Landis on Armstrong - the gory details

And yet, and yet, there are still those naive Lance-is-whiter-than-white believers. His denials are pathetic, the sour milk analogy a desperate attempt to discredit Landis. I believed not a word of what Landis said the last four years, but I believe everything I'm reading the last month or so, mainly because for the first time, what he's saying makes sense.

I concur. My guess is 98% of what Landis says is true. If any of this can be proven, it will suck for the companies like Trek, etc. who have made it "big" because of Lance and his deceit. I really enjoyed reading about the U.S. Postal bikes going missing...$5,000 bikes just don't go missing, especially when you are dealing with highly organized management teams.

Maybe Landis is telling the truth, maybe not but after years and years of nothing but lies, he's telling the truth....he has no credibility. Landis sounds like a whiny bitch and the public is going to believe what they want to believe. There will always be doubters but Lance again will beat this rap.

Leave Lance alone. He's honest. He has cancer and would never ever lie. He got there with hardwork, not drugs. You are bad people, very, very mean! Shame on you! Lance has never lied, not once. He's a nice man.

troll alert. 3/10

There is not one person on the planet with an IQ over 70 that believes that Lance is clean. Not one.

Thanks for pointing that out. I thought the guy was serious. I was all like "LOL no way lance is clean that guy is an idiot!" but then I saw your post and realized he was just trolling. Silly me!

Public, shmublic. Tiger's skank army seemed to lack credibility at first, too. What matters is that those with influence in the sport, especially federal investigators with a track record of taking down dopers, will listen to Landis.

or maybe even wrote:

troll alert. 3/10

There is not one person on the planet with an IQ over 70 that believes that Lance is clean. Not one.

Actually, unfortunately you're wrong about this. There are many smart people on here who "cling" to the notion that Lance was clean all these years in the absence of anything but an enormous and ever-growing multitude of circumstantial evidence (although Lance did actually test positive for epo with his "A" sample, but there was no back-up sample to confirm it).

But the Lance believers are deluding themselves, no doubt. At first I thought Landis was just a weasel for doing this, but, now, hopefully it will open the door for more people to speak out and clean up the sport. Hell, Vaughters never really denied using drugs, just simply wanted to push forward with a clean team. Lance should simply take the Mark McGuire approach and find sudden- onset amnesia as well as iterating over and over that he doesn't want to talk about the past; that he's merely here to focus on the future.

Here's the rub though. The entire top of the peloton was dirty. If they were all clean, Lance still beats them, clean. He showed prowess as a 21-year old, winning a stage of the TDF, and then lost 25 lbs post-cancer, replete with all of its epo treatment and other drugs. Lance was still the best, so, to me, it doesn't really matter... other than to clean up the sport going forward.

Is there a jealousy component? Sure, Landis is pi$$ed because Armstrong didn't get busted for doing the same thing.

The testosterone patches are common and so is andro-gel. Unless the testosterone levels are out of whack - nearly impossible for an endurance athlete, then testing for synthetic testosterone is almost never done. Synthetic testosterone is nearly identical to the real thing and can only be differentiated with something like a mass spectrometer. Time in the mass spectrometer is very expensive, so the real testosterone vs synthetic testosterone is rarely done.

Anyone find it interesting that an old guy (nearly 40) with one nut, is able to hang with and beat young guys in a race that lasts 3 weeks?

It will be a great day in cycling when cyclists no longer suddenly get testicular cancer, drop dead of a heart attack or drug overdoses, or have to employ fanciful theories like vanishing twins. Admittedly, those days are long gone, because the science has improved, but LeMond was right casting doubt on a peloton, whose average speed just started getting impossibly fast starting in the early 90s. That doesn't exonerate LeMond necessarily. Steroids have been in cycling for 50 years. But something changed dramatically.

I took up cycling briefly, was almost immediately riding with some Cat 2's and 3's in the mountains, holding my own, and many of them knew riders who were cheating to "move up" to the next level. That and the fact that one can sit and draft the whole way makes it a pseudo-sport to me.

Sagarin wrote:

Here's the rub though. The entire top of the peloton was dirty. If they were all clean, Lance still beats them, clean.

Here's the real rub: you can't possibly know that and you're clearly indulging in and perpetuating the Armstrong legend by saying that. He could be equal to many riders in the peloton if all were clean and he could simply be a better responder than the rest to the doping that benefits performance in that sport and thus dominates all who are weaker responders. You're propagating a broad assumption as truth.

You're right. It is merely an opinion. However, Lance showed all the tools back when he was a 16-year old triathlete. Moreoever, he was taking it to top-notch American cyclists as a 17-year old and he was winning stages of the TDF before he got his cancer and DROPPED 25 pounds. His VO2 max and wattage were as high or higher than anyone's. It is my opinion, yes, but I still think Lance would've won the TDF clean against a clean peolton. Maybe not seven times.

I hope Landis' testimony is the domino that starts the chain...

Sagarin wrote:

You're right. It is merely an opinion. However, Lance showed all the tools back when he was a 16-year old triathlete. Moreoever, he was taking it to top-notch American cyclists as a 17-year old and he was winning stages of the TDF before he got his cancer and DROPPED 25 pounds. His VO2 max and wattage were as high or higher than anyone's. It is my opinion, yes, but I still think Lance would've won the TDF clean against a clean peolton. Maybe not seven times.

I hope Landis' testimony is the domino that starts the chain...

I believe Lance is like Barry Bonds. They both had the most amount of natural talent in their respective sport, and when you combine that kind of talent with drugs you get a demigod.

Hey Dumbasses,

If Lance has been doping for years and years and years, how is it that he has never been caught? Care to explain that? Clearly you are so confident that he is doped to the gills, but he is one of the most tested men in the world and has never gotten caught? Yeah, Right.

Exactly!!

Good post "this is stupid."

My guess is that Armstrong's teams consistently had the best and most organized doping programs. Yes, many others in the peloton probably doped out of competition. However, when the tour started cracking down, my guess is only those with the most money were able to keep this going during the tour.

Landis even mentions when he got to team Phonak, they didn't have an organized doping program like US Postal. If Phonak didn't have a program, then you have to bet that most of the other teams didn't.

We will never know if Lance would have been the best with a clean peloton.

Florida Track Club wrote:

Hey Dumbasses,

If Lance has been doping for years and years and years, how is it that he has never been caught? Care to explain that? Clearly you are so confident that he is doped to the gills, but he is one of the most tested men in the world and has never gotten caught? Yeah, Right.

Oh no! There was a partial sample that a journalist found from a VERY credible French lab from 2001 that definintely proves Lance has always and will always dope.

Sagarin wrote:

. . . and DROPPED 25 pounds.

I don't think there's any evidence of weight loss. Also, note that Armstrong went from being a world-class classics rider to being a world-class stage rider. I don't buy that.

From WSJ:

Three other former U.S. Postal riders told the Journal in interviews that there was doping on the team during the time Mr. Armstrong was its lead rider, and one of them admitted that he himself had doped. Several other riders said they had never observed such activity during their time with the team.

One of the most tested and one of the most talented, all in the same.

Yet people are unable to wrap their minds around the fact that "a 40 year old guy with one nut can hang around with younger guys with two."

Maybe it would take drugs for people like you guys to compete in the tour, but not everyone's the same. Some 17 year old's are capable of taking out some of the top-ranked men in the world. Some do that kind of thing their whole life, battle cancerous tumors that invade nearly all of their major organs, come back and rock the world that is against them from day one, all whilst being one of the most drug-tested athletes in history.

Sorry if you guys can't handle that. This is his last tour, he won't get caught, and all you're left to do is speculate for the rest of your worthless lives instead of enjoying the phenomenon that be.

Take your evidence of a biased journalist working for a biased foreign newspaper that illegaly obtained and altered a urine sample.

Take your evidence, the word of a convicted drug cheat who profusedly denied cheating, even after he was caught, and hold it dear. Because the only evidence against lance armstong was illegally obtained and altered or given by a vindictive pyschotic character with no merit to his name.