Armstrong drops fight against doping charges

[Mustard]

Originally Posted by Bartelby

This is not a denial, but a purposeful evasion:


"Enough is enough." For me, that time is now. I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. Over the past three years, I have been subjected to a two-year federal criminal investigation followed by Travis Tygart's unconstitutional witch hunt. The toll this has taken on my family, and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today – finished with this nonsense.

That is Armstrong saying that he is fed up with having to prove his innocence, despite the fact that he has never failed a drugs test according to the official laws of cycling. It's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not the other way round.

[Bartelby]

But he didn't even assert his innocence in that statement, and that's the point, as he has done before.

Why not do it again? Im not suggesting he prove his innocence, but on legal advice he refused to restate his innocence.

[Mustard]

Originally Posted by Bartelby

But he didn't even assert his innocence in that statement, and that's the point, as he has done before.

Why not do it again? Im not suggesting he prove his innocence, but on legal advice he refused to restate his innocence.

Read the statement. Armstrong mentions how he has been subjected to a witch hunt from Travis Tygart and the USADA, and has faced a federal criminal investigation (which collapsed, btw. how strange that this has been forgotten by the press). Armstrong mentions the toll it has taken on him and his family, and that he's now "finished with this nonsense".

[Bartelby]

Yes, and there's no categorical denial that he took PEDS.

[fundrazer]

The problem with what you're claiming, is the fact that other former teammates have come out and testified against Lance. George Hincapie is the most recent big name. But I know what you're going to say...blah blah...plea bargain. He retired. USA Cycling can't exactly suspend him now.

Or how about Johnathan Vaughters? Never tested positive, and he's also not a current rider. How does it benefit him to come out and say what he has about the Armstrong era? In reality, it's a bit confusing at first given the very strong anti-doping sentiment at his team. But, it's also fairly clear that he does seem determined to promote a clean sport.

Armstrong is fed up with what exactly??? Fed up with having to vilify and attack anyone that remotely connects him to doping? Simeoni, Lemond, Bassons, Hamilton, Betsy and Franky Andreu...Too many other names to mention! Apparently in one statement he referred to Betsy as a "liar and a prostitute."

[Mustard]

Originally Posted by fundrazer

The problem with what you're claiming, is the fact that other former teammates have come out and testified against Lance. George Hincapie is the most recent big name. But I know what you're going to say...blah blah...plea bargain. He retired. USA Cycling can't exactly suspend him now.

Other cyclists, for example, Roger Hammond, have defended Armstrong, saying that Armstrong was a great team-mate and that he had never been offered drugs by Armstrong. Hammond also mentioned that the USADA never asked his opinion in their investigation. I wonder why that is? Might it be because Hammond can't be blackmailed and isn't willing to trash Armstrong for the USADA's poison pen dossier?

Originally Posted by fundrazer

Armstrong is fed up with what exactly??? Fed up with having to vilify and attack anyone that remotely connects him to doping? Simeoni, Lemond, Bassons, Hamilton, Betsy and Franky Andreu...Too many other names to mention! Apparently in one statement he referred to Betsy as a "liar and a prostitute."

Armstrong is fed up with all the toil and stress it has put on him and his family, not to mention paying all this money to lawyers all the time, despite the fact that he has never failed a test according to the official rules of cycling. The USADA is an organisation backed up by US taxpayers' cash, and Tygart is determined to get Armstrong, come what may.

Of course, Armstrong's actions in saying that he's "finished with this nonsense" has only angered Tygart all the more, and now he's wants Armstrong in a criminal court for what he says is "perjury". Tygart is like this generation's version of Joseph McCarthy. It's uncanny similarity.

I also firmly believe that the USADA have offered plea bargains to Armstrong before now, to admit to PED use in order to keep some of his Tour victories.

[F. Perry]

Originally Posted by Mustard

Armstrong is fed up with all the toil and stress it has put on him and his family

[Bartelby]

Yes, he is not asserting his innocence anymore because he fears further perjuring himself if he has to give evidence under oath.

That's the legal advice.

[Mustard]

Originally Posted by Bartelby

Yes, he is not asserting his innocence anymore because he fears further perjuring himself if he has to give evidence under oath.

That's the legal advice.

The USADA's dossier is based on circumstantial evidence and the testimonies of plea bargained cyclists or those with an axe to grind against Armstrong. The dossier contains zero objective, physical evidence. What's scary is how many people have just bought it all at face value, and don't even question how someone who survived metastasised cancer, not only came back to professional cycling and won 7 Tour de Frances titles, but also did it whilst being doped up to the eyeballs (and never getting banned for a positive test), whilst also pushing drugs onto other cyclists.

If Armstrong did all that the USADA allege, then his powers would be at ridiculous levels. Not even Napoleon Bonaparte's escape from exile on Elba to reconquer power in France is on that level.

[adventure]

Armstrong has already stated for the record that he gained "no unfair advantage." There's not an idiot on the planet who doesn't understand what that means. I'll explain it to you since you are so dense:

Lance doped, but so did everyone else, so he doesn't think it's wrong.

Now, as you were:

[img]http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/picture/ZooYork8692/***.jpg[/img]

Originally Posted by Mustard

The USADA's dossier is based on circumstantial evidence...

[Bartelby]

Armstrong has an axe to grind in his favour, as do his fans, but there is an unchallenged dossier that stands as fact.

Armstrong recovered from cancer and then set about using drugs to gain an unfair advange. Nothing mysterious there with an admittedly Hollywood-style back story.

Originally Posted by Mustard

The USADA's dossier is based on circumstantial evidence and the testimonies of plea bargained cyclists or those with an axe to grind against Armstrong. The dossier contains zero objective, physical evidence. What's scary is how many people have just bought it all at face value, and don't even question how someone who survived metastasised cancer, not only came back to professional cycling and won 7 Tour de Frances titles, but also did it whilst being doped up to the eyeballs (and never getting banned for a positive test), whilst also pushing drugs onto other cyclists.

If Armstrong did all that the USADA allege, then his powers would be at ridiculous levels. Not even Napoleon Bonaparte's escape from exile on Elba to reconquer power in France is on that level.

[Mustard]

Originally Posted by Bartelby

Armstrong has an axe to grind in his favour, as do his fans, but there is an unchallenged dossier that stands as fact.

Fact? There's no objective, physical evidence and you call it fact? No, it's not fact.

Originally Posted by Bartelby

Armstrong recovered from cancer and then set about using drugs to gain an unfair advange. Nothing mysterious there with an admittedly Hollywood-style back story.

No, that doesn't cover the sheer scale of what the USADA is alleging that Armstrong did. As I said, they are asking people to believe that only did Armstrong beat metastasised cancer, come back to cycling and win 7 Tour de France titles, but that he did it while being doped up to the eyeballs (while beating all the testers), and was also the ring leader in pushing drugs onto other cyclists (again undetected).

The USADA's scenario of what happened has left reality way behind and entered the realm of fiction.

[Bartelby]

There are both physical and non-physical facts and the latter are more probative and more damning.

If he was as well as the next person after his cancer treatment why can't he cheat as well as the next person?

Armstrong's drug use was detected and he would have been wiped out earlier but for corruption.

[FrisbeeFool]

Originally Posted by Mustard

The USADA's dossier is based on circumstantial evidence and the testimonies of plea bargained cyclists or those with an axe to grind against Armstrong. The dossier contains zero objective, physical evidence. What's scary is how many people have just bought it all at face value, and don't even question how someone who survived metastasised cancer, not only came back to professional cycling and won 7 Tour de Frances titles, but also did it whilst being doped up to the eyeballs (and never getting banned for a positive test), whilst also pushing drugs onto other cyclists.

If Armstrong did all that the USADA allege, then his powers would be at ridiculous levels. Not even Napoleon Bonaparte's escape from exile on Elba to reconquer power in France is on that level.

What additional evidence would you need to see to be convinced that Lance doped. Would you need to see a picture of him in the act of administering banned substances, while he held up a copy of the days newspaper. There's mountains of evidence chronicling his history of doping. His team had a history of institutionalized doping, that he played a major role in.

[firefox]

Contador is playing possum now!

[FrisbeeFool]

Originally Posted by Mustard

What's scary is how many people have just bought it all at face value, and don't even question how someone who survived metastasised cancer, not only came back to professional cycling and won 7 Tour de Frances titles, but also did it whilst being doped up to the eyeballs (and never getting banned for a positive test), whilst also pushing drugs onto other cyclists.

When he was getting cancer treatment, he was asked by the doctors about his medical history. He admitted to them about the blood doping. Some of his closest friends and confidants who were there, have testified about what they witnessed Lance saying. So you're right he did survive cancer. And he is also guilty of using illegal performance enhancers. Maybe this guy is one of your heros. He might be one of the biggest sports figures of the past decade. It doesn't change the fact that he cheated.

[GregN]

I would say this is proof that this is puts serious doubt on any credibility Armstrong may still be holding on to


http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...014-27kom.html

[Bartelby]

More testimony about the horrifying audacity of LieStrong:

In short order, however, it became clear to O'Reilly that her tasks with the team would hardly be limited to kneading leg muscles and doing laundry. This week O'Reilly said she became a regular player in the team's doping programme, one that investigators have said took on its most sinister and far-reaching dimensions with the arrival of Lance Armstrong in 1998. O'Reilly, then not yet 30, said she wound up transporting doping material across borders, disposing of drugs and syringes when the authorities were lurking, and distributing performance-enhancing substances to the team's riders whenever they needed them.

Discretion and loyalty, she said she came to understand, were not just valued qualities; they were paramount. "It was prevalent, but discreet," O'Reilly said of the team's doping. "The drugs were just part and parcel of things. You didn't analyse it at the time. It was just part of things."

And so, she said, she once travelled from France to Spain and back to pick up illegal pills for Armstrong and delivered them to him in a McDonald's parking lot outside Nice. Another time, she took a package of testosterone and got it in the hands of another rider. O'Reilly said she provided ice to the riders who had containers full of doping materials they needed to keep from spoiling. She spoke of using her talents with makeup to disguise bruising from needles on the arms of the riders.

Some of it made her ashamed, she said, and all of it made her anxious. But the truly hard part was to come: talking about it publicly. "The traumatising part," she said from Manchester, "was dealing with telling the truth."

O'Reilly first went public in 2003, when she co-operated on a book, LA Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong, that sought to expose Armstrong as a drug cheat. Armstrong sued her for libel.

O'Reilly said Armstrong demonised her as a prostitute with a drinking problem, and had her hauled into court. Ultimately, a legal settlement was reached, and O'Reilly tried to pick up the pieces of her life, sometimes talking about Armstrong and drugs, but to little notice.

[Mustard]

Originally Posted by FrisbeeFool

What additional evidence would you need to see to be convinced that Lance doped. Would you need to see a picture of him in the act of administering banned substances, while he held up a copy of the days newspaper. There's mountains of evidence chronicling his history of doping. His team had a history of institutionalized doping, that he played a major role in.

It makes Armstrong sound like something out of The Godfather. All the evidence is circumstantial and based on the testimonies of cyclists who have been offered plea bargains or have with an axe to grind. Why do you take such evidence as fact when blackmail is involved? The federal investigation into all this was dropped.

[Bartelby]

Der Krieg ist verloren.