Armstrong surrounded by drug rumors yet again

[Russ Smith]

I get your point I guess we just disagree on it. If it were me and I was afraid something was going to tarnish my image, I'd come out before the race and make it perfectly clear I took EPO and steroids during my recovery, here are the dates I took it, here's what I took, at these levels.

Hell I'd go to a lab and give a blood and urine sample and have them test it to find out if I was going to fail a test or not, I don't see that to be very difficult, especially someone who's in a sport where they get tested all the time. It was counter productive for him to conceal that he'd used it because it just raised suspicions later.

THe way he claims this is a witch hunt by the French bugs me too. Did you know he's suing a texas insurance company because they refuse to pay off on bonuses he earned by winning the TDF in 02,03 and 04? The reason they refuse is they say there's sufficient reason to doubt he won the races legitimately, and this case is several months old he's due to go to court on it fairly soon in Texas, so they doubted him BEFORE this latest story broke.

I think Lance is to cycling what Carl Lewis was to track, an amazing performer who will be endlessly linked to drug use suspicions.

 

[Crazy Canuck]

I get your point I guess we just disagree on it. If it were me and I was afraid something was going to tarnish my image, I'd come out before the race and make it perfectly clear I took EPO and steroids during my recovery, here are the dates I took it, here's what I took, at these levels.

Hell I'd go to a lab and give a blood and urine sample and have them test it to find out if I was going to fail a test or not, I don't see that to be very difficult, especially someone who's in a sport where they get tested all the time. It was counter productive for him to conceal that he'd used it because it just raised suspicions later.

THe way he claims this is a witch hunt by the French bugs me too. Did you know he's suing a texas insurance company because they refuse to pay off on bonuses he earned by winning the TDF in 02,03 and 04? The reason they refuse is they say there's sufficient reason to doubt he won the races legitimately, and this case is several months old he's due to go to court on it fairly soon in Texas, so they doubted him BEFORE this latest story broke.

I think Lance is to cycling what Carl Lewis was to track, an amazing performer who will be endlessly linked to drug use suspicions.

Russ... If we knew what we now know... of course your approach makes absolute sense. But, what he did (no doubt under advice) and, may I add, what you would have actually done under these precise circumstances, would be based on the best advice available at the moment. Lance, his people... (nor you)... could possibly guage all eventualities 5,6 years hence.

As for the court case. The onus is on the Insurance co. to prove that Lance actually was using illegal enhancers. Rumour and innuendo is insufficient, I'd venture.

 

[Russ Smith]

To show how obsessed I am with this I tried to call in to Larry King tonight to ask Lance questions but I didn't make it past the screener.

I had 3 questions based on comments he made during the show.

1) You said they violated confidentiality rules because single source samples are NEVER to be made public(no A sample). THen you said they didn't ask for your permission to test as the rule requires. if the sample is confidential, how do they know who to ask for permission?

2) You said you weren't questioning the documentation linking you to the tests, you were questioning what was in the vial, you said it was tampered with. Since we know the vials were NOT labelled with names, how did they know which samples to tamper with? Remember only 12-15 came up positive so we know they didn't tamper with them all.

3) You said you gave 17 samples that year and only 6 were positive, why were the other 11 negative? Well the inventor of this newer test says it will detect EPO in urine for 3-5 days since it's used. Isn't it plausible in a race that takes over 2 weeks that you simply didn't stop using the EPO early enough and the first tests were positive and the later ones were negative? Given you had no idea in 1999 what the safe window was to stop to avoid detection(since the test didn't exist) isn't it entirely plausible that anybody cheating could have some positive and some negatives depending on when they quit EPO?

As you can see my questions were too long and they told me point blank they weren't taking such detailed questions.

Oh well.

 

[Crazy Canuck]

To show how obsessed I am with this I tried to call in to Larry King tonight to ask Lance questions but I didn't make it past the screener.

I had 3 questions based on comments he made during the show.

1) You said they violated confidentiality rules because single source samples are NEVER to be made public(no A sample). THen you said they didn't ask for your permission to test as the rule requires. if the sample is confidential, how do they know who to ask for permission?

2) You said you weren't questioning the documentation linking you to the tests, you were questioning what was in the vial, you said it was tampered with. Since we know the vials were NOT labelled with names, how did they know which samples to tamper with? Remember only 12-15 came up positive so we know they didn't tamper with them all.

3) You said you gave 17 samples that year and only 6 were positive, why were the other 11 negative? Well the inventor of this newer test says it will detect EPO in urine for 3-5 days since it's used. Isn't it plausible in a race that takes over 2 weeks that you simply didn't stop using the EPO early enough and the first tests were positive and the later ones were negative? Given you had no idea in 1999 what the safe window was to stop to avoid detection(since the test didn't exist) isn't it entirely plausible that anybody cheating could have some positive and some negatives depending on when they quit EPO?

As you can see my questions were too long and they told me point blank they weren't taking such detailed questions.

Oh well.

Good questions, Russ.

Lance may think he's addressed the issues fully, but it will be interesting to see what Dick Pound, the Montreal lawyer - who heads the Olympic anti doping organization (WADA) - has to say in the next few weeks.

 

[Russ Smith]

Good questions, Russ.

Lance may think he's addressed the issues fully, but it will be interesting to see what Dick Pound, the Montreal lawyer - who heads the Olympic anti doping organization (WADA) - has to say in the next few weeks.

Pound was quoted yesterday as saying the A sample B sample stuff is nonsense he said in effect do you know how many times in history a B sample has been used to exonerate an athlete who failed a test with an A sample? Almost never, it just never happens so to suggest that because there are no A samples the tests are invalid is just silly.

Lance is really pushing it here he's essentially accused those in the lab of doctoring his urine samples now so HE is now subject to a lawsuit over defamation if one of those lab people decides to sue. It would be interesting, I would assume if such a suit were filed that a lot of stuff Lance doesn't want coming out, might come out, I think he was REALLY stupid to go and make those charges. He admitted last night the documents shown matching him to the number on the positive samples were legit, he said that's not what was tampered with it's the urine in the vials that was tampered with.

He did admit last night that he stopped EPO in 1996 so there's no way that cancer treatments left EPO traces in his urine in 1999, he admitted that to Bob Costas last night.

 

[Crazy Canuck]

Pound was quoted yesterday as saying the A sample B sample stuff is nonsense he said in effect do you know how many times in history a B sample has been used to exonerate an athlete who failed a test with an A sample? Almost never, it just never happens so to suggest that because there are no A samples the tests are invalid is just silly.

Lance is really pushing it here he's essentially accused those in the lab of doctoring his urine samples now so HE is now subject to a lawsuit over defamation if one of those lab people decides to sue. It would be interesting, I would assume if such a suit were filed that a lot of stuff Lance doesn't want coming out, might come out, I think he was REALLY stupid to go and make those charges. He admitted last night the documents shown matching him to the number on the positive samples were legit, he said that's not what was tampered with it's the urine in the vials that was tampered with.

He did admit last night that he stopped EPO in 1996 so there's no way that cancer treatments left EPO traces in his urine in 1999, he admitted that to Bob Costas last night.

I believe that Lance was quoted as saying that he'd not be pursuing the issue before the courts, but - as you point out - by impugning the lab and it's technicians, he may have to defend himself. It's interesting (and it makes me quite suspicious) how he is now trying to play the anti-French card.

 

[Russ Smith]

I believe that Lance was quoted as saying that he'd not be pursuing the issue before the courts, but - as you point out - by impugning the lab and it's technicians, he may have to defend himself. It's interesting (and it makes me quite suspicious) how he is now trying to play the anti-French card.

He was already sued by the Italian rider he named last night as having slandered Michele Ferrari. He called the guy an "compulsive liar" and was sued for slander. Italian Police also investigated Lance because of a charge that he threatened and verbally and physically assaulted the Italian rider trying to get him to recant his statements about Ferrari. I don't know the outcome of those cases but here's a story about it.


"Lance Armstrong flew to Italy on Wednesday to meet with an Italian magistrate about the Filippo Simeoni case. Prosecutors are investigating whether Armstrong verbally assaulted or slandered Simeoni after Simeoni testified against Michele Ferrari in his doping trial. Ferrari was convicted last year.

Armstrong had worked closely with Ferrari before the doping case against him was launched, then broke off the relationship.

At last year's Tour, Armstrong chased down a break that included Simeoni, then told the group that he would let it escape only if Simeoni was not involved.

La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that magistrates are investigating whether Armstrong asked Mario Cippollini to pressure his Domina Vacanze management to get teammate Simeoni removed from the team. That accusation apparently comes from Vincenzo Santoni, still managing Simeoni while Cippollini moved on to Liquigas-Bianchi.

Simeoni also has a libel suit pending against Armstrong in France, stemming from Armstrong calling Simeoni "a compulsive liar" and saying Simeoni had been doping before he ever hooked up with Ferrari."

The other interesting thing, the former assistant who came out last year and said he'd found androgens (steroids) in Lance's things in 2002 also said that it was untrue Lance was no longer working with Ferrari, that as late as 2002, Ferrari was training Lance in the Canary Islands. That has never been confirmed but they have confirmed that Ferrari and Lance were both in the Canary Islands during the time the assistant said this happened and Lance admitted last night they're still friends, just not professionally.

He's really going down a slippery slope the more people he accuses the more likely someone is going to sue him and the more likely someone is going to dig up a bunch of stuff from his past that will make him look even worse than he does now. He should have just issued the denial and dropped it.

 

[Crazy Canuck]

French fans rip L'Equipe for report


Associated Press
8/27/2005 11:42:04 AM

PARIS (AP) - French fans directed harsh words at the newspaper that accused seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong of doping, saying the report has no bearing on their respect for the American cyclist.

L'Equipe published a series of letters-to-the-editor in its weekend magazine Saturday in response to last week's cover story that Armstrong used a banned blood booster in his first Tour win in 1999. The cyclist has denied the charges.If the seven letters published, six voiced support for Armstrong and varying degrees of anger at the newspaper for what they called pointless muckraking.

Leave him alone!" wrote Eugenie Hays from the Brittany town of La Forest-Landerneau. Like many readers, she noted that so many athletes take banned products these days but not everyone inspires like Armstrong. "Don't shatter our dreams."

Louis Riche, another reader, wrote in to say that, "these accusations (true or false having little importance) only show one thing: that scientific research is seven years late."

He questioned whether French cyclists would face the same scrutiny as the American star.

"So, in six years we'll know if Thomas Voeckler was doped on the 2004 Tour," Riche asked about the rider who held the yellow jersey for 10 stages that year. "Ah, no, am I crazy? He's French."

L'Equipe reported Tuesday that new tests on six urine samples he provided during the 1999 tour resulted in positive results for the red blood cell-booster EPO.

William Dubois wrote to say he does a fair amount of cycling and understands the need for an energy booster.

"For me, my EPO, from time to time is (licorice-flavoured aperitif) pastis and, at Sunday dinner, a good glass of wine! I know that professionals don't only drink mineral water," he said.

Not everyone spared Armstrong from judgment.

"You were my hero," wrote Rahila Abdul. "Why did you do it?"

 

[Stout]

French fans rip L'Equipe for report


Associated Press
8/27/2005 11:42:04 AM

PARIS (AP) - French fans directed harsh words at the newspaper that accused seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong of doping, saying the report has no bearing on their respect for the American cyclist.

L'Equipe published a series of letters-to-the-editor in its weekend magazine Saturday in response to last week's cover story that Armstrong used a banned blood booster in his first Tour win in 1999. The cyclist has denied the charges.If the seven letters published, six voiced support for Armstrong and varying degrees of anger at the newspaper for what they called pointless muckraking.

Leave him alone!" wrote Eugenie Hays from the Brittany town of La Forest-Landerneau. Like many readers, she noted that so many athletes take banned products these days but not everyone inspires like Armstrong. "Don't shatter our dreams."

Louis Riche, another reader, wrote in to say that, "these accusations (true or false having little importance) only show one thing: that scientific research is seven years late."

He questioned whether French cyclists would face the same scrutiny as the American star.

"So, in six years we'll know if Thomas Voeckler was doped on the 2004 Tour," Riche asked about the rider who held the yellow jersey for 10 stages that year. "Ah, no, am I crazy? He's French."

L'Equipe reported Tuesday that new tests on six urine samples he provided during the 1999 tour resulted in positive results for the red blood cell-booster EPO.

William Dubois wrote to say he does a fair amount of cycling and understands the need for an energy booster.

"For me, my EPO, from time to time is (licorice-flavoured aperitif) pastis and, at Sunday dinner, a good glass of wine! I know that professionals don't only drink mineral water," he said.

Not everyone spared Armstrong from judgment.

"You were my hero," wrote Rahila Abdul. "Why did you do it?"

Great stuff!

 

[Renz]

UCI: No doping evidence against Lance
Associated Press

AIGLE, Switzerland (AP) - Cycling's world governing body criticized world doping authorities and a French sports newspaper for alleging seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing substances six years ago.

The UCI said Friday it was still gathering information and had asked the World Anti-Doping Agency and the French laboratory which tested the samples taken from Armstrong in 1999 for more background. It also wanted to know who commissioned the research and who agreed to make it public.

"How could this be done without the riders' consent?" the UCI said.

Last month, Armstrong was accused of doping by L'Equipe, which reported that the blood booster EPO was found in six of his 1999 urine samples.

Armstrong has angrily denied the charges, saying he was the victim of a "witch hunt." He questioned the validity of testing samples frozen six years ago, and how the samples were handled.

"The UCI statement from our standpoint was encouraging to the extent they seem to be conducting a meaningful investigation and they seem to be asking the right questions," Armstrong's agent Bill Stapleton said Friday.

The UCI also asked WADA to say if it allowed the results to be disseminated, which the cycling federation says is a "breach of WADA's anti-doping code."

"We have substantial concerns about the impact of this matter on the integrity of the overall drug testing regime of the Olympic movement, and in particular the questions it raises over the trustworthiness of some of the sports and political authorities active in the anti-doping fight," the UCI said.

The UCI also said it had received no evidence of doping despite requests.

"The UCI has not to date received any official information or document" from anti-doping authorities or the laboratory reportedly involved in the testing of urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France, the cycling federation said.

UCI president Hein Verbruggen has asked for harsh sanctions against dopers and suggested Armstrong should face sanctions if he were shown to be guilty.

He also told Friday's Le Figaro that Armstrong had proposed before the Tour that all of his urine samples be kept for tests over the next 10 years.

UCI said it was still "awaiting plausible answers" to its requests to WADA and the laboratory.

"We deplore the fact that the long-established and entrenched confidentiality principle could be violated in such a flagrant way without any respect for fair play and the rider's privacy," it said.

UCI singled out WADA president Dick Pound for making "public statements about the likely guilt of an athlete on the basis of a newspaper article and without all the facts being known." Dick Pound is a jerk.

It also criticized the article in L'Equipe as "targeting a particular athlete."

L'Equipe said it would react of UCI's criticism in Saturday editions. Tour de France organizers had no immediate reaction, spokesman Matthieu Desplats said.

Claude Droussent, the editor of L'Equipe, denied his newspaper targeted Armstrong because he is American, and said it would have treated a French rider the same. Yeah, right!

Armstrong retired after winning his seventh straight Tour title in July, but said this week he is considering a comeback. He plans to attend the Discovery Channel team training camp this winter.

 

[Russ Smith]

Talk about misleading titles to a story. The title implies they checked and found no evidence of doping, but in reality all they say is they haven't received any evidence yet from WADA or the lab involved.

Guess what, they probably never will, they have to go TO the lab to get that. If you're accusing a lab of tampering with urine samples(like LA did) or botching tests, you don't have them pack everything up and ship it to you, you go to them and inspect them onsite.

Curious to see what the Saturday story from the French paper says in rebuttal.

 

[Russ Smith]

Yesterday Armstrong and his handlers held a 45 minute teleconference where they blasted everyone and accused the lab again of urine tampering. Lance then announced he will NOT come back because he thinks he wouldn't get a fair shake in the TDF if he did.

Dick Pound has come out and said it was the head of the UCI, Hein Verbruggen, who supplied the documents to the paper that allowed them to verify the samples belonged to Armstrong in the first place. He's denied he was the leak, he's also the guy saying so far they have not gotten any evidence from WADA so you can see there's a lot of intrigue going on. IF Pound is right the very guy investigating this for UCI, is the source of the original leak. If Pound is wrong, he probably ought to be removed as head of WADA he can't make accusations like that about Verbruggen if they're not true.

Armstrong now says he thinks Pound is out to get him because several years ago he openly criticized Pound. He thinks Pound planted the ID code linking him to the samples and said today he might call Pound a bad guy and a crook.

Here's the part where Verbruggen is said to have provided the leak.



"Mr. Verbruggen told us that he showed all the forms of Mr. Armstrong to L'Equipe and that he even gave the journalist a copy of one of the documents," Pound said during a conference call from Montreal.


"I don't understand why they're not stepping up to that and saying, 'Well, I guess we do know how the name got public, we made it possible,' " he said.


But Armstrong said that he himself had authorized releasing the forms to L'Equipe. He said the request from the newspaper was to check whether the UCI had granted him any medical exemptions during competition, not to find out if the numerical code used by race official to identify Armstrong matched the one attached to the urine samples.

So clearly something is not right with this whole situation, a whole lot of people accusing each other of wrongdoing.

 

[vince56]

Dick Pound

OT:

 

[Renz]

Yesterday Armstrong and his handlers

LOL! We know you dislike Armstrong, but if ever there were someone in charge of their own career it is Lance Armstrong.

 

[Russ Smith]

LOL! We know you dislike Armstrong, but if ever there were someone in charge of their own career it is Lance Armstrong.

he hired a PR firm and they and his agent set up the teleconference so I thought handlers was a fair way to describe it. He told the media he'd answer all the questions and then basically spent

I don't dislike Lance I admire what he's done for cancer, I just think he's completely lying about using EPO.

 

[Renz]

he hired a PR firm and they and his agent set up the teleconference so I thought handlers was a fair way to describe it. He told the media he'd answer all the questions and then basically spent

I don't dislike Lance I admire what he's done for cancer, I just think he's completely lying about using EPO.

Fair enough.