Mr. 60%, should he have his tour win revoked?

patch70

Interesting thread.

Back to the topic of Riis and his current role:
I have heard rumours that the CSC success of the last few years is partly attributed to a very good cocktail of PED's. Obviously just rumours but the source was more credible than reading it on cyclingforums.com

micron

wouldn't it be more surprising if there was a top team that wasn't using PEDs? Festina were scapegoats in the 90s, Phonak have taken that role in the 00s and somehow we're all supposed to believe they're isolated cases (Cofidis having played by the UCI rules & made their cosmetic changes). Strikes me the ProTour is a nice cosy club all signed up to 'ethical' codes that I suspect serve simply to turn a blind eye to the big boys.

tcklyde

If LA's improvement post cancer is so miraculous, exactly what magic dope is he taking and how come every other cheater out there isn't taking it? I mean, EPO can provide a modest improvement and blood doping took Hamilton's mediocre talent up a notch. But If LA's improvement is so stupifying, surely you guys don't think it's jsut EPO or extra blood, right?

__________________
Harry

micron

Just look at George Hincapie - Classic specialist - power up those hills at a tempo that climbers like Mayo and Simoni and Heras can't hold. To what do we attribute this? Superior training methods? Which any other team has access to and employs (read Kloeden's recent interview). Or something else? Because if Hincapie's 2004 Tour performance isn't that of a carthorse transformed into a thoroughbred, I don't know what is.

DiabloScott

Right, Lance has the superjuice that no one else (rider, doctor, or official) knows about and nobody knows how to test for. It doesn't affect his hematocrit or any other tested blood parameters but it turns him from a moderately successful one-day racer into the record holder for TDF wins with the possible side effect of causing testicular cancer metastasizing throughout his whole body in the interim.

If Lance had dope that good he wouldn't need to be a TDF specialist, he could win everything. If Lance's dope is the same as everybody else's but he has some way of masking it better then he wouldn't have any performance advantage.

Gene therapy? That's a stretch, but maybe… what would it do? Without specifics you're just spouting conspiracy theories in hopes that one will stick.

If he's doing something he'll eventually get caught, or someone will rat him out (someone with more hard evidence than what's-her-name), or he'll confess, or he'll die.

And Kloeden rode just as aggressively as Armstrong did in the last 5km of that stage - except he didn't have a team willing to bury themselves for him and he was just a smidge more tired at the sprint. My ProCycling mags take a couple weeks longer to get here than they do to Ireland I guess so I haven't seen the interview yet but I'm looking forward to it.

__________________


http://diabloscott.blogspot.com

tcklyde

These are excellent points. I'll add that for the superjuice theory to be true, it's necessary that LA has been on it since at least 1998 ... seven years ago (afterall, he got 4th in the Vuelta that year). So the superjuice was developed over seven years ago and during that time it has been kept completely secret. It has not been shared with any other atheletes during this time. It was originally given to LA presumably for free or very little b/c, afterall, LA was just a classics rider up to that point and didn't have much cash. If such a miraculous product exists, one would think the medical properties could be worth millions, yet the superjuice juicer gives it only to LA.

To me, only one solution makes sense: LA invented the superjuice himself! See, during his cancer treatment, he spent all his free time in the lab, concocting this magic formula. He uses it only for himself, although he occasionally puts a few teaspoons into Hincapie's coffee or Landis's oatmeal on big mountain days.

__________________
Harry

micron

Well, it will certainly be interesting to see how Landis does at Phonak, won't it?

DiabloScott

I don't think Landis is going to have a chance to do anything. Phonak won't even be showing at most of the PT races, and the other races won't have many PT teams.

__________________


http://diabloscott.blogspot.com

limerickman

I have a lot of sympathy for Landis - he joined in good faith (presumably) and here he has a team that is disintegrating before the season starts.

patch70

Why do you think it is just one single superjuice that has stayed constant over the period of Lance's comeback till now?

Most cyclists take a coacktail of legal +/- illegal substances to help them get through the grand tours. I heard a pro talking about getting an infusion of intralipid, vitamins, fluid and insulin at the end of each stage. In that group, only the insulin is illegal. But, doping at the top level is not just a question of "is someone using Epo?". It is a whole combination of things.For example, Epo, blood doping, growth hormone, testosterone, anabolic +/- cortico-steroids, creatine, & whatever else that we may not have even heard about yet. Get the drug combination and the timings they are given right, and you might just see an advantage over other cyclists. Also, new drugs are being studied all the time so it is likely the "right" combination varies over the years.

Perhaps USPS had better knowledge about optimum doses, ideal doping timing and useful drug combinations than other teams??? Such information would not be worth anywhere near as much as a new whiz-bang performance enhancing drug that could be sold on a wide scale but would certainly make the team doctor or whoever very valuable to his/her team.

tcklyde

So you're proposing, now, that Bristol Meyers funded a major dope invention program with the plan to feed it to Armstrong? Keep in mind that this must have happened before Armstrong had any substantial funds. What exactly would Bristol Meyers do this for? Certainly there R&D would be directed towards something they could legally profit from, not a mysterious superjuice that they gave only to Lance Armstrong. Not to mention the legal and public relations implications of getting caught would be catastrophic for the company. Bristol has 5,400 research staff. All this would be kept a secret for more than seven years?

The number of steps one must climb to make the "LA uses the superjuice argument" are staggering.

> In addition, the entire peloton is a rolling drug trials laboratory anyway.

So that's why Omega Pharma wanted to sponsor a team. To save on research costs!

> In the end, the athlete with the best doping protocols, drugs, methods, and own unique reaction to this synthetic process may emerge as a dominant rider.

This is the damned if you do, damned if you don't logic that bugs me: If you're the dominant rider, you must dope. If you don't dope, you're not the dominant rider. By this logic, LA became a doper because he won the Tour.

The only thing I don't get about this logic is that no one is yet calling for Cunego's head...

__________________
Harry