Lance folds on drug charges

Well seeing as his brother tested positive this year and has previous - showed to have paid many thousands of euros  to a doping doctor for "training plans" - what do we expect ?

All this has been obvious for years - as long as I've been into cycling anyway.   I did a quick search on here and some of us were saying Armstrong was nailed on as a doper 6-7 years ago.  I honestly think the only people who haven't assumed exactly what has now been proven were those who had only a passing interest in the sport.  

 What it needs is for those In charge to want to change the culture - but in reality Verbruggen and now McQuaid aren't that interested - they are more interested in their own careers.   Where are British Cycling in all this - why aren't they making public statements that the people at the top have to change.  It actually makes me feel that the amateur side of the sport should break away and leave the rest of them to it - road cycling is a great sport or hobby irrespective of what the pros get up to - I don't really want to have to have a uci racing licence (via BC) or organise races under UCI rules when they are headed up by this bunch of crooks.      

You may enjoy this article by Michael Barry. I did and thinks he makes a lot of sense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/sports/global/cyclings-new-path-to-a-clean-sport-must-continue.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

maybe he'll update and re-release Inside the Postal Bus.

it looks as if the LA legal backlash has started - News International (*spit*) are considering legal action against him for fraud over an out of court settlement they made in 2006 after an article accused him of doping and he contested it and won.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sunday-times-pursue-fraud-case-against-lance-armstrong

Did anyone catch the 5 live piece last night?

Why weren't they brave enough to broadcast before? My knowledge is thin on all this and it does appear that all the facts have been known for a while.

Didn't hear the 5Live thing but you're 100% correct. Anyone with more than a passing interest (like for more than 21days each July) knew pretty much everything that's come out in the past few months.  I think it would be fair to include journalists in that category.  Where was Roger Cook when we needed someone like him?  The BBC don't rely on advertising revenue so they IMHO are more culpable than most.  Hiding cheating isn't a public service in my book.

As for Barry.  WTF? What is it with everyone's been at it for a couple of decades but everyone stopped in 2006? Are we really supposed to buy that?  So the liers and cheats all stopped voluntarily in 2006...except the ones who didn't stop but the benefit just disappeared overnight meaning people could win clean?  I've checked and I can't see any ProTour parcours including a cobbled section of the Road to Damascus around that time.

Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth* or shut the fck up.

As we were. 

* oh and preferably BEFORE you're outed involuntarily and retired.

A lot of this stuff has been known for years - but Lance had very persuasive lawyers. 

However now USADA have said it - I guess its fine to repeat it.

I dont think I heard anything new - but then again I follow the sport. To a lot of casual sports fans - a lot would have been new.

Barry left USPS in 2006 so he would have left their doping plan.

Oh - then it was T Mobile in 2007 but didnt seem as successful there ? He may have been clean - I've no idea. 

I gave up smoking regularly in 1983 and told everyone including the missus, that I'd packed in.  but I hadn't really as I still had the odd few sneaky fags between 1985 and 1987

but then I gave up for good.  1987 coincided with me packing in corporate employed life for the life of self employment so I had no need of the fags any longer as my stress levels went plummeting downwards.

I'm still off the fags.

sounds familiar???  

I listened to the whole of the 5 live show. Made Lance out to be a nasty  monster. And as for the bit (can't remember which of them who said it) about them sneaking around like in a bad spy film with hat, scarf and dark glasses on  to pick up supplies - good grief! So which is worst - blood doping, EPO or testosterone? Be interesting to see if any suffer long term effects from taking all this crap. And the blood-doping doctors were referred to as vampires!

It seems to me that without all the recent admissions from Hincapie etc, there was very little that hadn't already been dragged through the courts (LA Confidential), could be written off as false claims from banned former team mates or otherwise wouldn't stand up in a court of law.  And there was Lance pointing out he'd never failed a test all the time.  Easy to say now that a journalist could have got further than David Walsh did, but I'm not so sure.

fat buddha wrote (see)

I gave up smoking regularly in 1983 and told everyone including the missus, that I'd packed in.  but I hadn't really as I still had the odd few sneaky fags between 1985 and 1987

If you confessed that your illicit supply of cigarettes was delivered to you personally by a young masseusse halfway up a pass in the French Alps, the fags would be the least of your worries.

I saw a report on the BBC (I think) last night that focussed on Lance getting his drug supplies from a motorcyclist. If I didnt know better I'd have thought they had some bloke on a kawasaki nipping through the race - giving LA his hypodermics mid race and buggering off. 

"So which is worst - blood doping, EPO or testosterone? Be interesting to see if any suffer long term effects from taking all this crap."

technically none of them are crap - they are all natural - EPO and testosterone (and HGH, another one used regulalry) are made by every human being in small quantities.  blood doping is the least natural of them.   and none of them should suffer any long term issues as levels will drop to normal once they stop.  

Oh our friend (and Lance and Yates) motoman? It's okay he's told us the truth and Brailsford has done his due diligence no doubt.

Nothing to see here.

Azure were. 

Couldn't Run A Bath wrote (see)

Nothing to see here.

Azure were. 

 

Very astute  I will get my cote.

fat buddha wrote (see)

"So which is worst - blood doping, EPO or testosterone? Be interesting to see if any suffer long term effects from taking all this crap."

I was regularly offered Human Growth Hormone and EPO as a young rugby player trying to make the grade back in the late 90s. Friends had made the leap to national league teams and said that it was a regular part of their conditioning programme, and that I needed to juice too in order to get the right physicality. One in particular I remember going from being a skinny former basketball international to being a rippling, 19-stone monster athlete. Maybe cycling is a sport that took cheating through doping to extremes. But cheating is rife in all sport. I'm finding all the wide-mouthed, faux-innocence of the media as nauseating as I find the dopers. Cycling's moment in the wider public consciousness will fade - quite possibly as soon as tonight if England lose to Poland and Rooney foul-mouths an official. The world keeps turning.

Good friend of mine from University was prescribed HGH as a kid. He was very short and apparently they went through a phase giving it to little kids. I remember the day he called me over to the TV and said that some people who had been given it had developed CJD (the human form of mad cow disease). I remember telling him it would never happen to him. A couple of years later he couldn't recognise any of us or communicate at all. He had the brain of a very small child at that point. Another year and he was dead. 

I wish people would stop messing with this crap. 

sadly the CJD/HGH link came too late for many people and supplies these days come from either bioengineered versions or different screened sources.

the bigger risk comes from those taking drugs from unlicenced sources, or overuse (anabolic steroids for one).  the pro cyclists at least - if there is any crumb of comfort here - were being medically monitored and taking drugs from licenced suppliers even if illegally obtained.  

STIL  - I've seen likewise with young rugby players on sterioids who get all bulked up.  one young lad suffered badly with compartment syndrome in his legs as his shin tendons couldn't cope with his rapidly bulked up muscles and he had to have them cut so he could walk.   

Surely the mental side effects are going to be worse, Hamilton and Pantani spring to mind as having suffered depression, Then theres the people destroyed because they didn't take drugs and those that didn't follow the Lance plan and got hounded out of the sport, both cyclists and team physios,coaches etc. I think this side is almost impossible to measure.

I hear Danny Boyle is makng a new Trainspotting film: