Landis on Armstrong - the gory details

Impercisely watson wrote:

Hmmm, I see don't understand there are two side to every coin.

You have proven nothing, except how willing you are to accept imprecise data as fact.

Peace out, brother Watson.

Watson, you spelled "Imprecisely" wrong. I acknowledge that there are two sides to every coin, but I was just pointing out that some people like to fool themselves, even when the evidence flies in their face.

trollism wrote:

You must honestly believe that the man is clean.

I can't quite fathom whether it's pathetic or endearing.

I'm agnostic on the Armstrong affair, as I mentioned in my previous post. I don't know enough about cycling as a sport or Armstrong's career specifics to be able to authoritatively make a judgement. In all honesty, cycling is not a sport I find particularly interesting, so I've tended to skip over much of the speculation about Armstrong, Landis, et al. I started reading through this thread on a slow afternoon and I'm looking for additional commentary and information.

Certainly, what Landis has said (assuming his accusations to be accurate) and the information other posters have provided in this thread (again, assuming it to be accurate information) seems to add up to a quite damning portrait of Armstrong. However, "Hold on a sec" seemed to offer a critique of some this information. I didn't entirely follow his critique, and I'm interested to hear more.

Since posters on LetsRun don't always appear with their qualifications to comment on issues apparent, and given the relative paucity of links or citations to support the information being provided in this thread, comments like those offered by "Hold on a sec" can be helpful for someone (like me) who is relatively unfamiliar with the situation as he/she attempts to parse out reliable sources and information from general background noise.

trollism wrote:

You must honestly believe that the man is clean.

Actually, I honestly don't care.

1) Landis' credibility

OK, my original claim was that when you can't rebut the message, shooting the messenger is a weak alternative. Bringing up credibility is a diversionary tactic to stop people thinking about any possible merits. Look how much time we are spending discussing credibility.

I'm also not convinced that Landis ever lost his credibility. Sure, that's what Lance, Bruyneel, and McQuaid would like us all to believe, so they don't have to deal with the merits of the claims. Of course Landis lied about doping. To not lie would be exceptional. But Landis still has inside information, and knows secrets. His former position gives him sufficient credibility to follow up his allegations. We know from convictions over the last 15 years (and the history of over 100 years), that doping in cycling is pervasive. We know that the athletes are always a few steps ahead of the drug testers. We just don't know the details. If they are beating the system, Landis knows how he did it. The details he gives today, will improve anti-doping efforts tomorrow (at least for a little while).

2) Lance's positives

OK, I'm looking at it from the scientists' viewpoint, i.e. Ashenden and the French Lab, and not from UCI's lawyer's viewpoint. I was avoiding talking about WADA, UCI, and L'Equipe, as I insist it isn't relevant. Whatever love spat that exists between WADA and the UCI doesn't change what the Lab found.

If you insist that WADA, and Dick Pound, and L'Equipe are trying to lance Lance, in some kind of witch hunt, I won't argue against that.

I also think the UCI is in severe denial. Of course UCI accepted the Vrijman report. They commissioned it. They hired a lawyer to help them justify why they can do, or should do nothing, their preferred solution. And Vrijman was very good at assigning blame, and casting doubt, all around, to every organization except the UCI. This is what lawyers do.

Vrijman correctly finds that the UCI can do nothing with the test results. If sanctions ever did occur, it would be easily overturned in appeal for all the reasons he found. In large part, because that was not the main purpose of this testing.

Ashenden represents that they checked for contamination. They know what real EPO looks like, what synthetic EPO looks like, and when real EPO "shifts" due to other factors, like contamination. He claims that checks and cross checks were in place to look for things like that. They also cross-checked it with the Tour de France performance, and found the results very coherent.

I accepted that representation. I assume there is a minimum amount of competence of professional in their field of expertise, but there is always the possibility that this faith is misplaced (due to incompetence, or hidden motives).

Now of course, UCI's lawyer correctly says, there are not enough paper trails, so we don't have enough evidence to build a solid case to sanction athletes.

The lab says they weren't doing the tests for doping control purposes. Therefore, they didn't apply the bureaucracy normally associated with something that can end careers. They didn't know, or couldn't have known, which athlete produced which samples. The athlete's names only came out through the combined efforts of external organizations (WADA and L'Equipe).

I'm aware of Ashenden's relationship with SCA Promotions. Ashenden claimed that Coyle's study on Lance was unscientific in many respects. He was right.

So, I guess it comes down to what does positive mean, and to whom, and when is a positive a positive? In the lab, they applied a test to detect for synthetic EPO, and 6 of the samples, later attributed to Lance, tested positive. The scientists are convinced that the samples contain synthetic EPO, through their analysis of the tests, acutely aware of issues such as aging, tainting, and contamination of the samples. The likelihood of bad data, or contaminated or tainted samples producing such coherent results, when overlayed with the Tour results, is extremely small. Now if UCI's lawyer asks the scientist, can we call this an "Adverse Analytic Finding", the scientist must apply the definitions and criteria for doping control, and admit that it fails, because some paperwork is missing, or because no alternate sample exists, but ultimately, because that was not the purpose of the testing.

I'm playing the role of the scientists. If you want to play the lawyer, and say "Maybe they found it, but they can't prove it", go ahead.

no. the best clean riders will also be the best responders.

the gap will be smaller though.

Don't make me laugh. A "diversionary tactic"? Who exactly am I diverting? It is simply the acknowledgment that until someone, somewhere comes up with some actual evidence, having the word of Floyd Landis isn't the most conclusive evidence.

And it takes two to make a discussion here.

Let's be clear here he didn't just "lie about doping". He appealed a WADA decision, went through the hearing, wrote his book etc etc. More importantly he raised over a million dollars (The "Floyd Fairness Fund") from supporters on the basis that he was innocent. So there there is no question that HE committed fraud. He's on the hook for a million dollars.

After having the tour stripped from him? Sure. But that chapter was already closed. THIS confession of his came suddenly, unexpectedly, and out of the blue.

Only it's not unexpected or out of the blue at all. It comes right after his failure to get on another pro team for the tour. He was rejected by several, including Armstrong's. Then, suddenly, his "conscience" got the better of him. Only now. Wow! What a strange coincidence!

Does that mean Armstrong is not a doper? Of course not. But Armstrong doesn't have to prove he his not a doper. Someone has to prove he is. Maybe Novitsky will. But the word of Floyd Landis does not qualify as proof. At this point it does not even qualify as evidence.

Oh... NOW you are aware? Sounds like you've finally been educating yourself on this topic. The last time you posted posted you didn't even know what the Vrijman report was. Good for you.

Wait a minute? What does Coyle have to do with any of this? We're talking about Landis credibility and the supposed positive test results. Now you are bringing up Coyle? If I were someone else, I might accuse you of "diverting".

Given the technical problems with the reliability of the tests themselves (chain of custody, no B-sample, no certain knowledge of what 6 years does to them, no knowledge of contamination) they don't mean anything. That's the problem. You don't get to simply dismiss those concerns. Neither does Ashenden. There's a reason they have such strict controls on testing like that. You don't get to ignore them and then pretend like you did not.

But hey, maybe I am wrong. The FDA and Novitsky have all the information about tests of the 1999 samples that you and I do. Yet even they don't seem to want to touch them with a ten foot pole. Why haven't they just subpoenaed these people and this "evidence"?

I'm not playing a role.

Honestly, if Novitsky can get some confessions out of a bunch of people that they saw Armstrong doping, great. But until you have something real, the word of Floyd Landis is nothing but the angry rantings of an admitted fraud who a month earlier was trying to get a job out of the guys he's now accusing.

They handed out a bunch of subpoenas yesterday. Landis name was not on them.

Don't make you laugh? Why not? Can't we have a little fun while we're doing this? By diversionary tactic, I specifically had McQuaid in mind, not you. He (the UCI) has the obligation to make sure the sport is clean, and his immediate response is to question Landis' motive and credibility.

Our argument was about when credibility matters. I said there are ways to deal with a lack of credibility, and the allegations of a liar can still lead you to new evidence. But let's stop all that one until more evidence comes. Then in 7 years or so, I'll resurrect this thread.

OK, so Landis told a lie for a long time, that cost his loyal fans a lot of money. You even mentioned fraud. I don't think they can hang Lance anymore for his alleged past crimes. The tracks are covered too well. He was still an insider, who knows how athletes are beating the system. The big value of Landis' admissions (to me) is that by knowing how they are beating the tests now, doping control can be improved. For example, make surprise controls really a surprise, and looking harder for blood bags.

I'll admit I didn't know the details, but my asking you "What is the Vrijman report? You didn't say." was more to point out how you interjected that into the discussion, without really explaining who Vrijman was, or what the report said. It was one example of you bringing new information, out of the blue, without really providing evidence, or making the link. It's not fair to place the burden on your readers to figure out what you are trying to say.

As I said, I was also trying to avoid discussing WADA and the UCI, as my point was really about what the French lab found. Call me naive, but my opinion is that all the other organizations have their faults, secrets, and hidden agendas, but not the French lab. They worked with anonymous samples, and even resisted giving these numbers to WADA, until assurance was given that sanctioning athletes would not be involved.

I'll be honest though, I did not read the full 130 page report before (or even now), but I had to dig a little bit to "refresh" my memory on the different players, and their reactions at the time. I understand there are reasons for strict controls, mainly to protect the athletes in a doping-control situation, since the penalties are so severe. But they were in a research situation, not a doping control situation.

The lawyer still thinks strict procedures applied, for ethical reasons, according to some ISO standards, if the data was to be published. I'm not so sure the individual data was meant to be published. Certainly the names were not intended to be published, except perhaps by L'Equipe, and their unknown inside sources.

As I said, in his lengthy interview, Ashenden says they had checks and cross-checks in place, and they were looking for these kinds of shifts associated with contaminated samples. The data was coherent, and also overlayed nicely with the results of the tour, once they knew the names. This was data they produced from the samples, without knowing the names of the athletes. He also discussed the possibility of accidental injection of synthetic EPO, and how it would be hard to recreate such coherency by accident or on purpose. I take it on faith, that they have the competence to identify these kinds of false positives, when they are expressly looking for it. This falls short of the standards for sanctioning athletes, but for internal research purposes, to improve a mathematical model, can still be acceptable.

I don't really want to talk about Coyle (I did a long time ago in another forum). You brought up the "dubious" link between Ashenden and SCA Promotions. What I know about Ashenden and SCA Promotions has to do with Coyle, and their roles in the Lance vs. SCA Promotions arbitration. Coyle had a study that said that Lance made super-human gains in efficiency. This was to be used in the arbitration, to demonstrate how it was possible to improve so dramatically, without doping. Ashenden was highly critical of Coyle's methodology in this study. Maybe Ashenden did more, and you meant something else, but that's all I know.

I'm not sure what Novitsky will find. Marion Jones was never convicted for doping, just for lying about it to a federal investigator. Likewise, if Lance is found guilty of something, I'm sure he won't be sanctioned for doping, but something like improper use of federal funds, or money laundering, or income tax evasion (from Ebay Trek bike sales), or falling behind on his alimony.

Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, David Zabriskie, Pat McQuaid, Andy Rihs, Johann Bruyneel, Jonathan Vaughters, Jim Ochowicz, Hein Verbruggen are all liars.

Floyd Landis who has admitted to lying under oath and soliciting money from his supporters under false pretenses, is now tell the truth.

Hmmmm.

According to Landis, Pat McQuaid, Lance Armstrong, Dave Zabriski, Levi Lepheimer, Johan Bruyneel, Andy Ris, George Hincapie, Johnathon Vaughters, Hein Verbruggen, Jim Oschowiz and others are all liars.

Floyd Landis who lied under oath, solicited money from supporters under false pretenses and tried to blackmail his way into the TOC is telling the truth.

Hmmm.