reaction to it.
The problem is clearly that effective drugs testing is less a science than an art, a matter of opinion, at the margins a toss of the coin. Putting a bunch of chemists in ultimate charge of our iconic sports isn't the answer either. We have already seen how politically committed "scientists" trashed long-range climate forecasting by concerted, consistent lying and thuggery to protect an ideal that shone only to them. They were supported every step of the way by the mob, as the chemists will be if my bleak scenario is enacted.
What we have already seen in sports where they control doping better, as in the better regulated Olympic sports, is that witch hunts lead to false accusations, people's careers ruined for taking a cough medicine prescribed by their physician for a slight cold. That's nonsense too, and the drugs laboratories and officials should be sued for consequential damages and penalties. Let's be clear on this: I would rather a hundred dopers escape punishment than that one innocent is falsely shamed. That is the only proper interpretation of the law and any regulation applied by anyone whosoever; to compromise on that principle is to betray human rights.
These facts together may make control of doping impossible. We may be heading for a Rollerball future in which athletes are a separate class of humanity, bred and doped from birth for extraordinary athletic feats.
Andre Jute (http://coolmainpress.com/andrejutebio.html)'s sports are cycling, rugby, racing in all its forms (automobiles, offshore powerboats, transocean yachts), polo, tennis and golf. He is the author of IDITAROD a novel The Greatest Race on Earth (http://www.amazon.co.uk/IDITAROD-novel-Greatest-Earth-ebook/dp/B004GKMQE8), about the perilous 1000 mile sled dog race across Alaska, perhaps the only race in the world which is guaranteed to be drug-free.
Copyright ©2013 Andre Jute. This article, as long as it is used complete including this notice, may be freely reprinted on not-for-profit sites. No commercial use without permission.
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Thanks, Andre, that is well thought and well expressed.
I saw some recent discussion comparing the slower times on Tour de France climbs, now that drug testing is stricter, with the smaller number of home runs in baseball. The problem goes so far beyond Lance.
It is curious how preoccupied folks get with athletic competitions. I suppose "who's on top" is the subject of fascination that goes way beyond just humans. "Fair play" is a tricky call. We even have rules of war, and of course endless violations there too.
It's a bit of a rollerball world!
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Whilst I agree in principal with the nature of your view, I cannot accept in this particular case that Armstrong was a symptom of a wider problem within the sport and its officials.
Armstrong used his power, wealth and force of personality to vehemently deny and even pursue anyone that dared to accuse him, that has nothing to do with the culture of the sport and its failings but in the man himself, he believed he was above the law not a victim.
His only regret is being caught.
Ian
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would have been a much deeper interview if david walsh had done the interview.as paul kimmage says on the evening news he needs to name all the officals that turned a blind eye as these guys are still running cycling.
oh lance boy you sure done wrong big time :'(
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It's a bit of a rollerball world!
Shh, Jim, you're telling everyone our age: only the middle-aged remember that movie! -- AJ
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I posted the same piece above to RBT, where Andrew Muzi (a wellknown bike shop owner in Madison, Wisconsin), added this:
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Doping in sport is not a "magic pill". It's a small help to
recovery and VO2 capacity in our sport, a small help to
other factors in other sports. It's not a secret and we can
read history to get some idea of how 'pure' The Ancients rode.
'Jacques Anquetil, the first cyclist to win the Tour five
times, once said, “Leave me in peace; everybody takes dope.”
The relatively quaint drugs of choice back then were cocaine
and amphetamines, among others. Before Anquetil, Fausto
Coppi, the first superstar of cycling, when asked whether
riders took drugs to survive and win, replied, “Yes, and
those who claim otherwise, it’s not worth talking to them
about cycling.” '
from http://thedailybanter.com/tag/jacques-anquetil/
Here's a very nice overview with bibliography:
http://www.abcc.co.uk/drugs-and-the-tour-de-france/
--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971
***
Posted without any intention of implying that Muzi approves of my article, of course. But Mr Muzi makes it sound as if, in the present climate of lillywhite perfection and sanctimonious outrage, there is a leaden inevitability about the cycle (sorry!) of the rise to fame by any cyclist, followed swiftly by his exposure as a drugs fiend and dispossession of his prizes. In short, Andrew makes this whole Armstrong tragedy sound unstoppable from the day Lance Armstrong climbed up onto his first bike. "Son, it grieves your mother and me that you want to be a cyclist. Do you really want to stand exposed one day as a drugs cheat?"
Andre Jute