The Glade 4.0

500 drug tests since 1999, roughly 39 drug tests per year, and they are now just going to strip Lance Armstrong of his titles and his records, etc.

What does this say to other people who overcome insurmountable odds and become beacons of light for the youth?

"It does not matter what you did, we will call you a liar and cheat until you are too tired of us to defend yourself anymore."

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I lost every shred of respect for Lance Armstrong when he left his wife and kids after they stood by him through his cancer treatments and then broke off his engagement to Sheryl Crow the day before she went public about having cancer. **** his scumbag ***, may he burn in hell.

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The public likes to make judgements on Lance Armstrong, because we all know, that the news tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It seems to me that certain people weren't going to stop until Armstrong went down. Why?

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Heh, why? Honestly, he was always sort of a dick, especially before cancer. Very full of himself, probably to the point of arrogance. Not that he wasn't a fantastic rider or couldn't back it up - he won the world championship in 1993, at age 21 - but he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

I've been reluctant to believe all of this, but as I type this now I wonder if re-claiming his lost glory after cancer wasn't an overwhelming motivation for him to dope. Given how prevalent it was (is?) in bike racing, it's hard not to believe that he really was doing it. Very disappointing.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

It's all of sports, Aethien. I don't blame him for anything. I would have done exactly the same. And regardless of anything else, they can't strip him of his paychecks, and that's the important thing.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

No, no, I know, Rynar. Baseball has taught us that lesson this week, hey? Still, it's kind of depressing.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

So you'd cheat if it meant you had a better chance of winning?

I get so tired of the "he never failed a drug test" crap. He failed a bunch of drug tests. In 1999 he tested positive for testosterone both his A and B samples and magically his legal team immediately produced a prescription for a cream to "treat saddle sores" that contained testosterone. Oh the presciption they produced was written after he failed the test but the inconsistency was ignore. Then he got caught with synthetic bovine hemoglobin in his bag and once a test for EPO was developed his remaining samples from the Tour all tested positive. Not to mention that 10 of his former teammates all said he was doping, 5 of them having been found guilty of doping themselves, but he was clean as a whistle?

*shrug* Karma delayed != karma denied.

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Sure, except here's the problem...

You have an athlete who has put up unprecedented achievements, and you spend enormous effort to prove him guilty of doping. Finally, after not actually officially proving anything, the athlete stops fighting and you declare that you are victorious in your endeavor to do whatever it was you were doing, and as a sign of your grand achievement, strip him of all accomplishments. And you award all the diverse runners-up the victories in whatever events.
...
...
Have you kept all their urine samples?

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As far as I am concerned he was doping. But then, so was pretty much everyone else on the Tour.

Even with the playing fiend being kinda levelish in that respect, 7 Tour victories is still a hell of accomplishment.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Five hundred tests in 13 years. That's 39 tests per year. That's a test every nine days.

Let's suppose that some of those tests are multiple different tests given at the same time. If each time he's tested, he gets a battery of three tests, that's 13 instances of testing each year, which is still more frequently than once per month.

As far as any of you are concerned, he wasn't doping. It doesn't matter how hard it is to believe, or what you're starting to wonder as you type your posts. Lance Armstrong came up clean under excessively close scrutiny for a very long period of time. That means either he's clean, or he's developed a technology that nobody else has access to.

I don't believe for a second that Lance Armstrong is one of his generation's greatest minds in chemistry.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I can believe in a conspiracy to cover up his doping, especially with EPO and blood doping. Blood doping doesn't show up after a day or three afaik, and EPO didn't have a test for a while.

Its hard to believe that he *wasn't* doping, but eh. I still think that he is the best cyclist of his era.

When everyone is doping, noone is.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Mr. Armstrong seems to have decided the fighting of the constant accusations was more expensive than just letting the thing go. USADA hasn't proven anything and their witness list is extremely suspect.

They also don't have the power to strip him of any races they have no full authority over.

Bureaucratic idiocy.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

When you're talking about the best of the best in one-dimensional sports, where only one physical aspect matters (how fast you can run, how much weight you can lift, how much endurance you have, etc) and there's not much thinking involved, it's basically impossible to compete without "cheating." There's no way to beat that advantage in a competition where you don't have the ability to out-think or out-play the opponent.

It's an economic decision.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Xeq, from now on when I read your posts your name shall be Negative Nellie in my mind, because that's how you come across to me. There is always a way to overcome adversity...it's called using your brain and your brawn to figure out how to do something instead of giving up and saying "no way that I can do that".

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

It's not about "overcoming adversity." Your opponent can do all these things too, and you're again behind. You can't expect to win at something thoughtless like running or cycling if they cheat and you don't. Sports like soccer and basketball don't really have problems with drugs or doping because in those sports you can win by outthinking the opponent, so drugs don't help. I doubt many football quarterbacks take drugs either, it's not worth it. But for something as single-minded as moving from Point A to Point B as fast as you can, I'm pretty sure nearly everyone cheats. They wouldn't be competitive if they didn't.

/channels her inner child "cheaters never prosper"!

I call BS Xeq. Through out history people have tried and succeeded without "cheating". Nowadays, it seems no one wants to or can compete on a level playing field. Perhaps it's like Rynar said, it's an economic decision, but the ability is still there...you just need to want it bad enough to try, without "cheating".

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

It completely depends on a balance of risk, reward, harm done to others, and concequences. Sports are unique in that the rewards are becoming incredibly wealthy and setting your family up with what can be dynastic wealth (or squandering everything on a failed MMO), the risks of detection are minimal, the concequences aren't monetary, and no one gets hurt. Like I said, I'd do it in a cocaine heartbeat.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I don't know for sure if Lance Armstrong used PED's during his career. I hope he didn't. I like the guy, want him and his foundation to be successful.

Even if he did use them, after a 20 year witch hunt, there is no way to know for sure. The USADA has been trying so hard for so long to find some shred of proof that he's guilty that it's hard to trust them and their finding.

Supposedly they've persuaded sevral of his former teammates to testify against him in this trial. The problem is, how do we know we can trust this testimony? How do we know these people aren't doing this as part of a plea to get out of their own possible indictments?

The USADA should have dropped this years ago. They need to focus their energy on finding better technology and developing a more accurate testing program, instead of conducting witch hunts against Lance Armstrong.

There are better things to do with the time, energy and money they've put into this.

USADA is now going to pursue criminal charges against Lance Armstrong. The chief witness against Armstrong is Floyd Landis.

The real truth, though?You guys argue about a lot of things; but if you want to see the end-result of a public education system, this is it. Several of you think he couldn't possibly have been that good without cheating. He couldn't have done it without being 'wrong' and 'unethical.' So why bother even having competitions or athletic challenges anymore? This is just a social application of the redistribution of outcome.

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Occams razor maybe?

Bureacratic conspiracy (to no apparent end) extending internationally + witnesses from his team where doping was the norm versus his positive tests were actually positive?

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Define "that good." Do you really think that one person can really be so much better at a specific, highly focused physical activity than every other person on the planet that he can still beat them even if they cheat to give themselves an unfair advantage? Platitudes about "hard work" and "wanting it" apply to the average person, not to the best of the best. At his level of competition his opponents are all busting their asses too.

Because the events and competition are enhanced by the better performances brought about by the PEDs, sports aren't so important that we should care about PEDs, and if they were to disappear after the public becoming used to sering enhancd sport we'd all be left feeling like we were watching a WNBA game.

Khross, I played major college athletics and 80% of the guys I played with used. One of my largest regrets is that I didn't.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Let me say this, I do not give a rats *** if he was doping or not. BUT, he jumped through every gorram hoop for how long?

This became a witch hunt long ago.

But he survived cancer and lost a nut to it, it would not surprise me if he needed daily injections of testosterone.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut