The truth is coming out, more and more. Armstrong and his cronies will just keep trying to question the credibility of everyone around him. Lance Armstrong reminds me of a wrong way driver who pretends that everyone coming in his direction is driving in the wrong direction.
It it specifically does not hold true when you try to apply it to boxing. Ooooops......otherwise, solid CTRL-V brah.
The former US cycling professional Tyler Hamilton has made a fresh claim that the seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong not only used performance-enhancing drugs but had actually given a positive test, in 2001. It has always been a cornerstone of Armstrong's defence against such charges that he had never tested positive during his career. But this was flatly contradicted by his former US Postal team-mate Hamilton in an interview webcast by CBS's 60 Minutes programme on Sunday. "I know he's had a positive test before," Hamilton said. "For EPO [at the] Tour of Switzerland, 2001." Asked by the CBS reporter Scott Pelley how this alleged positive test had not been made public and no action taken, Hamilton explained: "People took care of it. I don't know all the exact details but I know that Lance's people and the people from the other side, the governing body of the sport [the UCI], figured out a way to make it go away." The same allegation of a cover-up at the Tour de Suisse, shortly before Armstrong won his third Tour de France, was made last year by another former team-mate of Armstrong's, Floyd Landis, among a series of claims about Armstrong and the US Postal team's use of banned substances and blood-doping. Armstrong, his team manager Johan Bruyneel and the UCI have all denied a conspiracy to suppress a positive test; they have also denied any ulterior motive for the donations by Armstrong of $25,000 and a subsequent $100,000, ostensibly to assist the UCI's anti-doping work. Earlier this month, the UCI and its former president, Hein Verbruggen, lodged a legal action against Landis in a Swiss court. Armstrong's lawyer, Mark Fabiani, released a statement on Sunday refuting the claims made against him on 60 Minutes. "Throughout this entire process, CBS has demonstrated a serious lack of journalistic fairness and has elevated sensationalism over responsibility," Fabiani said. "CBS chose to rely on dubious sources while completely ignoring Lance's nearly 500 clean tests and the hundreds of former team mates and competitors who would have spoken about his work ethic and talent." Hamilton's testimony in the matter, however, may be more difficult for the UCI to dismiss. Pelley reported that CBS had seen a sworn statement obtained by the FBI from the director of the Swiss laboratory that had conducted the testing for the 2001 Tour de Suisse. In that statement, the lab director said that a UCI official had brokered a meeting between himself and Armstrong and Bruyneel – a highly irregular matter. Asked by Pelley how he knew of the affair, Hamilton answered: "He [Armstrong] told me." He said that Armstrong seemed supremely confident there would be no consequences of the positive test: "He was so relaxed about it and he kind of said it off the cuff and laughed it off." The UCI under Verbruggen was frequently criticised for dragging its feet on effective anti-doping measures, despite the fact that the blood-doping agent EPO had been a known problem in the pro peloton throughout the 1990s. But it would be a serious blow to the credibility of the sport's international governing body if it were proved that it had connived with a rider and his manager to suppress a positive drug test. It would also undermine the position of the UCI's current president, Pat McQuaid, who has strongly backed his predecessor on the issue. McQuaid addressed the issue last year at length. "The UCI takes seriously the accusation that [it] took a bribe to hide the positive test of Lance Armstrong in 2001," McQuaid said. "We've contacted the labs involved for testing for EPO at that time. I have a statement here from those labs that support what I say. "In relation to Lausanne, there were 18 positive tests for EPO for the UCI, controlled by this lab between 2001 and 2003: six in 2001, four in 2002 and eight in 2003. All analysis was sent to IOC and the Swiss Olympic authority "I also have a letter from Wada that states from January 2004, every positive result for UCI also went to the Wada. I also have a report from the Tour de Suisse from 2001 which states that there was no doping case in 2001. "All this information supports what the UCI has always stated: That there is no way that the UCI or its former president Hein Verbruggen could have accepted a bribe. It's just not possible." Responding to Thursday's allegations of doping against Armstrong, his lawyer, Mark Fabiani, ran the same argument against Hamilton as was used last year against Landis – that both are motivated by "greed and a hunger for publicity" to maximise book deals. However, Hamilton said on 60 Minutes that he had decided to come clean after being served a subpoena in June 2010 to come before the grand jury that is hearing evidence in the federal investigation led by Geoff Novitzky. As the food and drug administration, the FBI and US department of justice investigate the case, witnesses are called to testify under oath before the grand jury, which will eventually decide if there are sufficient grounds for a prosecution for fraud of Armstrong and other associates of the US Postal team. If Hamilton's performance as a penitent sinner on 60 Minutes needed enhancing, that help already came. On Friday, the Associated Press reported that another former team-mate of Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, who, unlike Hamilton, has not tested positive for a banned substance and is still a professional rider with the BMC squad, had given evidence to the grand jury also implicating Armstrong in doping. Hincapie denied, via Twitter, that he had spoken to 60 Minutes; the CBS webcast on Sunday evening repeated the AP story, but shed no further light on its source. Hamilton told 60 Minutes that having to confess to doping throughout his career to his family had been "brutal", but that it had been irresistible at the time as "part of the culture of the sport". He said he had seen supplies of EPO in Armstrong's refrigerator and had witnessed him injecting the substance "a couple of times". Hamilton also claimed that Armstrong had himself administered drops of Andriol, an oral form of the banned steroid testosterone, to Hamilton on one occasion after a race. These practices, Hamilton alleged, were regulated by medical staff on the US Postal team, and encouraged by the management. Favoured riders were even given special white lunch bags, Hamilton said, which contained doping products – he said he actually felt privileged when he became one of the white lunch bag set. Riders were carefully coached on how to dose themselves to avoid detection in tests, and used code words and "secret phones" – mobiles not registered in their names – when communicating about supply and transfer of doping products. Team parlance for EPO, Hamilton said, was "Poe" or "Edgar Allan Poe". Armstrong has always denied ever taking performance enhancing drugs. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/may/23/lance-armstrong-tyler-hamilton-claims ---------------------- Why in the world does an active athlete donate money to the governing body that is supposed to regulate him? This smells extremely fishy...like a bribe. I wouldn't be surprised if more money changed hands and more people have been paid off under the table.
I am pretty sure he cheated but so did everyone else. I am not sure why there is a witch hunt going on for Lance. I cant believe some of you guys are getting so worked up over a freakin' cyclist .
There is little to no doubt that Armstrong did it now in my opinion. I saw the "60 Minutes" interview last night. Why would Hamilton go before a grand jury and make all this stuff up under threat of perjuring himself and doing time? He would have to be incredibly stupid to do so as he loses his partial immunity in the process. I know he got caught and has a book coming out. And, that will always be brought up when questioning whether he has his own motives for lying about the situations. The only thing this entire investigation is about now in my mind is can they prove it without just listening to his fellow riders say he did it. They need the physical evidence to have a slam dunk case and I don't think they have it. Lance was correct in what he has said all along even to this day...about them trying to come up with something after believing he was in guilty all along. They have been coming at him for years and still don't have the physical evidence to back up that he was in fact doping. Lance was very good at beating the system and winning the races. If most riders were doing it (which it sounds like they were), then the whole sport was dirty. The true clean riders were all in the back and struggling in the mountains. The dirty riders were leading the pack and flying over the mountains. Of course Lance would claim to be clean all these years with no failed test. He's got multiple titles to defend. Who in their right mind would come clean under the weight of those titles? He gets zip for coming clean...except the taint. I'm not sure he predicted it would turn out this way. But, he knew what he was doing and he knew that after winning these titles...he had to stick to his guns regardless unless physical evidence came out that totally proved he was lying (same as Roger Clemens is doing). He made a decision early on to just call everyone else a liar with alterior motives...and that doing so would not sink him without true evidence to back it up. In my opinion, maybe Lance is doing what other riders say and think...everyone else was doing it so I did nothing wrong. It was just the way it was then. Under such a mindset, he probably thinks he is innocent. The real calamity here is the system allowed the riders to cheat it by passing these tests. How can riders be held to account under such a system? How many other riders were guilty beyond just the ones who won and were not caught? Seems like they all should be under the same spotlight. They should put together a poster for each Tour and mark what they think...doper or non-doper. I would be interested to see that. Seems like they could make those determinations based on who did well in the mountains alone while the ones who actually struggled were probably clean.
Dude has raised over 300 million dollars for cancer research. Frankly, I don't give a **** if he doped.
We should just end this thread on Surfguy's post. It's a good summation and completely reasonable opinion on Armstrong's motives.
He was able to raise that because people liked him and believed he wasn't a cheater. This is similar to a charity lying in order to get your money. Not 100% the same but there are similarities.
Tend to agree...there are similarities and no one is denying his him bringing awareness to cancer...but if he cheated his way to have a voice, well...
...the world is still the better for it and so is the sport of cycling which actually mattered for a brief seven year stretch where for a few days a year people checked a sports page to see if Lance won.
It's f'd up logic that I'm not going to be upset about Lance Armstrong cheating in CYCLING because the result was hundreds of millions of dollars going to cancer research that would have otherwise gone elsewhere? Sorry, this isn't like baseball where the "greater good" was just more interest in the sport in the 1990s, this is real stuff. Cancer research. I don't excuse Lance Armstrong, I'm just saying that him cheating in a sport full of cheaters who are only mad because an American cheated better led to some pretty awesome things for humanity. Maybe you'd trade all that money for cancer research back so that some European (who is also likely cheating) could have those titles instead of Lance and you could (falsely) feel like justice was done, but I sure as hell wouldn't. Sorry if that is "f'd up logic."
Arnold cheated. If he had never taken steroids, he would have never been famous, never been in movies, and thus never been a governor.
Yeah, I'm sure that's the message that get from all this. Before the media started breaking stories about these athletes using steroids kids didn't cheat. Nobody cheats until they other people cheat. That's why nobody has ever cheated except for all those people who do cheat and didn't need a cheating role model to do it.
I'm pretty certain they have many urine and blood samples from Armstrong in storage. Wasn't that the reason for keeping it -- you may test negative now, but as our technology improves we'll retest your samples. And this is for many riders not just Lance. Btw -- have they finished the Alberto Contador investigation yet?
