BREAKING Report: Lance Abandoning Fight vs Doping Charges, TDF Titles Gone

Lance Armstrong - does not test positive, found guilty, loses 7 Tour de France titles

Jan Ullrich - tests positive, found guilty, gains 4 Tour de France titles

Thank you USADA for taking titles won by a U.S. rider you can't actually nab and giving them to a dirty foreign rider.

The interesting decision for the UCI to make now, is whether they will merely strip Armstrong of his titles, or award them to the second place finishers, as they did in the case of Contador and Landis.

I would hope that they don't, because the prospect of Jan Ulrich (convicted doper), Andreas Klöden (heavily implicated in the Freiburg case), Joseba Beloki (implicated in the Puerto / Fuentes affair), Alex Zülle (self-confessed doper, Festina affair), and Ivan Basso (convicted of doping) being declared champions in his place would be beyond farcical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TSawala/sandbox

As a testicular cancer survivor I can tell all you idiots on this board that EPO was certainly not one of the drugs my prescribing physicians gave me. Not at one point was it even brought up in the course of 5 years. So before people hop on the Lance Defense-bandwagon and say EPO positive-tests were a result of cancer treatments, I suggest you set your ignorance aside. He is a disgrace to cancer survivors and merely used his cheating and LIVESTRONG Foundation to make millions of dollars at the expense of the public's naivety. PATHETIC.

It's amazing that after years of toothless doping enforcement in cycling (and in lots of other sports) that people can call USADA's pursuit of Armstrong a witchhunt. USADA simply could not ignore the increasingly public and detailed accusations against Armstrong -- it was an embarrassment to anti-doping efforts. I am glad that USADA showed some spine and went after an athlete who has intimidated his past accusers into submission.

Querfeldein wrote:

The interesting decision for the UCI to make now, is whether they will merely strip Armstrong of his titles, or award them to the second place finishers, as they did in the case of Contador and Landis.

I believe this is a decision for the ASO to make, not UCI, but I confess that I am a little confused on jurisdiction about this particular issue.

There are 2 sports where doping is 100%, thats pro bodybuilding and cycling so are they going to just wipe out all the records for the last 30 yrs of cycling. In actuality Armstrong competed againt a level playing field since all the competitors are doping.

A Clean Winner? wrote:

Lance Armstrong - does not test positive, found guilty, loses 7 Tour de France titles

Jan Ullrich - tests positive, found guilty, gains 4 Tour de France titles

Really? Do you have a link to the source that reports this information? And why would Ullrich be awarded four new wins when he finished second to Lance only three times?

Nice piece this morning that expands on the overriding point here. The man ran roughshod over every obstacle in his way over the last 20 years, without regard to other people. He has the resources to fight against 10 more investigations if need be. No one willingly gives up SEVEN championships of the pinnacle of their sport. No one.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/lance-armstrong-gives-up-fight-against-usada--raising-questions-about-his-innocence-.html

and thank you Rojo for pointing out my gaffe of saying DOZENS Of witnesses.

USADA is on the chopping block for many politicians who are looking to trim the government budgets.

Tygart and his henchman needed a big target and a "victory" to justify their pathetic existence.

Now the FBI need to make Obama admit he usurped the Presidency and faked his documents and past in exchange for a light sentence of life in prison.

And the winner is:

In 1999, Armstrong’s first Tour victory, Alex Zülle of Switzerland finished second. (Zülle had previously admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs and was suspended and fined.) In 2000, 2001 and 2003, Germany’s Jan Ullrich was the runner-up. (He later served a doping ban for his involvement in the Operation Puerto blood-doping ring, but that ban did not begin until 2005.) In 2002, Joseba Beloki of Spain was second. In 2004, Andreas Kloden of Germany was second. (He also was connected to a scandal regarding blood doping at the Freiburg University Clinic before the 2006 Tour.) In 2005, Ivan Basso of Italy finished second. (He served a two-year ban in 2007 and 2008 after admitting that he “attempted doping,” although he denied ever doping.)

So then, where was Obama born- Kenya or Indonesia?

friend of mine posted this on Facebook. hits the main points pretty well:

1) People keep saying he didn't fail a drug test, so this investigation is stupid. Two things to consider -- A) allegedly, part of the USADA case is that there's solid testing evidence of blood doping during his comeback and evidence that positive tests from ~2001 were, in fact, covered up. So that should be kept in mind. B) as everyone points out, testing positive is good evidence of being dirty, but not testing positive doesn't mean being clean. Everyone knows that the testing protocols can be beat. As they say, fail an in competition test, you've failed two tests -- Drugs and IQ.

2) Witness testimony is not hearsay. Hearsay is evidence from one person, which he/she got from another person. EYE-WITNESS TESTIMONY IS NOT HEARSAY. In the case of Lance, there is not one, but almost a dozen people who claim to have DIRECTLY OBSERVED doping or evidence of it. It's not just rumor. If we accept eyeball witness in murder cases, certainly we can in doping cases. Given how beatable drug tests have proved to be, I whole-heartedly support eye witness accounts for doping. Especially when there is not just one, not just two, but ten.

3) Lance was a doper among dopers and he won convincingly. Given the playing field, he was the best. I do not doubt he worked harder and raced with more guts than everyone out there. Nevertheless, one thing we will never know is if Lance would have been the best in a clean field. There is variation on how people respond to drugs, so perhaps there are dopers who are "low responders" who could have beat Lance clean. Vaughters explains this well in his piece on Cycling news (followup to the NYT piece). This is all besides the point, however, because all the top cyclists were doped.

4) If they take away his TDF wins, I don't think they should be handed down to anyone. It's comical how many people below him have already been busted. What's the point?

5) Lance's real moral failing is not doping. Everyone doped and if you wanted a shot, you had to dope. That's pretty clear. So I'll give him a pass on that. However, I think he has had a chance to come clean and thereby really help clean up the sport. Instead he has lied, lied, and lied. And not only has he lied quietly, he has lied loudly and without shame.

6) Giving up the fight right before all the real evidence is about to come out is pretty transparent. He plays the role of the persecuted and tired right before the witness testimony exposes his lies. I wonder how many of the witnesses will be called in the case against Dr. Ferrrari.

I still don't see any reason why he should be stripped of the titles.

The USADA has no jurisdiction over the TdF.

Why is everyone talking about Lance's never failing a drug test (which he did, anyhow)? The tests suck. Anybody involved in professional sports like track or cycling can tell you that the testers are always a step behind the dopers. I mean, Marion Jones won every race she entered for years and never tested positive. Let's stop pretending the tests are effective- if they were, there wouldn't still be dozens of doping violations at every Olympics.

Yes no one gives up 7 titles or their fight for innocence, just like no one would ever admit to a murder or crime they didn't commit.

You all should be aware that there has been many cases where people who are wrongfully accused of a serious crime (i.e. murder) end up actually admitting to it even though they flat out didn't do it which is usually discovered later when they actually catch the real criminal/murderer. Why is this? Because of relentless police and interrogation tactics used in investigation not so much to catch the person who actually did the crime but just to catch someone.

So yes, actually someone would do what Lance Armstrong did and fact is he never admitted to drugs he just stopped fighting the USADA's constant and relentless persecution of him. Mind you, this only proves how cynical and stupid it is on some of you to say "he had unlimited resources" well, then if that were the case wouldn't he have kept fighting? Clearly he does not have unlimited resources.

But now that he has stopped fighting then the USADA needs to put their money where their mouth is and show some hard evidence within this next year. If they bring hard evidence and proof then by all means he is a dirty cheat but if not, he's just a man who was crucified for the sake of the USADA's on bitter vendetta against him.

We will have to see wrote:

But now that he has stopped fighting then the USADA needs to put their money where their mouth is and show some hard evidence within this next year. If they bring hard evidence and proof then by all means he is a dirty cheat but if not, he's just a man who was crucified for the sake of the USADA's on bitter vendetta against him.

Please define "hard evidence." USADA will be releasing much or all of their evidence, at least in abbreviated form, in their sanctioning documents. By abandoning this hearing Lance has given up any possibility of cross-examining the eyewitnesses, so if he attacks them as unreliable, jealous, etc. that is going to ring a bit hollow.

ballyhoo stew wrote:

2) Witness testimony is not hearsay. Hearsay is evidence from one person, which he/she got from another person. EYE-WITNESS TESTIMONY IS NOT HEARSAY. In the case of Lance, there is not one, but almost a dozen people who claim to have DIRECTLY OBSERVED doping or evidence of it. It's not just rumor. If we accept eyeball witness in murder cases, certainly we can in doping cases. Given how beatable drug tests have proved to be, I whole-heartedly support eye witness accounts for doping. Especially when there is not just one, not just two, but ten.

This is partially correct.

Witness testimony may be hearsay or it may not be testimony. Eyewitness testimony is not hearsay, as long as the witness is testifying to what they observed. However, if the witness is testifying to what someone else said--which is the case as to what Lance said or what doctors said--that is hearsay. So it is likely that some of the testimony of the teammates is not hearsay--what they saw Lance doing, what they did, what doctors did to them or Lance--and some of it is hearsay--what they heard Lance say, what they heard doctors say, what they heard directors say.

Just because the evidence is hearsay doesnt mean it is bad evidence or not allowable; rather, hearsay evidence must meet additional standards to be deemed allowable.

Maybe people will stop and rethink the cancer fundraising industrial complex that grew out Lance Armstrong's Livestrong campaign. Because instead of thinking deeply about cancer and the horror it wreaks, we've created a corporate-sponsored vanity affair around it.