Anybody still think Floyd Landis is an innocent victim?

[Heucrazy]

These guys are all dopers, it's not even worth discussing anymore.

Ullrich, Zabel, Riis, Landis, Armstrong, Pantani etc

If anyone believed Armstrong was clean, that's ridiculous if you want to tell me a guy like Armstrong could win 7 straight Tour de France after having testicle cancer all that while competing against other top athletes that even admitted to doping?

People just don't want to believe it in Armstrongs case because they like this feel-good story.

Or it could be the fact that he never tested positive in spite of being the most frequently tested athlete in the entire sports world.

 

[Russ Smith]

Or it could be the fact that he never tested positive in spite of being the most frequently tested athlete in the entire sports world.

That's just it, most of those guys never tested positive. The tests have always been behind the technology used to cheat.

Remember the controversy was samples from years ago were tested and found to have EPO in them. That's because at the time those samples were given, there was no reliable test for EPO in urine, nobody knew then they'd be tripped up later. They saved the samples, years later they were used to test a procedure(they were literally trying to find out how far back that procedure could work) and surprise they found EPO in old samples that were completely anonymous to them when they ran the tests. Then they got access to the list to cross reference the samples, found out several were from Lance, and the whole thing wtih L' Equipe started.

Also, Lance did in fact test positive years ago, he said he had used a cream for saddle sores and that caused the result.

In July 1999, during the Tour de France that he was easily leading, Armstrong had a positive finding for steroid use. "I already knew about the steroid because Lance had told me," she is quoted as having said.

"He said he had used a steroid before or during the Route du Sud the month before, and he thought it would be OK for the Tour. He thought the drug would be completely eliminated from his body."

To resolve the looming scandal, she continues, Armstrong and two officials of his team decided to attribute the steroid to a cream used to treat saddle sores. Since Armstrong had not listed such a cream or treatment on his obligatory medical form, the team's doctor, according to this account, filled out a predated prescription.

At a news conference during the Tour, Armstrong explained the appearance of the steroid as a result of his treatment for a saddle sore.

http://www.active.com/story.cfm?story_id=10776&category=tdf2004_peloton&num=0

Lance's excuse was that as a result of his recovery from testiclar cancer he was prone to saddle sores and had used a cream that caused the test. That cream was subseuqently banned, but Lance never had to prove it caused the result, and he didn't disclose in advance he was using it as was required.

 

[BACH]

Or it could be the fact that he never tested positive in spite of being the most frequently tested athlete in the entire sports world.

And your point is?

Riis never tested positive when he won the TDF. He was tested 5 times in 22 days back then.

 

[slinslin]

Funny I remember Armstrong testing positive like 2 years ago but it was somehow dismissed... not just in 1999.

 

[Russ Smith]

Landis has a book coming out soon where he will tell the "real story" of how he won the TDF. He apparently notified the court since several chapters discuss his pending case which technically violates the court mandated gag order until his US hearing is over.

One of the more interesting things from his hearing is the case of Joe Papp. Papp is a middle of the pack rider who was suspended about a year before Landis' trial for synthetic testosterone in his system. He testified in the Landis case and said Landis and his team were being preposterous in claiming that doping with synthetic testosterone would be pointless, nobody would do it, and they're not even sure it was possible to do it. Papp said people do it all the time, he'd been doing it for years when he finally got caught, he was testifying because he thought Landis' claim was so outlandish it was embarassing.

Landis' team had a fascinating rebuttal, they claimed that Papp was testifying as part of a plea deal, that in exchange for his testimona, USADA gave Papp an extremely light suspension, one they called ridiculously low.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't that mean that Landis and his team are complaining that Papp's suspension was too short, even though they contend that what he was suspended for wouldn't work, nobody does it, and it's practically impossible to do? Why would they think he should get a longer suspension if they don't believe it's possible to do what he got suspended for?

 

[Russ Smith]

I just started reading a book last night(can't remember the title offhand) aobut doping in cycling. Talk about scary stuff. But one of the fascinating
things is why so many cyclists seem to come down with serious illnesses at a young age in the peak of health, like Lance Armstrong did. Because for years one of the ways they doped was giving them injections of cortisone which they believed help dramatically in recovery time from exertion. Of course cortisone suppresses your immune system, in one case a guy who was on the same junior team as Lance developed a severe case of human parvo virus that ended his career eventually. He was never fully recovered.

Parvo is apparently extremely common, over 60% of people will get it at some point in their lives, but it's usually harmless. IN his case he got it so severely he lost over 2 full years of his career and was never the same after.
He's convinced he got infected from a dirty needle that a doctor injected him with who told him it was "extract of cortisone." THe rider is now a doctor and knows that there is no such thing, it was straight cortisone and he's convinced that's why his infection was so bad.

All kinds of stuff about riders dying of heart attacks because EPO made their blood so thick they got a blood clot while sleeping. Guys used to rig heart monitors to alarms so that if their heart rate dropped too low it would wake them up so they could start doing jumping jacks to get the pulse rate up before they had a heart attack! 10 dutch riders in less than 2 years died of heart attacks from EPO in the late 80's early 90's.

I haven't gotten to the part yet about Landis right now they're tying in all these guys who at one point had ties to Lance Armstrong and were doping and building the case that Lance did too. The implication is that Landis had been suspected of doping for quite awhile prior to his TDF win but it got very little hype because nobody cared about Floyd Landis until after Lance retired.