Sports Illustrated: Lance Armstrong Doping Story Time

It was bound to happen…

Cuz like the more people who hit it? The more, er, More Sports, they’ll have :)

hehe, don’t get me wrong, I go there quite a bit…but it’s to check basketball scores ;)

Unless the Livestrong stuff appears tomorrow.

No wait, that was Blind Side.

Somehow I imagine if this all comes “crashing down”, he’ll skate and retire to Aspen. I wish I could suffer that way. Maybe I have little faith (if in fact this is all true) that this will amount to anything more then a great big, “I told you so” and we’re back to, “everybody else was doing it” and it all gets dusted away. But, I’m rambling…

when an accused doper hogs the water.

Catlin was read his 1999 letter. He said that because he tested by code and not by name, he has “no clue which sample belonged to Lance,” but he admits the data are disturbing. He explains that one failed confirmation would be a “once-in-a-blue-moon” occurrence. As for the three high T/E ratio results detailed in the letter, he says, “that’s very strange.” When Catlin’s letter was read to Breidbach recently, he too expressed concern, saying, “Wow, that should not happen. If you find a nine and can’t confirm, then something is very wrong with your screening test.”

And (biased judgment ahead), like many half-truths* emanating from Club Lie-strong, once the announcement of the hiring cycled through the main-stream press, the rhetorical work of propping of Armstrong’’s reputation had been done.

• I do not have time to itemize or explain these. Let’s just leave it at a statement that for several years Armstrong has been a master of gaming the news cycle.

Well it does matter if it was banned, am sorry. Just like Moser and the LA Olympians’ blood doping. Look at the Actovegen story.

You say simply possessing the drug was illegal – by whose rules? The UCI’s or the real world’s?

As for the clinical trials side of the story – the general issue is not new, we’ve known for quite some time now that drugs used in clincal trials were being used in the peloton. Where do you get these things? Not just the drug companies. The hospitals and the doctors running the trials are also sources.

(slightly sarcastic response – “slightly” because, oh boy, you never know anymore)

Sounds credible. At least Popo may not have problems.

This whole LA and Dope stuff is a slow-motion train wreck: horrifying, fascinating and with an utterly predictable outcome. Even if HWSNBN evades justice this time.

"It is also not true that the police found evidence of links between Armstrong and Dr Ferrari. That’s because the electronics expert who has been asked to study the contents of two laptops and two mobile phones has still to submit his report to the magistrate Benedetto Roberti."

That’s some flawed logic right there. Quite often the people who you work for wants to know the actual results before there’s an official report, and obviously finding the evidence doesn’t depend on the actual report.

I’m not sure how NAS kept the doping products out of the Italian press – At the time, all we got was that there’d been a raid and that the authorities had taken computers and some substances. No details. Very interesting.

Sometimes, CONI is slow. So, it’s possible that the Italians are still working on preparing a case. They would be within rights to bring a case against Popovych as they did with Valverde – Popovych raced in Italy, though he carried a non-Italian license. But the whole thing is complicated by the progress of the U.S. case. For example, I could imagine the U.S. authorities asking the Italians to hold off from opening their case until the U.S. Grand Jury was done. Or some such thing.

The other question is whether there is another case against Ferrari in the making here.

..which so common down through time.

Lance will be called, last maybe, but in this type of witch hunt, he will be in front of the grand jury. 100%.

I claim no legal expertise or anything close to it, but it is so obvious they don’t have him on anything and so much $ has been spent already. Lance will take the stand, and his confidential testimony will be leaked, not exactly like what happened to Bonds and Giambi, the leak will be more sinister, and designed to sway public opinion against Lance.

And then there won’t be any trial and that will be the end of it.

People, don’t ever fuck with the FDA with your bike. If you know what’s good for you, don’t do it.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” – WJC

Yes, I guess there were later, after Lance winning at least 2 TDFs, sponsorship (advertising) contracts with USPS, where it’s obvious who got the big paycheck, but the defense is gonna be: here is an athlete who didn’t end up poor, like so many do, and now the gov’t is gonna scapegoat just him for attention, singling him out among many involved in this specific case, with a special hired bounty hunter from the FDA (The FDA? Who knew? Who else have they gone after?) and try to make him poor? And in the bigger picture, what about Haliburton’s criminal impact on gov’t and life in the USA vs. Lance Armstrong??

Lance has a good case to say he was only defending himself financially as an athlete throughout his career – people trying to say he was a mailman are just against.

I would also like to know if Catlin is anything different then the outstanding reputation he has built throughout his career, but this article really was less then a half-assed way to speceulate on this possibility.

Sadly in this article, he seems to be defamed simply to add a little something to LA conspiracy theory.

Widely respected by who?

Cuz I’ve been surprised in recent years by the lack of praise folks like ashenden have had for catlin.

We have plenty of examples of doctors saying, well, why would they use that substance, it wouldn’t work. When, the athletes are using it – and maybe it’s working in combination with something else, maybe it’s not working, but they believe it does.

So, the “it doesn’t work” argument doesn’t do much for me.