Lance Armstrong about to go down on 60minutes.

Know Nothing wrote:

Lorenzo the Magnificent wrote:

I think LA most likely doped, but that clip makes Tyler Hamilton look as weasly, nervous, and odd as it's possible to be.

Lance is blessed by his enemies.

He doped. They all doped. Lance is still the best, because everyone was and still is doped and he beat them. I don't mind, it's still exciting to watch. All his former teammates accusing him also doped. In the long run, nobody cares, and Lance will never go down because Livestrong does too much good to fall with Lance's house of cards.

I think these were probably the best posts in the thread. I'm sure I've defended Lance in the past at one stage or another and - hell - I even raised money for Hamilton's charity once upon a time. But the fact of the matter is Hamilton looks like a weasel, none of Lance's "outers" are credible because they've all got horrible histories and something to gain, and ultimately the overall impact on society (particularly for anyone affected by cancer) is a net loss if Armstrong does go down.

Bit of a shame really, but does no one much good if he goes down. Surely everyone else on the podium during the Armstrong area was doped to the gills... "can't make a donkey into a show horse".

I am not and will not defend doping, just don't think this will take him down and not sure I care if he ever does topple.

Look there are a few jock sniffers that won't believe LA doped until he rides across the finish line with a syringe stuck in his arm with a big lable "EPO" on it, or if the big liar himself were to come out and admit it.

They are like a religion's True Believers.. logic and thought play no part of their defense of LA.

therealscotty wrote:

Lance has more than 500 tests...ALL positive.

Where's the proof? Just because Lance and his PR firm says it over and over, it doesn't mean it's true. You probably believe there were WMD in Iraq too. Lance wasn't even the most tested cyclist during his era.

As another poster mentioned, all of the pro-Lance folks need to go to the cylingnews website and read the clinic.

Lance is a fraud, period. He hides behind the cancer screen... "look at how much good he's done." Look at how much money he has made from promoting cancer. Cancer that was likely caused by PED use.

I used to watch the Tour de France every summer cheering for Lance, but I finally took my head out of the sand and saw the reality. It's not a pretty picture.

He's done a great job of smearing people who've come forward and the number of people is extensive. Do you really believe they are all out to get Lance?

Finally, Lance was a great cyclist, but he apparently responds very well to drugs. Look at his record in grand tours before cancer. Please explain his sudden emergence as the "best Tour rider in history." It seems that his association with Ferrari, a sophisticated PED program, and payments to the UCI were more likely responsible for his success than "his high VO2 max" or talent.

Does it go "swoosh" when things go completely over your head like that?

Yaroslav wrote:

Little respect, even though he might be telling the truth.

he is telling the truth. And he's only coming out with it after he HAD to say this all:

It's not like Landis, who also was telling the truth, but did it like a sleaze ball.

ciclista wrote:

Bit of a shame really, but does no one much good if he goes down.

What about his competitors who refused to dope, and therefore couldn't even make the pro teams, or were relegated to the back of the pack?

What about up-and-coming elite endurance athletes who now face the choice of whether they should dope?

But most importantly, what about those of us who had to listen to all of the annoying idiots who refuse to believe that Lance doped?

therealscotty wrote:

This is how it works...

You either have an admission, a dirty test, or you have nothing. Armstrong is the greatest TdF rider of alltime, and this bothers lesser riders. The attacks follow. Am I certain that he never used PEDS? Of course not, but you MUST have proof, and none exists.

Keep in mind...cyclists test positive all the time. Lance has more than 500 tests...ALL positive. I have followed cycling for 26yrs, and find it almost impossible to explain how a dirty rider could somehow pass more than 500 consecutive screens.

BTW..Bond was never tested. MLB did not introduce random testing until Bonds was out of the game. Hamilton has been caught at least 3 times. A proven and admitted cheater. Landis, also a proven/admitted cheater.

Landis explains how it is done through techniques such as EPO microdosing, consistent blood work and blood smears. Not too complex but you have to be vigilant. This kind of vigilance is nothing to guys who spend 4-6 hours a day on their bike. Not to mention the money they can make is very much worth investing in a lab.

In order to be caught and to be ostracized for it, you have to be really stupid, really obvious and not well liked. See Barry Bonds and Ben Johnson. If people like you and you have major financial backing, you can do anything you want. See Carl Lewis, Lance Armstrong, ARod. Mary Decker fell somewhere in the middle.

Many small-pond'ers reach the next level and discover they are just ordinary there. Unwilling to accept that they reached their peak and they would never be great, they decide all those faster guys must be doped. You see it here on every thread from Hall, to Wanjiru, to Radcliffe, to Geb and down the hierarchy of ability. "If they are faster than I am, they are doped." It ought to be Letsrun's motto.

For years and years, I've heard so many wannabe's whining about it being impossible to compete without doping. To me, this is just a convenient excuse to not compete, to not work hard or to explain away their lack of ability. If they think the sport is corrupt like that, it makes me wonder why they bother with the sport at all. It's like joining the mafia and then crying about having to commit crimes to get ahead in the business. Maybe they should have pursued an honest profession and not one for which they would be forced to compromise their morals.

I know a rider who road on a team with lance and Tyler. He was never taken to the tour because he would not take part in the program, guess who was taken.

Form your own opinion.

well my message just got erased so i am not going to retype it - but here is a story on USA cycling and doping...not about LA but the culture and how some athletes were unknowningly doped and that only 1 in 7 athletes who tested positive were ever sanctioned according to this story.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/04/10/60II/main284958.shtml

there was another news story about a USA cycling doctor who quit after he was essentially told to make positive tests go away - but i cannot find it. If true, it is certainly interesting. Suggest you can test positive and no one will ever know.

i didn't read all the posts so excuse me if this has been mentioned.

Hamilton has a great deal to gain from this. He has a new book coming out that NOBODY would buy other than hard core cyclers who would read it while wearing biking shorts. Lance Armstrong is an athlete that every American knows. How much publicity will be gained from the 60 minutes interview? This would be akin to 10 million dollars of free advertising. 60 minutes is usually among the top 10 shows watched each week and add in the commercials and watercooler talk leading up to the airing and after this will arguably be the most advertised book to come out in 2011. Hamilton has everything to gain and nothing to lose since he is a confirmed drug cheat.

gold counter wrote:

Hamilton has everything to gain and nothing to lose since he is a confirmed drug cheat.

Not true. Assuming Hamilton said the same thing to the grand jury, he has a ton to lose. Perjury to a grand jury isn't taken lightly.

Going down on 60 Minutes? Lance must be hard up to have to do porn now.

Who is this rider? He must not be terribly upset about the injustice since he has apparently only spoken to you about it.

Why don't we try to argue this like religious people: Show us the proof that Lance DIDN'T dope.

(You know, like you'd prove that God doesn't exist.)

mlb wrote:

This is kind of like baseball. Everyone was doing it, so who really cares. Lance can't come out and say he doped because then he really looks bad. I think it is hypocritical of baseball to blackball guys like Bonds, Sosa, and Mcquire. They raked in tons of cash when they knew they were doping. Cycling got back on the world map thanks to Lance, and now some want to see him go down.

This is such a stupid statement. Were/Are most of the riders in the TDF dirty? Maybe. However to say that ALL of the riders were/are doping is wrong. Even guys like Landis, an admitted doper who was stripped of his TDF victory, admit that it was not until very late in his career that he was able to systematically dope under USPS. There WERE riders who were competing back then clean.

If even ONE rider in the peleton competed without the aid of PED's, then guess what? Lance screwed them over, completely. The notion that because a portion of competitors is breaking the rules by doping, that it is ok for everyone to dope, and no one is at fault, is exactly the line of thinking that leads to the rampant corruption within that sport.

If you listen to folks like Ben Johnson, Justin Gatlin, Kelli White and Regina Jacobs, I guarantee you that their justification is very similar to your defense of Lance. If we stand by the notion that it is ok to dope because other competitors are doing so, then we cannot criticize the athletes that are ripping what little legitimacy our own sport (T & F) has left to shreds by employing the use of PED's in the exact same manner.

Vas-t'y frotte wrote:

Who is this rider? He must not be terribly upset about the injustice since he has apparently only spoken to you about it.

Well, he retired from cycling with a bad taste in his mouth at a fairly young age. He also knew like some others have found out, that it is hard to take on the machine known as LANCE. Things like this were well known back then in and around Boulder, the cycling community didn't want the dirty little secrets out.

Hincampie (sp?) has said Lance took the juice.

No link but it's on the front page of ESPN.com right now.

Wow.