Greg Lemond drops bomb at Landis trial

Rorkes Drift wrote:

Once again, I must reiterate that LeMond's criticism of doping in cycling long preceded Armstrong and Landis. He was on the record accusing leaders of the peloton of EPO, blood doping, growth hormone, and testosterone as far back as 1996-98 (which, after recent revelations by former Telekom staff, seems to have been born out).

I think it goes back even further than that. In the interview I linked earlier, LeMond says his power numbers were higher than ever the last year he rode the tour (92 I believe) and he was getting dropped by a significant number of veteran riders who hadn't shown any such ability in previous years. That's not hard evidence of doping, but is certainly suspicious.

Exactly. He also pointed out the striking discontinuity in power output that occurred in the early 1990s. Whereas previous Tour leaders had always maxed out around 380-390 watts, all of a sudden in the 1990s you started seeing riders cranking out in excess of 450 watts (Armstrong would often do time trials and mountain stages at upwards of 500 watts!). I certainly believe in evolution, but I do not believe the human species evolves like that in the space of 5-10 years.

Estimates of the effect of human growth hormone alone suggest an average increase in power output of 20 or so watts over a three week event. Add in EPO, new technology in blood doping, haemaglobin binders, and testosterone, and all of a sudden you're looking at a 100 watt jump!

Scary how fast most people jump to a conclusion.

There is a big difference between the fact that phone calls were made and what Greg Lemond claims the conversations were about.

The longer you live the more you understand just how sneaky some people can be and appreciate the rule of law.

Pages of mostly drivel and I love how nobody has tried to rebut you.

Rorkes Drift wrote:

Exactly. He also pointed out the striking discontinuity in power output that occurred in the early 1990s. Whereas previous Tour leaders had always maxed out around 380-390 watts, all of a sudden in the 1990s you started seeing riders cranking out in excess of 450 watts (Armstrong would often do time trials and mountain stages at upwards of 500 watts!). I certainly believe in evolution, but I do not believe the human species evolves like that in the space of 5-10 years.

I remember in the 2006 tour they were making a big deal about how the cyclists now often had power meters on their bikes during the rides so you could tell what kind of power they were putting out. But back in the 1990s, this wasn't true was it? My point is, how would Lemond or anyone know what kind of power people were putting out during the tour?

LeMond should just come clean about the fact that he blood doped and set an example for landis.

Lemond says that he was using a power meter to train in the early 90s. They may not have been using them in the race, I don't know, but he was using one in training sessions leading up to the Tour. In recent years it has become pretty easy to build a bike lighter than the minimum limit so hanging a power meter on a bike that needs to weigh more anyway won't hurt the rider's performance significantly.

Even without the power meter, assuming you know the rider's weight, you can calculate a pretty good estimate of his average power output during climbs, certainly with enough resolution to notice a 10-20% jump.

Hot off the press just a few minutes ago

http://trustbut.blogspot.com/2007/05/geoghegan-statement.html

PRESS RELEASE

John Vandevelde and Blythe Leszkay, of Lightfoot Vandevelde Sadowsky Crouchley Rutherford & Levine in Los Angeles, attorneys for Will Geoghegan, issued the following statement on behalf of Mr. Geoghegan:

----

I apologize to Greg LeMond and his family for the distress I caused by my call. I also apologize to the arbitration panel and to Floyd Landis and his legal team for the distraction. I have been very angry about how unfair this whole proceeding is to Floyd, a great friend and a greater champion, and stupidly tried to take out my anger on Greg. I acted on my own, impulsively, after a beer or two. I never thought about keeping Greg from testifying. If I had, I would have concluded that since Greg is such a fierce competitor my stunt would likely make him more resolved to testify. What I did was wrong and very unfair to Greg. I am very sorry about and embarrassed by my conduct.

Lemond's just bitter that the drugs he used weren't as good as what is out today.

His tone in his book from the late 1980's seemed a lot more kinder and non-critical towards drugs in cycling.

To: All Members Of The Media, The Sporting Public, And Any Other Interested Parties.

As most of you know, we all woke this morning to a Soap Opera / "Made For TV Movie" inclusive of Sex, Drugs and Lies, from the USADA/Landis hearings at Pepperdine University, Stage-4. Please, lets try to stick to the facts of this case as they pertain to the Anti-Doping process. I, like many others are more interested in the facts of this case, than the sensationalism of "bombshells." The end result of this case will manifest itself with a huge impact on ALL Olympic athletes that have been declared "cheaters", as well as future generations of potential Olympians that are turned off by the current Anti-Doping process that is extremely 1-sided, and does not allow for a reasonable defense against a system that has been constructed with the aim of being the Police, Prosecutor, Judge, Jury and Executioner.

I have been following this case very closely, as it is a topic that is very close to my heart, and one that I have very strong opinions about. The reporting (and analysis) of yesterday's testimony should be focused on the other, and even BIGGER "bombshell" (in my opinion), the fact that the most basic tenets of the Anti-Doping process are flawed. We (Administrators and participants of Olympic sports) have been told for many years by the Anti-Doping Agencies that:

a) The science behind the testing is un-impeachable.

b) There are strict "standards" that the labs must adhere to when searching for adverse-analytical-findings.

c) The sample testing is performed "blind."

As for (a/b): after yesterday's testimony by the two lab technicians (USADA's own witnesses), we now know that although the science itself may be solid, the application of external influence to the samples is AT BEST a personal decision by the individual performing the analysis. Contrary to WADA's own lab standards, manual intervention is routinely used to "clean up" the data that the instrument spits out, if the analyst believes that the machine made an error. To further allow indiscriminate modification of the results, no internal standards exist to the extent that "clean up" or manipulation is performed, nor is it even a process that all technicians perform. And here's the kicker: they don't even have to document what they have done to the raw data, and to what extent. To make matters worse, the data files for each of the "sequences" performed by the technician is overwritten with each iteration. The final result of the analysis, in the opinion of the technician, is all that matters!

This would be the same as you or I receiving an exorbitant finance charge on our credit cards, and upon challenging the bank have them tell us "We can't justify the charges, nor can we show you how we arrived at that figure, but that's the amount that you owe us." This would be a concern to many, if not all of us. How do you think this makes an Olympic athlete feel?

Another MAJOR concern is the fact that the lab technicians apparently know the source (name of the athlete) of the sample that they are testing. In this case, part of that may be due to the publicity surrounding the testing. However, lets keep in mind the fact that "blindness" should be a built-in part of the process, taking into account the fact that the lab (LNDD) itself was the source of the leaked publicity. To remove even the appearance of impropriety, All "B" samples should have been, and SHOULD ALWAYS be analyzed at a different laboratory. To me, it would be the same as losing a race by millimeters and requesting an additional look at the film, only to have the same Commissaire perform the follow-up review. What's the point?

Great care and effort (isn't this the "scientific method" that I learned in High School?) is supposed to be taken to ensure that "blindness" of the analytical operators is paramount to the process. It is in fact the basis for everything that follows. It concerns me greatly that there was absolutely NO consideration given to this aspect of the original testing, as well as the follow-up testing. If this can occur in a high profile case such as this one, how much of a chance does the average 3rd place finisher or random (randomly selected) control have for impartiality? If such important tasks are merely "ho-hum, rote, quasi-standard operating procedures", I can only wonder what else is going on that we don't yet know about?

Although I am not a scientist (i did have 2 semesters of Organic-Chem in College) or an attorney, I have listened to a lot of this testimony and have read quite a bit of it also. It is very clear to me that major changes need to be made; not just in the process of reporting and challenging an AAF, but also in how an AAF is actually determined. The creation/manipulation of the raw data used to even determine the existence of an AAF doesn't appear to have the same level of importance as the legal battles that routinely ensue. This is backwards, in my estimation.

To me, these are the real "bombshells" from the stage-4 testimony. They shouldn't be overshadowed by the personal, and tragic, admission of Mr. LeMond or actions of Mr. Geoghegan. (I'm still not sure of what "facts" USADA was gleaning from LeMond's original testimony). Their testimony, statements and actions have absolutely no bearing on the scientific and procedural issues at hand, and have only served as a distraction.

There are a lot of things that the Anti-Doping Agencies can (and should) learn from this hearing, and a lot of questions that will still need to be answered at the conclusion of this case. I believe that we are all better served if we focused on the real bombshells, not the sensational ones. There have been several others, and I'm sure there are more to come.

Ray Cipollini

Publishing rights to "If I Really Doped at the Tour de France" should be a hot item soon.

Whether Landis doped or not, this assessment of the situation is the one that should be focused on. All the people on here who "think" he did or who "think" he didn't are full of crap. You don't know, and unfortunately, because it appears the whole process to find out has been majorly tainted and screwed up, you won't know.

Which is the point of this. Guilty or not, nobody can say for sure because of the actions of the testers and the testing procedures. Landis should go unpunished and the whole testing procedures for all sports should be fixed. If someone is guilty, the process needs to be set up so it really is as absolute, blind and unbiased as humanly possible. If someone is not guilty, there should be no chance that their testing or results could be tainted.

For those of you that love track, cycling, etc., this is extremely important. If Landis is punished given the mistakes and possible deliberate tampering, then all of sport is a joke. Athletes at this level devote and sacrifice years to their sport. Imagine how you would feel if you worked like they do and had your career and reputation destroyed by either a mistake or a deliberate attempt to wreck your career.

On the other side, it is time to do this right so cheaters are caught in a fair and non-biased way. If Landis wins this, it is more likely the changes will be made to catch cheaters correctly in the future.

Exactly.

With all the holes the defense is putting into the testing wouldn't the USADA want to bring in scientific experts to counter the claims of the defense? Instead, they bring in a controversial character ,Lemond, who does not bring any substantial evidence and moves the emphasis of the trial to himself. I guess like the majority of the justice department, the USADA lawyers probably went to Regent Unversity Law School

Well, I guess Lemond wasn't lying after all. Even if Landis didn't put Geoghegan up to making this call, it still doesn't reflect well on his integrity that he shared Lemond's secret about childhood sexual abuse with Geoghegan and, for all we know, others too.

And we shouldn't forget Landis's message board threat to reveal a secret of Lemond's.

Nor should we forget that it is in Geoghegan's self-interest to say that his call had nothing to do with Landis or with Lemond's impending testimony, because to make such an admission could expose him to criminal liability.

Weird wrote:

Exactly.

With all the holes the defense is putting into the testing wouldn't the USADA want to bring in scientific experts to counter the claims of the defense?

Hello? Yesterday was day 4 of the hearings. Who do you think has been testifying so far?

Weird wrote:

I guess like the majority of the justice department, the USADA lawyers probably went to Regent Unversity Law School

This is actually pretty funny, and I might pass it on to them. Rich Young, the lead attorney for USADA, graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. Having not experienced a proper education at Harvard or Yale, he is inordinately proud of his Stanford roots.

Rich and the other members of USADA's litigation team are not DOJ lawyers. They are members of a private firm.

ATTORNEYS for Will Geoghegan provide a carefully worded "press release" that says that his phone call wasn't an attempt to intimidate a witness in a legal proceeding. Exactly what was the purpose of the call then?

I would like to have seen the sample retested at another lab too but I honestly don’t think the result would have been different. As for the anonymity of the tested, are we talking about the re-test and wasn't that done with Landis's team present?

The ADA needs to clean up its act in terms of the confidentiality of test results before it can expect the necessary support of the public. Otherwise the cheats will continue to play their smoke and mirrors games hiding behind paid lawyers and doctors arguing over every minute protocol as if any missed dotted I or uncrossed t negates the accuracy of their findings.

Rorkes Drift wrote:

Exactly. He also pointed out the striking discontinuity in power output that occurred in the early 1990s. Whereas previous Tour leaders had always maxed out around 380-390 watts, all of a sudden in the 1990s you started seeing riders cranking out in excess of 450 watts (Armstrong would often do time trials and mountain stages at upwards of 500 watts!). I certainly believe in evolution, but I do not believe the human species evolves like that in the space of 5-10 years.

Estimates of the effect of human growth hormone alone suggest an average increase in power output of 20 or so watts over a three week event. Add in EPO, new technology in blood doping, haemaglobin binders, and testosterone, and all of a sudden you're looking at a 100 watt jump!

An interesting accusation, since, if I remember correctly, LeMond held the speed record for a time trial in the TdF from 1989 until it was beat a year or two ago. With the improvements in equipment and aerodynamics over those years you would think that someone could have ridden a time trial faster than LeMond did (to beat Fignon on the Champ Elysees) if the power capabilities of the riders had jumped 20 to 25%.

Just curious, but where do the hGH estimates come from?

armstrong is next. get that lousy doper !