Dublin Girl Accuses Tour Hero

limerickman

Todays Sunday Independent Newspaper here in Ireland carries
the above headline (there is a link but you need to be a subscriber to the Independent to gain access to it).

I'll briefly outline the article as I bought the newspaper this morning.

Didier Roux writes :

"Lance Armstrongs tour preparations have been rocked by the former masseuse Emma O'Reilly who claims that LA once said to her "You know enough to bring me down".

O'Reilly worked for USPS between 1996-2000 and was LA's masseuse for the 1999 and 2000 T'sDF.
O'Reilly casts a dark shadow over LA's whiter than white reputation.
O'Reilly, 34, paints an extraordinary portrait of the US sporting icon who conquered cancer to ride to the summit of cycling and who has always denied using performance enhancing drugs.

(Article goes on to cover allegations about bags with neddles at the 1998 Tour of Holland - O'Reilly driving to Spain to collect a
bottle of pills from Bryneel - giving LA make up to coverup traces of injections.)

O'Reilly recalls a conversation she had with LA at the Dauphine Libre in 1999 where LA complained of having a low haemocrit level and how "he was going to do what the others do" to increase the level.
O'Reilly says "I knew that EPO was the only answer".

O'Reilly states this in spite of LA's repeated rejection of any claims that he has ever taken EPO.
In the summer of 1999, when traces of corticosteroid - a banned
substance - was found in LA's urine in the Tour of Challans and announced during the 1999 TDF, O'Reilly claims that a US postal
doctor backdated a prescription for a poutice containing corticosteroid.
O'Reilly states "USPS chiefs wanted to ensure that LA's explanation would standup".

O'Reilly claims represent an atom bomb to the reputation of LA who is chasing TDF number 6.

So how come O'Reilly, who works at a sports centre in Manchester, has only now decided to speak, 4 years after leaving USPS ?
"Facts have matured my decision" - who repeated these claims to Paris-Match magazine.
"I felt implicit in this cynicism and I was very uncomfortable with it.
Since then racers have died.
Marco Pantani died in a hotel room drugged with anti-depressants.
Today riders are given drugs at a very young age.
The conversation ( at the 1999 Dauphine) with Lance shocked me.
He explained to sponsors and everyone that he was clean.
Young people believed him and they still believe him."

At USPS, a suspicious O'Reilly refused to participate in the teams medical program, which she claims "consisted of the administration of both legal and illegal drugs for recovery and performance ehancement".
"We knew it was happening but we rarely talked about it.
For example, there was a boy - officially called a trainer but between us, he was a courier.
The only person he would speak to was Dr. Lusi De Moral"
says O'Reilly.

Riders including LA used to ask O'Reilly for ice cubes.
"I asked them if something was inflamed.They used to reply that
there wasn't (anything inflamed). I later learnt that EPO had to be kept cold.They had a small flask to do this" says O'Reilly.

O'Reilly acknowledged that she difficulty with coming forward with this information.
"I don't feel good about what I am doing.But this helps my guilt.
This is not about revenge.
I would like to think that ll of the evidence in the book might help
to change things."

gntlmn

She might be more believable if she lived in America. Who knows what kind of deals she worked out prior to her allegations. She sure is getting a lot of publicity, way more than she probably ever got in her entire life or would have hoped to get.

limerickman

Well I transcribed the article to let the Forum members see the coverage over here : on the basis that most of them ain't subscribers to the Sunday Independent here in Ireland !

gntlmn

In fairness, I will post also Lance's rebuttal, which I have also posted under "Is Lance Doping" in the Bike Cafe forum.

Here's Lance's version of what she says quoted from Statesman.com in the article of June 27, 2004 entitled, "Lance Mentally Ready for France."

"I know (the book)'ll be interesting if you also like to read about two-headed babies, UFOs and the fact that Osama bin Laden is playing golf in Las Vegas," Armstrong said. "They're all interesting tidbits. But they're not factual."

steve007

@gntlmn

Exactly!

The article from the sunday independant is old news that appeared over a week ago anyway.

tafi

That is a rather cynical comment to make. But possibly true as well. She already is being dissmissed in the US simply because she is a foreigner.
I would also like to point out that the publicity that a whistleblower gets is far from flattering and not somehting that one would chase after for themselves. She may earn an unenviable reputiation as destroying the career of a sporting icon and the hatred of many fans. Is that the kind of publicity you would go chasing?
As I understand it O'Reilly left the team on good terms.

I do not want to damn anyone yet until I have seen evidence but professional cycling is still surrounded by a murky sesspool of suspicion whic will never be cleared away until there is a full commission of inquiry into the sport as a whole to eliminate doping. The Manzano revelations have gone some way towards this but the very fact that others are willing to close ranks around him makes me suspicious to start with.

suzylou

I'm not too sure about this.

I'd imagine that LA is probably THE most dope-tested rider on the planet right now, so it would be hard for him to get away with regular doping.

I'd not be surprised if he had tried it at some point earlier in his career - I'd guess that most young and ambitious riders do dabble at some stage.

As a former Dublin resident, I also feel confident saying that the Sunday Independent isn't exactly the world's premier news source She must have offered the story to other papers for more money and been turned down....

gntlmn

For people who want to make a living off publicity, any publicity is desirable, even bad publicity. Sometimes bad publicity works better because it gets more people paying attention to you. You have probably heard of the American shock jock Howard Stern.

As for whether I want to go chasing bad publicity, I would have to say no. But I don't want good publicity either. I am not one of those people who wants to make a living off publicity. So no publicity for me is best. But I am not Howard Stern, nor am I O'Reilly. Who knows what O'Reilly's motivations are.

Lance Armstrong is subject to random year round drug testing. If he were taking EPO, he would have a 1/8 chance of being caught each and every time he goes in to submit to one of these random tests. There is a very, very remote chance that he has beaten these odds and come clean when he has not been clean. The odds of a continuous false negative would be 7/8 to the power of the number of times he has submitted to a random test.

Let's play with some numbers because I don't know how often he has to submit. Let's say he has 12 tests a year randomly through the year. His odds of beating all tests for that year while taking EPO would be (7/8) to the 12 power. This is 0.201417238. Now let's say he submits every year for the past five years, every year taking 12 tests. His odds of a false negative would then be the odds of beating all tests in one year to the 5th power because he is beating each of these tests every single year for 5 years. This is 0.201417238 to the 5th power. The answer is 0.000331499732. Yes, it's that remote. That's a 3 out of 10,000 probability that he beat the test while taking EPO the whole time once every three weeks.

If you want to see how I derived the 1/8 probability of having detectable EPO traces while taking EPO regularly, please see what I have reposted beneath my next paragraph. This comes up from a thread I started under Grand Tours entitled EPO: Are the effects permanent?

Do you really think that Lance is using EPO considering the odds against it? Or do you think he is one of the 3 out of 10,000 who could have passed all his drug tests and still been dirty? Do you see why I am inclined to call O'Reilly a liar? It's about the probabilities. Maybe she didn't run these numbers before she went and blabbed to that quasi tabloid journalist Walsh. But when you do, I would be very surprised if you weren't inclined to believe that she is lying.

And here is the repost:

quote:
Originally posted by donhix1
I heard that long exposure to EPO screws up the bodies regulatory system so that natural EPO isn't produced at normal rates causing a mild anemia.
End of donhix1 quote.

Hmmm. This makes sense in that the body's regulatory mechanish does get damaged by long term drug use from at least one other drug--steroids. I heard it reduces the amount of natural testosterone which is produced, of course while taking them but also after taking them long term. So I wouldn't be surprised with EPO either.

I suppose those that do this on a regular basis may be shortening their lifespans.

One reason I doubt that Lance is doing EPO is that he is subject to random drug testing on a year round basis. This means that if he did EPO, every 3 weeks he would have a 72 hour window where he could get busted with traces in his blood. That's 3 days out of 24 or 1/8 of the time. If he has been getting tested randomly and regularly all year, every year for several years with EPO in his blood 1/8 of the time, odds are he wouldn't have made it clean even through one year of random drug tests, let alone several.

I don't think most riders are subject to random year round drug testing. If they know when the drug tests will be administered, they can easily cheat by abstaining for 72 hours prior to each test.

We need uniform random drug testing for all pro cyclists, not just some.

gntlmn

You must have been posting while I was posting. Please see my discussion above on the odds of continuously testing negative when you're really positive for EPO.

Also, what you say about the incident being isolated might be true, but if it is, and it was truly a case of doping in 1999, then O'Reilly is not coming forth now because of her concern that there is an ongoing problem with Lance continuing to dope. Her motivations must be otherwise. The odds of his continuing to dope and hide it are so remote. But of course, she may not have considered the odds, either. She may not realize how ludicrous her concerns are.

tafi

As I have said I'm not damning either of them but neither of you have come up with any proof. Satistics is all very well (I know how probability works). However you haven't included factors such as masking or the use of saline solution which can bring haematocrit levels down to the acceptable range very easily. To quote the chance of passing a lot of tests based on pure maths is very naive. And I would like to see proof that Armstrong is the most tested rider too.
If O'Reilly has sold an obviously fake story surely she would be standing in the witness box in defamation proceedings by now?

And you mean to say that Armstrong has never sold one story or another of his to newspapers before? He is very media savy and able to use it to his advantage. But like any allegation against him. His rantings are also just talk.
Can I also ask what is a reputable news source. A Lawyer?

Don't get me wrong things have hit the fan in Australia too, and now five riders must find a way of clearing themselves completely of wrongdoing unless one of them (and it may not have been any of them) admits to doping. Else none of them will ever be free of suspicion.

The "not here" attitude of Australia towards this issue has been quite naive. The "not our Lance" attitude may be similarly so.


It is true that many athletes including Lance have submitted statements stating that they had never "Tested positive". Very few of them actually go so far as to say that they "Don't take drugs".
the actions of many athletes has indicated that word alone cannot be trusted.

Rightly or wrongly there is now a definite stigma surrounding Armstrong and unless this can be dispelled it will remain forever.

gntlmn

Quotes from Tafi



The burden of proof rests with the party who makes a claim. In this case, O'Reilly has made claims. She has not offered proof; she expects us to take her word for it. For example, where are the vials she claims to have been asked to dispose of? She says she threw them away.

Well, if I make a claim that I own $1 billion dollars in gold buried 10 miles deep on the far side of the moon, and you doubt me, as I expect you would, I would expect you to ask me to prove it. I would not be able to. It's too hard to get over there, I might explain. Being unable to prove that I am wrong is not proof that I am right. The burden of proof would be on me to prove it exists, not on you to prove that it doesn't

By the same token, O'Reilly has made claims she cannot prove. The fact that we cannot prove her wrong is not evidence that she is correct. The burden of proof is on her. She is the one making unsubstantiated claims.

You make good points about the testing. I haven't included the reductions in the odds as you have suggested because I wanted to start with long odds and work my way down. It's a simplistic way of looking at it, I agree, but it's a good starting point. But while we play this numbers game, remember that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim that doping has occurred. That's the $1 billion in gold buried on the far side of the moon, the UFO, the Bin Laden in Vegas. There is no direct evidence of doping. She hasn't come up with anything which is concrete or has physical form. In other words, she has no physical evidence. Stories without physical evidence, while not necessarily false, are simply harder to believe because they could very easily be fabrications.

But getting back to what you have said about masking agents, you sound like you are informed to realize that there are tests for masking agents as well. I'm not a chemist, but I doubt that a rider is going to be much of one either. Let's just say that Lance makes an attempt to mask EPO (if that's what he is alleged to have doped with). He would have to mask successfully each and every time that he went in to get a random test and knew that he had EPO in his system. In a 5 year time, the most likely number of times he would be in the red zone, assuming he was tested 60 times (this is a guess), would be 60/8 = 7.5. Therefore, he would have to fool the chemists successfully 7.5 times, theoretically. If he does not, then he's crucified in the press. We would have heard about it. But he passed every time. So he is either a very good "street" chemist or simply a clean rider. I am inclined to believe that you can fool someone some of the time if you're an amateur, but not in the long run unless you are an expert. I doubt Lance is an expert chemist. He doesn't have the background. To include others as co conspirators would make it harder for him to contain the story, not easier. So that's not believable either. We are talking about a long time here. The testing would have exposed him if he were doping. If anything looks funny, like evidence of any kind of masking agents, I suspect they go deeply into the urinalysis to test further. How easy it is to fool them I don't know. I do know that if I get a drug test and I have eaten just one bagel with poppy seeds on it in the past 72 hours, I will get a positive result for opiates. This is an extremely sensitive test. You only need an extremely low concentration to test positive. In this case, it would be a false positive because poppy seeds are in the same family as morphine, but they aren't drugs. What I'm getting at is the following. If I had a drug pusher trying to convince me that I could easily beat drug tests by using masking agents, but I knew my entire reputation were on the line if I failed, who will I believe: the drug dealer or that the chemist is better at discovery than I, the amateur am better at hiding? I wouldn't make that stupid choice, but that doesn't mean Lance didn't. It just illustrates what he would have to ponder before going down such a course. I think, as you already know, that this choice is not believable.

As for proof that Armstrong is the most tested rider, I have never made that claim. If you have heard this, perhaps you could show me where you discovered that this is true. I would like to see the proof too. That he is tested randomly in the offseason I gleaned from the press. I would like to know exactly how his random drug testing program works. It will be easier to ponder the probabilities.



I don't know what you're driving at here. Maybe you can explain what this has to do with whether O'Reilly is making a far fetched claim or not. What Lance is making clear is the fact that she has no physical evidence. If she said she saw a UFO today that abducted her, opened her brain, took samples of her various tissues and then released her but she had no scars, her story would not be very believable. It might be true, but I doubt it. She has done the same thing with Lance. She has no physical evidence. The difference between her and someone on the street who would make such a claim is that she worked with USPS. That seems to be about it.



I am not basing my analysis on a "not our Lance" attitude. I am simply looking at the facts that have been presented and using reasoning. I come to bat when it seems that injustice is done. Justice, in this case, has nothing to do with who is being incriminated. It has to do with whether the allegations are true. It doesn't seem like it in this case.



To say they "Don't take drugs" is a statement that cannot be substantiated. It's like saying that that gold is buried on the far side of the moon. It may be true, but you can't prove it. I suspect that Lance is aware of this argument, and sidesteps this issue by saying "I have always tested positive." This is a statement that can be proven. The evidence is the conclusion of the testers when they analyze every sample. That he has always tested positive is strong evidence that he has not been doping, but it is not 100% reliable. It is 100% reliable in that the results were all negative, but ever so slightly less than that that the results indicate no drug use. It is only at best 9,997/10,000 proven by the testing. It has a 3/10,000 probability of a false negative in 5 years, using the assumptions I made. That's slim odds.



I think people for the most part don't believe tales that are based on no physical evidence. Some do, but I suspect they are the minority. So I suppose if there is a stigma, it will not be dispelled from these people because they do not think rationally. They would not believe the physical evidence that would exonerate Lance, if this did exist, because they are believing the story of O'Reilly even though she has no physical evidence. So they are the same type of people who would believe far fetched stories published in the tabloids. It would be tough to teach them logic when they have a habit of not looking for physical evidence to determine whether a statement is true or not. So I suppose that a small minority might continue to believe these allegations.

tafi

If you do not know if any claims are true, proven or not, then it means that you do not know. It does not make them unlikely.
The fact that you are prepared to continue to put figures on your arguments is a worry because that sort of thing cannot be quantified.

Sure I believe in the right to assume innocence. But I have to say that the way in which the sport has been treated in the past by those that have doped changes the playing field quite substantially.

As a very recent example take David Millar who strenuously denied all allegations made by Cedric Vaseur. He could easily continue to stand up and say that he hasn't tested positive. Yet by his own admission now, he has cheated.

You could also look at it from an economic point of view. These guys are paid millions for what amounts to not more than a no-brainer 9-5 job. If they dope then they defraud team mates, competetors, sponsors, fans, etc. of a great deal of money. In most other jobs there would be a fair bit more accountability placed on the employee.

Please understand I am not trying to drag anyone down but you cannot damn someone because what they say won't stand up in court. To use some probability you stand a 50% chance of O'Reilly being right or wrong.

gntlmn

In your first paragraph, you need to be specific. Please list where have I erroneously applied figures to my arguments. And what I am saying about believability is that physical evidence is a far stronger argument than mere words. O'Reilly has offered mere words, no physical evidence. If for a moment you imagine all arguments that can be made without physical evidence, clearly the answer is infinity. You are not bounded by reality. Conjure up fantasies at will from your imagination because you don't have to come up with evidence. This may have been what she did. It may be that what she claims is true, that she observed certain things which indicated suspicious activities were occurring. This doesn't mean indications were correct. The alleged observations may have been the result of something which was not doping. Perhaps the syringes, if they truly did exist, were for vitamin injections. I would be more inclined to believe another explanation rather than doping because of my exhaustive, but as you suggest, rough estimate that the odds to beat all the tests is far less than 1%. So until I figure conclusively otherwise, I must believe what I have rationally computed and conclude that the odds suggest she is lying.

The thing about Millar is that the authorities found used syringes in his apartment. Upon questioning, he admitted he had taken EPO. I suppose that he could have denied it, but I suppose that that path would have resulted in stiffer action against him. This case is different because indeed there was physical evidence against him--the syringes. As for O'Reilly's contentions, there is no existing physical evidence against Lance. She has come up with a story about syringes, but no syringes. Do you see the difference?

How is it that you suspect that cyclists have less accountability than other employees? They are subject to ongoing drug testing. Many non cyclist employees are not. You cannot base the claim that cyclists are less accountable than other employees on the fact that someone who has no physical evidence to back her story has pointed the finger at a famous cyclist. Anyone can do that. It doesn't mean it is true. Until I see some proof otherwise, I must believe the proof in front of my eyes, that Lance has passed every drug test with flying colors. He has been held accountable, and he has passed the tests.

To figure odds that O'Reilly is right or wrong is not a simple one figure probability. It is at multi step process. For one, she may have fabricated the whole story. For another, she may have observed syringes, but they may not have been used for doping. She may have told the truth, and they may have been used for doping.

Based on the evidence at hand that we have before our eyes, the odds that she fabricated the entire story seem very high, like higher than 99% to me based on the drug testing analysis. It must be this because if she were telling the truth and he only doped that one time, then his performance would have measurably declined since then. But he just did his best time up Dauphin Libere only 2 weeks ago. Therefore, either he doped then and it didn't help him, or he didn't dope then. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done his best time.

Let's assume that he did dope and continued to dope all along. That's the only other way that he could have maintained his supreme performance all this time. Then he would have had to beat all the drug tests all along for this 5 years. Go back to my analysis in my prior post, and you will see that the odds of this are very slim. There is a far less than 1% probability that he could have been doping all along.

I'd say that if she did observe syringes, then they were not used for doping. Otherwise the consistent performance would not have been maintained by Lance. This is the only situation out of those I have posed where she might have better than 1% odds of truth, but this would be a case of exonerating Lance, not implicating him.

So you see, the odds of her telling the truth are way lower than 50%. They are way lower than 1%.

Ted B

LA has submitted at least as much body fluids to analysis as any pro since 1999 (read his books). This is almost certainly because the French have been very reluctant to accept the fact that a cancer survivor can excel in such a rigorous sport. In fact, LA contends the opposite...that the suffering of cycling pales in contrast to the suffering one learns to endure when subjected to repeated sessions of IV chemotherapy.

O'Reilly is an 'unknown' who can only offer circumstantial evidence (her word), and no one can really know for certain her true motives or what type of deal(s) she may have made to say what she's said. As it is, some of the things she's said don't quite add up (IMO).

Meanwhile, the existing proof consists of the fact that LA submits to testing on a frequent basis and has done so for years. If LA can dope and get away with it for that long, the entire drug testing program should be shut down, being a waste of time and money. Furthermore, LA's physician should be considered for the Nobel Prize for successfully rendering modern doping detection techniques useless.