Armstrong drops fight against doping charges

[adventure]

"He also has to be careful.

Armstrong is facing legal challenges on several fronts, including a federal whistle-blower lawsuit brought by former teammate Floyd Landis, who himself was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title, accusing him of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service. The U.S. Justice Department has yet to announce whether it will join the case.

The London-based Sunday Times is also suing Armstrong to recover about $500,000 it paid him to settle a libel lawsuit, and Dallas-based SCA Promotions has threatened to bring yet another lawsuit against Armstrong to recover more than $7.5 million an arbitration panel awarded him as a bonus for winning the Tour de France.

The only lawsuit potentially impacted by a confession might be the Sunday Times case. Potential perjury charges stemming from his sworn testimony in the 2005 arbitration fight would not apply because of the statute of limitations. Armstrong was not deposed during a federal investigation that was closed last year without charges being brought."

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mor...#ixzz2HtZCtEBH

[THUNDERVOLLEY]

Originally Posted by adventure

Lance is now going to admit to doping. All of his idiot fanboys will still claim he didn't dope. SMH

..how it must be a one big feeling of butthurt to those who tried to call Armstrong--riding a freakin' bike--was in their words, a "superman," or "ultimate athlete." I saw that as ton of ill-minded crap from the start, and it is great that his defensive fans and writers in the sports media had that crap blow up in their collective faces.

[jamesblakefan#1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=Zad68VOxr8g

[Speranza]

Originally Posted by Mustard

The USADA have destroyed cycling as a sport. Lance Armstrong won those 7 Tour de France titles, not to mention that he has passed every drug test he has ever taken, and that was a LOT of drug tests.

Mustard, I remember you saying that his colleagues took deals to save themselves pretty much, and that he was innocent. The former may be true, the latter not.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21024288

Now, considering he passed a LOT of drug tests, what does this say about drug testing?

[hollywood9826]

My only issue was how he personally attacked anyone that said anything about him.

I'm sure his confession will be the biggest sounding pre written legal mumbo jumbo as anyone ever in history.

I doubt he says anything concrete as far as dates or anything that may have legal ramifications.

[TennisLovaLova]

fortunately, this thing is happening now in cycling, I fdont watch I dont like it
just imagine one second if this was happening in tennis
and instead of Armstrong it was Federer or Nadal
what a disaster it would be

[tennismonkey]

they interviewed oprah regarding her interview with lance. i'm paraphrasing but she implied that he sounded very rehearsed and prepared i think her words were but she didn't seem to think he was especially contrite.

i think the vast majority of people know he's "confessing" at this point for his interests (competing in triathlons, getting endorsement deals back, not having people call him a cheat when he goes out in public, etc) than in him really being sorry for anything.

[FastFreddy]

Originally Posted by jonnythan

So the question remains... if Armstrong doped so much and ran such a huge doping operation, how come none of the blood and urine samples he's provided can be shown to contain banned drugs?

So will all the Lance fan boys watch him say he used drugs on the O show this Thursday? Hopw he goes to prison for fraud ie 20 years!! Also and has to pay back the 100 million he made from cycling. Plus give back the 40 million in fraud to the USPS they could use the money. I told u so Lance was riding dirty!!!!

[Dedans Penthouse]

^^^^^
This +1. Lance Armstrong's as fake as the knockers on your avatar (.)(.)

[jonnythan]

Originally Posted by FastFreddy

So will all the Lance fan boys watch him say he used drugs on the O show this Thursday? Hopw he goes to prison for fraud ie 20 years!! Also and has to pay back the 100 million he made from cycling. Plus give back the 40 million in fraud to the USPS they could use the money. I told u so Lance was riding dirty!!!!

If he admits it, obviously he did it.

My original objection is unchanged though: it's wrong to strip him of his titles without an actual failed drug test or admission as required by the rules. Now that he has admitted it, it makes sense to strip him of the titles.

Not before, though. It was wrong to do so before there was any physical evidence.

[FastFreddy]

Originally Posted by Dedans Penthouse

^^^^^
This +1. Lance Armstrong's as fake as the knockers on your avatar (.)(.)

So true but they r so much better to look at and feel great!!!

[FastFreddy]

Originally Posted by jonnythan

If he admits it, obviously he did it.

My original objection is unchanged though: it's wrong to strip him of his titles without an actual failed drug test or admission as required by the rules. Now that he has admitted it, it makes sense to strip him of the titles.

Not before, though. It was wrong to do so before there was any physical evidence.

He failed 3 differents tests. One was in 1999, he passed at the time since their was no epo test at the time. In 2006 the docs tested 6 samples from 1999 and they flamed for epo big time. Also when he failed one in the tour de swiss they had the doc tell them how the test works so then he never failed another test. One of his team riders would text him and tip him off if he was going to get tested after that stage.

Lance would drop out of the race to avoid the testing. Best one ever was in France a tester showed up at his door without warning. Lance said who is this dude and left the sight of the tester for 30 mins to take a shower. I bet he flooded his system with saline to pass the test. Best part is the show is now going to be a 2-parter Thursday and Friday night. I will get lots of popcorn and enjoy the show. The big O asks him about 110 question, I heard Lance cries after he pulls out a nose hair or was it an onion in his shirt pocket HAHA!!!!

[FastFreddy]

AUSTIN, Texas (AFP) — Lance Armstrong spent more than a decade vehemently denying accusations of doping, his reported confession on Monday coming only after the testimony of others had forever tainted his cycling legacy.

Below is a non-exhaustive list Armstrong’s doping denials since 2001:

2001
“This is my body and I can do whatever I want to it. I can push it, and study it, tweak it, listen to it. Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike, busting my *** six hours a day. What are you on?”
—Advertisement for Nike

July 2005
“I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics. I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles. But this is one hell of a race. This is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe it. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I’ll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets – this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it. Vive Le Tour.”
—After Armstrong’s seventh and final Tour de France victory

August 2005
“I have never doped, I can say it again, but I have said it for seven years — it doesn’t help.”
—On CNN’s “Larry King Live” after French newspaper L’Equipe reported tests on urine samples taken from Armstrong during the 1999 Tour and frozen were positive for blood-boosting erythropoietin (EPO)

2005
“… the faith of all the cancer survivors and almost everything I do off of the bike would go away too. Don’t think for a second I don’t understand that.”
—In testimony under oath during legal proceedings involving SCA Promotions over a bonus payment for a Tour de France victory

2007
“I was on my deathbed. You think I’m going to come back into a sport and say, ‘OK, OK doctor give me everything you got, I just want to go fast?’ No way. I would never do that.”
—Speaking of his life in an interview in Aspen with Bob Schieffer, a respected journalist with CBS and a cancer survivor

July 2009
“The critics say I’m arrogant. A doper. Washed up. A fraud. That I couldn’t let it go. They can say whatever they want. I’m not back on my bike for them.”
—Nike “Driven” commercial in the build-up to Armstrong’s first Tour de France since his comeback from retirement, showing Armstrong training in a Livestrong jersey juxtaposed with images of cancer patients

May 2010
“It’s our word against his word. I like our word. We like our credibility. Floyd lost his credibility a long time ago.”
—Response to Floyd Landis’ accusations of systematic doping in the U.S. Postal cycling team

June 13, 2012
“I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.”
—Responding in a statement when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced its charges against him

August 23, 2012
“There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say, ‘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.”
—Announcing he would not fight USADA’s charges and pursue a hearing to prove his innocence

[Disgruntled Worker]

Doesn't matter to me. For all we know everyone cheat since the Cycling Drug tests were so flimsy. The guy still won the Tour de France seven times (with cancer no less) and put bike racing on the map in the US. They'll strip him of his titles. Oh, but they'll KEEP the hundreds of millions of dollars (euros) he helped generate for the sport.

[jamesblakefan#1]

Originally Posted by Disgruntled Worker

Doesn't matter to me. For all we know everyone cheat since the Cycling Drug tests were so flimsy. The guy still won the Tour de France seven times (with cancer no less) and put bike racing on the map in the US. They'll strip him of his titles. Oh, but they'll KEEP the hundreds of millions of dollars (euros) he helped generate for the sport.

The guy bullied people, ruined lives, and in the end was a liar and a fraud. No respect for him at all.

[FastFreddy]

Throughout his career, Lance Armstrong always responded to doping accusations by saying he had been tested for banned substances hundreds of times and never produced a positive result. How could the world’s greatest cyclist, always in the cross hairs of doping officials, never fail a drug test if he was doping, Armstrong reasoned.



An explanation emerged Wednesday, when the United States Anti-Doping Agency released its dossier on Armstrong, citing witness testimony, financial records and laboratory results. Armstrong was centrally involved in a sprawling, sophisticated doping program, the agency said, yet he employed both cunning and farcical methods to beat the sport’s drug-testing system.

The report also introduced new scientific evidence that the agency said suggested Armstrong was doping the last two times he competed in the Tour de France.

“It has been a frequent refrain of Armstrong and his representatives over the years that Lance Armstrong has never had a positive drug test,” the report said. “That does not mean, however, he did not dope. Nor has Armstrong apparently had nearly as many doping tests as his representatives have claimed.”

As part of its investigation, Usada asked Christopher J. Gore, the head of physiology at the Australian Institute of Sport, to analyze test results from 38 blood samples taken from Armstrong between February 2009 and the end of last April. Those taken during the 2009 and 2010 Tours, the report said, showed blood values whose likelihood “of occurring naturally was less than one in a million,” and other indications of blood doping.

While Gore’s analysis was not a conventional antidoping test, Usada concluded that the findings “build a compelling argument consistent with blood doping.”

The techniques Usada says were used by Armstrong and his teammates to elude positive tests were used by many cyclists, and many believe those tactics are still in use today. They often exploited weaknesses in the antidoping system, many of which still persist.

The most basic technique outlined in the report, based on affidavits from some of Armstrong’s former teammates, was simply running away or hiding.

“The most conventional way that the U.S. Postal riders beat what little out-of-competition testing there was, was to simply use their wits to avoid the testers,” the report concluded.

To facilitate out-of-competition testing, professional cyclists are required to inform their national antidoping agencies of their locations at all times. Riders who receive three warnings in an 18-month period for either not providing their whereabouts accurately or not filing the information at all can be punished as if they had had a positive drug test.

Saying that “the adequacy of unannounced, no-notice testing taking place in the sport of cycling remains a concern,” Usada outlined several methods used by Armstrong and his teammates to circumvent the system.

The simplest was pretending not to be home when the testers arrived. As long as they were in the city they had reported as their locations, the riders found they would not receive a warning for not answering the door.

The agency compared the whereabouts information it received from Armstrong over the years with messages between Armstrong and Michele Ferrari, a sports medicine doctor who is also a target of the doping investigation. There were revealing discrepancies, the report said.

Travel plans that Armstrong conveyed months in advance to Ferrari through training and racing diaries were submitted to Usada weeks later, sometimes the day he made the trip. While those last-minute changes did not break any rules, they frustrated the agency’s testing plans. The doping agency also found that Armstrong often stayed at a remote hotel in Spain where he “was virtually certain not to be tested.”

According to the report, Armstrong abruptly dropped out of one race after his teammate George Hincapie warned him through a text message that drug testers were at the team’s hotel. Armstrong had, Hincapie said in an affidavit, just taken a solution containing olive oil and testosterone.

Riders on Armstrong’s team, the agency said, also kept a constant lookout for testers and relayed information about them to one another. Team officials often seemed to know when a supposedly unannounced drug test would occur.

When the testers could not be avoided, Armstrong and his teammates turned to drug masking, the report said. It indicated that during the 1998 world championships, testers were diverted to other riders on the United States team while one of Armstrong’s doctors “smuggled a bag of saline under his raincoat, getting it past the tester and administering saline to Armstrong before Armstrong was required to provide a blood sample.”

The saline infusion restored Armstrong’s blood values to a level that would not attract attention.

The report also described how Armstrong, often in conjunction with Ferrari and the team director Johan Bruyneel, was careful to use techniques and drugs that were untraceable through tests.

During his first Tour de France victory, in 1999, Armstrong’s drug of choice, according to the sworn affidavits, was the blood-boosting hormone known as EPO. At that time, there was no test for EPO, which is a cloned form of human hormone rather than a synthetic product.

But when rumors began circulating about the arrival of a test for EPO, Armstrong and some of his teammates switched to withdrawing and then reinfusing their own blood. Again, it was a technique initially without a test.

Ferrari discovered that when regular, if small, doses of EPO were injected directly into veins rather than under the skin, Armstrong and others could continue using the hormone without fear of a positive test result, the report said.

Armstrong and his teammates also learned from Ferrari that the test for testosterone was not highly sensitive and caught only those who consumed large amounts of it or carelessly used it at times of the day when testing was likely. A test for human growth hormone, another banned substance with a following among members of the United States Postal Service team, was introduced only this year, at the London Olympics.

According to the report, the drugs used by Armstrong and his teammates were generally supplied by José Martí, often at clandestine meetings. Better known as Pepe, Martí ostensibly worked as a trainer for Armstrong’s United States Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams. But several riders told Usada that Martí’s training largely involved relaying information from Ferrari, who was apparently careful to give only advice rather than administer or supply drugs. Martí, who also helped with the team’s blood transfusions, according to the report, sometimes sold drugs to riders on other teams.

Contrary to Armstrong’s repeated claim that he never tested positive, it was widely reported at the time that he tested positive for a corticosteroid during the 1999 Tour. But he was not sanctioned because the team produced a prescription from one of its doctors indicating that Armstrong had received it in a cream used to treat a saddle sore.

Usada contends in the report that the prescription and its explanation were both shams. In his affidavit to Usada, Tyler Hamilton, the disgraced former Olympic champion and Armstrong teammate, said the positive test prompted “a great deal of swearing from Lance and Johan.” A backdated prescription, a former team employee told Usada, was created to resolve the problem.

As part of its investigation, Usada said it recently obtained additional data from French officials who had retested Armstrong’s samples from the 1999 Tour. For procedural reasons, those samples cannot be used to sanction Armstrong. But the Usada report indicated that advances in EPO testing since then conclusively showed that he used the hormone. The report said the retesting produced “resoundingly positive values” from six samples.

Armstrong’s account of how often he has been tested has varied. His lawyers, according to the report, have indicated that he provided samples 500 to 600 times over 14 years.

Usada said it tested Armstrong only 60 times, and it cited reports indicating that the International Cycling Union had tested him about 200 times, although Usada said many of the cycling union’s tests were for a health program rather than for prohibited substances.

“The number of actual controls on Mr. Armstrong over the years appears to have been considerably fewer than the number claimed by Armstrong and his lawyers,” Usada said.

[Disgruntled Worker]

Originally Posted by jamesblakefan#1

The guy bullied people, ruined lives, and in the end was a liar and a fraud. No respect for him at all.

The guy bullied Floyd Landis for trying to incriminate him. Anyone else on this forum would have done the same. He is still an inspiration to cancer survivors for finishing the Tour de France seven times.

[jamesblakefan#1]

Originally Posted by Disgruntled Worker

The guy bullied Floyd Landis for trying to incriminate him. Anyone else on this forum would have done the same. He is still an inspiration to cancer survivors for finishing the Tour de France seven times.

The list of people who he bullied isn't just fellow cyclists. IT's people like Betsy Andreu who dared to tell the truth on fraud Lance.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/oth...sy-Andreu.html

Betsy Andreu woke up to a pair of disturbing voicemails in the spring of 2008. The messages were from Stephanie McIlvain, a close friend of Armstrong’s who worked for one of his sponsors, the Oakley eyewear company.

“I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head,” McIlvain tells Andreu in the first message. “I also hope that one day you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will definitely make an impact on you.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/mo...#ixzz2I5Aa2gn9

His entire legacy is built on a hill of lies.

[adventure]

Your head is so far up your own a-- it's unbelievable.

Originally Posted by jonnythan

If he admits it, obviously he did it.

My original objection is unchanged though: it's wrong to strip him of his titles without an actual failed drug test or admission as required by the rules. Now that he has admitted it, it makes sense to strip him of the titles.

Not before, though. It was wrong to do so before there was any physical evidence.

[ollinger]

Does this mean he won't be in the Hall of Fame?