HOLY showtime!!! Amstrong accepts life ban!!!

[Recycler]

G,Day, The USADA is a private company, what right have to charge or strip anyone? Bob.

[greyhoundtom]

I'm intrigued that the LA era is being viewed as a particularly tainted era.

My recollection is that after the "Festina Affair", which was in '98 IIRC, UCI suddenly got extremely serious about doping. LA was supposed to be the Shining Hope, showing what could be done riding clean, and the people he was riding with were also supposedly clean. Subject of course to the fact that there was no (easy?) test for EPO.

Makes me wonder if, in 10 years' time we won't be looking back at Wiggo (or next year's winner), after his 9th TdF title and saying "well, of course he was no better than the rest".

The main reason that the “LA” era is being looked upon as being particularly tainted, is because at that time several medical professionals became involved in providing PED’s specifically tailored to individual athletes, as opposed to their trainer providing something to boost performances.

These professionals had the knowledge and contacts to provide PED’s in such a manner as to circumvent the swabbing protocols in place at that time.

[herzog]

Speaking of the Festina affair, I read recently that one of the guys involved is now an official at Greenedge.

Lovely.

[Chris249]

G,Day, The USADA is a private company, what right have to charge or strip anyone? Bob.

It has as much right as private companies can have here in Australia, where they can do things like stop people working from the jobs they are in by removing their right to practise in certain professions, etc.

The fact that something is a private company is irrelevant. A company is just a way of structuring a business. If that business has been given power to do something by government or by agreement then that business can do that thing whether or not it is a company.

The company that is USADA has been given the right to ban Armstrong by Armstrong himself. When you take up racing, you make an agreement to abide by the rules and procedures of the sport. Those rules and procedures include the procedures, powers and bodies that work out who breaks the rules and how they shall be penalised. In this case, bike racers join the UCI and by doing that, they agree to follow the rules of the UCI which has also joined other bodies and been placed under other regulations.

Exactly what do you want to happen? Do you want riders to be able to race in UCI and IOC races and then reject the rules and get off scot free? Or do you want the UCI to have the enormous logistical and financial problems of running its own drug testing programmes in every country? Or do you want the taxpayer who doesn't care about sport to have to pay even more for running sport than they already do?

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Part of what raised questions about LA was that people could review his climbing performance against others in the
peloton using real-time gps + powermeter data, and conclude that he was 5% faster than "the rest" on climbs.

The UCI closed the peephole that put such data on view (or was it a loophole) and now prevents publication of such data.

The UCI has not prevented publication of data. It has simply prevented live data feeds, which has more to do with media deals, than "covering up" the data. The data is available to anyone if the rider/coach/team choose to publish it.

Anyone who wants to know how fast riders climb just needs a watch. Don't need power meters or GPS for that.

[ColinOldnCranky]

G,Day, The USADA is a private company, what right have to charge or strip anyone? Bob.

You shouldn't need to ask. Examples abound. There is no shortage of examples and the practice is not even new.

Try your local stock exchange typically (always?) a publcly listed company charged with specific responsibilities and having the full weight of law behind them. Ditto various industry boards and trade bodies and probably a raft of them that I have never heard of.

[Recycler]

G,day, Thank for seting me straight on the USADA. Bob.

[Chris249]

No worries

Cheers

[RonK]

There is no doubt that LA, like many cyclists and athletes in general at that time, was exposed to PED’s as a youngster by his coach, and looking at the timeline involved, the most likely PED first used would have been Testosterone, as this not only increases lean fast twitch muscle tissue but also increases the desire and ability to train harder, and was freely available at that time.

However while the use of Testosterone increases the chance of liver damage, there is no evidence to suggest that it directly causes either testicular or prostate cancer even with long term use, so to say that the use of PED’s most likely caused LA’s cancer in the first place, is a long bow to draw.......................and yes the fact that those that were involved, including LA himself, in the promotion of the use of PED’s are still being employed in cycling at various levels is a major concern.

I wouldn't be so sure about that...evidence is emerging that use of certain recreational drugs increases the risk of testicular cancer, and that high levels of testosterone increases the risk of prostate cancer.

And there are well-known links between testosterone and the incidence of breast cancer in women.

[toolonglegs]

There is also that fact that you would put off going to the doctor as you would be used to the effects of high testosterone ... Big hard nuts all the time !.

[Alex Simmons/RST]

G,day, Thank for seting me straight on the USADA. Bob.

While the information on the role of private organisations has been explained, USADA do not strip anyone of anything.

All USADA (or relevant in country ADAs) do is to report on the outcomes of their testing or investigations to the relevant sport's governing body and/or organisations. It's the governing body for any given sport (and relevant organisers) that are responsible for removing the titles and associated benefits from a rider (but that process is an automatic requirement following such a report).

Failure by a sport's governing body to do so is a breach of the WADA code, and that is punishable by removal of the sport from the Olympic Games. They can of course appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Sport to have the ADA's report overturned.

The rules on this are detailed in the WADA Code, available on the WADA website.

[ColinOldnCranky]

There is also that fact that you would put off going to the doctor as you would be used to the effects of high testosterone ... Big hard nuts all the time !.

Dunno about hard but ongoing use of synthetic testosterone actually shrinks the little buggers. Perhaps the drug testing labs should also carry micrometers in their test kits.

[Alex Simmons/RST]

<Snip>
Obviously he had some genetic gifts, they all do at that level. But he did "benefit" from a systematic doping program since he was 18 years old (suggest reading up on when Carmichael was running the USAC "coaching" program), and there is reason to consider this was a factor in getting cancer to start with. How people like Carmichael are permitted to still be involved with the sport makes me sick.<Snip>

There is no doubt that LA, like many cyclists and athletes in general at that time, was exposed to PED’s as a youngster by his coach, and looking at the timeline involved, the most likely PED first used would have been Testosterone, as this not only increases lean fast twitch muscle tissue but also increases the desire and ability to train harder, and was freely available at that time.

However while the use of Testosterone increases the chance of liver damage, there is no evidence to suggest that it directly causes either testicular or prostate cancer even with long term use, so to say that the use of PED’s most likely caused LA’s cancer in the first place, is a long bow to draw.......................and yes the fact that those that were involved, including LA himself, in the promotion of the use of PED’s are still being employed in cycling at various levels is a major concern.

This from WADA:
http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/docu ... Doping.pdf

(10) Long-Term Health Risks
(a) The health risks associated with long-term therapeutic doses of testosterone and chronic supraphysiologic doses of AAS are unknown.
(b) The most severe consequences of long-term AAS use many be on the cardiovascular system. ( Parssinen M et al, 2002)
* Left ventricular hypertrophy, Impaired diastolic filling, Arrhythmia,
* Increased risk of myocardial infarction and sudden death.
(Melchert RB, Welder AA, 1995) (Wight JN, Salem D., 1995)
(c) As etiologic factors for some cancers. (Parssinen M et al, 2002)
* Hepatic tumor (Nako A. et al.: 2000)
* Renal cell carcinoma (Bryden AAG, 1995) (Martorana G et al,1999)
* Testicular tumor (Froehner M et al, 1999)
* Prostatic cancer (Heikkila R et al, 1999)
(d) The risk of mortality among chronic AAS users is reported to be 4.6 times higher than non-AAS users. (Parssinen M et al, 2000)

[DaveOZ]

ABC 7:30 report NOW. Interview with Tyler Hamilton.

[Mustang]

<language>, who cares, look at the good LA has done


mod says: family forum, foul language is not appropriate.

[London Boy]

There is also that fact that you would put off going to the doctor as you would be used to the effects of high testosterone ... Big hard nuts all the time !.

And a tiny little willy...

[wombatK]

who cares, look at the good LA has done

It ought to be obvious when this thread has gone to 12 pages plus 21 on the
other thread that lots of people care about it.

As mentioned in a number of posts, there are serious concerns about how little
Livestrong does for cancer research (these days, nada, zip), and how much of
LA's involvement is self-serving. At times in the past as much as 55 cents in the
dollar donated to Livestrong has been used in running Livestrong - an appallingly
high proportion that raises serious doubts on its purpose.

If your point is that whatever good LA has done justifies any amount of
doping/cheating, it would be farcically easy for riders to cheat and win at the TDF
and on any sporting arena.

For now, it appears that the WADA rules don't allow such an easy escape from its sanctions.
Although its unlikely Armstrong will lose much of the $140+ million he's earned from his
cycling, his future earnings might be limited.

Time will tell whether his PED use has any health impacts that might limit his enjoyment
of this wealth, if his cancer was not a sign of that already.

Cheers

[Ross]

As mentioned in a number of posts, there are serious concerns about how little
Livestrong does for cancer research (these days, nada, zip), and how much of
LA's involvement is self-serving. At times in the past as much as 55 cents in the
dollar donated to Livestrong has been used in running Livestrong - an appallingly
high proportion that raises serious doubts on its purpose.

Not a lot different to a lot of other charities that don't have LA connected to them. Livestrong would raise a lot less if LA wasn't connected to them.

Not trying to justify the doping, just saying that there is good and bad in every situation.

[Ross]

Maybe Lance used to bong on when he was younger

http://news.yahoo.com/marijuana-smoking ... 42821.html

[ColinOldnCranky]

As mentioned in a number of posts, there are serious concerns about how little
Livestrong does for cancer research (these days, nada, zip), and how much of
LA's involvement is self-serving. At times in the past as much as 55 cents in the
dollar donated to Livestrong has been used in running Livestrong - an appallingly
high proportion that raises serious doubts on its purpose.

I think you would be surprised. It is a bad state of affairs that large charities do take so much to run them, but 55 cents in the dollar is by no means exceptionally high.

I recall many many years back that it bacame public knoweledge that Channel seven took out of the donations received the market value of advertising that was foregone over the weekend (there was NO advertising during the 26 hours of Telethon to that time.) That and other expenses pretty much took out the bulk of what we would hear about being pledged.

While they freely tell us how much they have collected over the decades, they are not so free about telling us about disbursements, jus that it goes into The Telethon Trust. I presume that a Harvard Business School graduate could work it out but most of us not that.

[wombatK]

I think you would be surprised. It is a bad state of affairs that large charities do take so
much to run them, but 55 cents in the dollar is by no means exceptionally high.

It's really unfair to the well-administered genuine charities to tar them all with the same brush.

A loss of 55 cents in the dollar (or yield of 45 cents) is quite high.

You'll have a damned hard time finding any praise given to charities or philanthropists
in the Murdoch press. But if you look past that bias, the facts in the tables here in
their sensationalised Millions in Donations blown on admin costs report
shows just how bad Livestrong is - the average is 22% and only one was as poor as Livestrong's 55%.


The American http://www.charitywatch.org/toprated.html can manage to find a heck of a lot of
charities that distribute more than 75 cents in the dollar to their causes. They suggest
anything below 65 cents in the dollar is not reasonable.

Even Livestrong improved it's game and got closer to the 75% after public scrutiny
from AIP after 2010, and perhaps also as the heat generated by questions on LA's
performances intensified over the last 2 years.

Prior to then, Livestrong's high administration costs were likely sucking up tens of millions
that other cancer-related charities could have put to better use, so it's difficult to be
awestruck by LA's "goodness".

[warthog1]

Maybe Lance used to bong on when he was younger

[clackers]

Maybe Lance used to bong on when he was younger

Well, if you read his biography he was a bit of a tearaway but the influence of a strong-willed single parent kept him going in the right direction. Unfortunately that may also have contributed to a Win-At-All-Costs attitude, but there you go.

[wombatK]

Unfortunately that may also have contributed to a Win-At-All-Costs attitude, but there you go.

Single parenting does not cause or contribute to a win-at-all-costs attitude. It's simple bad parenting, and two people
are just as capable of that neglect as is a single parent - even moreso if you think about all the males who
keep themselves absent from the family scene.

[warthog1]

Single parenting does not cause or contribute to a win-at-all-costs attitude. It's simple bad parenting, and two people
are just as capable of that neglect as is a single parent - even moreso if you think about all the males who
keep themselves absent from the family scene.

I didnt read it that way, more the strong willed personality?