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Anybody think he won't win? Will he be back next near? Looks like there's even some other US Postal team members that might be able to step up if he bows out after this year.
Olympic athletes take dope ..they get long bans or life bans ..while tour de France riders ....everyone looks the other way ..and when it's so blatant that they cant pretend they are clean anymore..lets em ride anyway ...
If it was an Internationally supervised event as opposed to a French supervised event it would have been shown up for the sham it is long long ago ..
It's just a corrupt media and political beanfeast paid for by the people who live along the route ...I've seen what happens to my local taxes when it's come through where I live ...
I'm presuming you are in the States and a fan of lance ..you probably only get TV coverage once a year of this ..we get to see every customs bust of team cars ..see every overdosed body found in their hotel rooms ..hear every confession by ex trainers ..every wife or girlfriend picked up at the airport with a pharmacy in their flight bag ...all year long the whole sordid mess ....and then suddenly the worlds eyes are upon the event and we are supposed to think that we imagined it all ...and that they are all clean healthty athletes!
Next thing they'll be trying to tell us that baseball players don't drink beer ..
So Lance soundly trounced a whole field of doped riders?! Makes the win that much more amazing.
Exactly!
Is what makes you so sure he was clean?
If none else in the "sport" is?
The rest ( whichever country they rode for ) always said they were clean ..til the proof outweighed the hype!
What makes you so sure he was not clean? Should we judge all athletes guilty until proven innocent, because whathever is printed in some tabloids?
The point is that if no one, including Lance, is "clean", then he is still BY FAR the best. If Lance is doping, I highly doubt that he is the only one. :)
That being said, in America, one is innocent until proven guilty and, in general, we believe in this strongly. Maybe this accounts for some difference in viewpoints.
Anyway you look at it Lance kicks a$$ on the mountains like no other.
Frenchman Richard Virenque won a record seventh polka-dot shirt for the race's best climber. It was also his sixth in a row.
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 143 Lbs
I would surely beat him going downhill :)
Should we judge all athletes guilty until proven innocent, because whathever is printed in some tabloids?
That's the problem, some cyclists who HAVE been proven guilty still could ride until the end. So if those guys didn't win it, what does it tell about the one who did win? And it's not tabloids, it's test by the International Cycling Union said they were doped.
The point is that if no one, including Lance, is "clean", then he is still BY FAR the best.
Or he just gets the best dope...
Frenchman Richard Virenque won a record seventh polka-dot shirt for the race's best climber.
err...that means very, very little to Lance. The polka dots were not on his agenda. He wins the tour in the mountains. You don't see little Richie Virenque finish the actual mountain stages anywhere near the front like Lance.
<<better dope>>
Maybe. Or maybe, just maybe, he is the better man?
<<So if those guys didn't win it, what does it tell about the one who did win?>>
Better rider?
[edited by: mfishy at 2:38 pm (utc) on July 27, 2004]
Thats exactly what I meant ...if my kid said he wanted to take up competition cycling ..( and The Tour de France passed by us at 200 meters this last time ) ..I'd be looking for "tracks" and expecting granchildren with two heads and flippers ..if he lived long enough to have kids of his own ...
Frenchman Richard Virenque won a record seventh polka-dot shirt for the race's best climber. It was also his sixth in a row.
He's a convicted doper ( who said they were all clean for 2 years in front of the courts and then owned up and said they were all dirty )..who was let back in to try to have a French citizen ( well actually now he's Swiss but his folks come from where I lived before ) maybe beat Lance ...
Thats not sport ..it's high farce performed by junkies on bikes .. and insulting my intelligence ...and real sportsmen and women in real sports ...
Is what makes you so sure he was clean?
We'll never know if he was clean or not, however, after surviving testicular cancer that nearly and probably should have killed him, we might assume that Lance would have more respect for his body and have the common sense not to dope.
Not to say its not possible but it seems hard to believe that an experience like that would not keep someone away from the drugs.
We could start now and dominate the training period leading up to the event next year!
</almost tongue in cheeck>
What makes you so sure he was not clean?
Hmmm, I love the tour, love the level, but I'm losing any doubts I may have had, LeMond basically said it straight out, Lance is doping, Armstrong's 'training' doctor, Ferrari I believe, often investigated, never convicted, Ullrich's 'training' doctor, likewise often suspected, never convicted, those two are the top two contenders year after year.
These guys are smart. US Postal's team doctor from '97 just came out and said he had to quit because uspostal felt that 'they could not compete' without a full team level doping program, and he refused to do it, and was politely let go a few months later. Next year was it, they won their first tour. This year all the uspostal riders were absolutely dominant, Eki place what was it, 6th in the individual time trial, no biggy you might say, problem is he's 38.... Landis came from basically nowhere and is now a dominant climber, amazing, no?
Simeoni testifies against doping and is ostracized by the peloton, hassled personally by armstrong in the race, looks more and more like the do not speak do not tell code getting enforced.
There were some subtexts in guys like Etxberra's comments about that particular event, maybe not all of Euskatel-Euskadi is doping, and isn't happy to lose to those who are?
Money at this level in sports has only one result, doping, because there's so much to gain by doing it, and so much to lose by not, since if you don't, someone else will probably beat you, same happens in american baseball, if you want to compete, you need to dope, increasingly. Witness the miracle growth of guys like Bonds, who magically gained way too much weight in his mid thirties, and a lot of other players.
Lance would have more respect for his body and have the common sense not to dope.
The stuff they are using isn't like speed, I don't know it's long term affects, EPO, probably new derivitives, a lab in California was busted, huge list of pro/olympic athletes using the latest designer masked stuff. When you want to win you want to win, and when you know x percent are doping, and you know that they are beating you, what do you do?
He's obviously doped. Can't remember the name of that typically canadian dish we had a thread about here, but I'm sure it's outlawed in the rest of the world. :)
As to whether Lance or any other rider is doped or not, the problem is we'll never know for sure except for those who get caught and convicted. For the others, there will always be those who belleve they are doped and those who believe they're clean.
