**official** Tour de France 2004 Thread

[RaiseUp]

I saw on Espn today, a thing about Lance. I think after I saw that program, he does take illegal drugs.

 

[Chello02]

We shouldnt be trying to find excuses why lance armstrong is such an amazing athelete. We should be glad he's an American... haha

 

[RaiseUp]

They had video footage of his entourage driving 150 miles to dump some garbage in a can, and when they went threw it, there were syringes and other things.

That's what convinced me.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
They had video footage of his entourage driving 150 miles to dump some garbage in a can, and when they went threw it, there were syringes and other things.

That's what convinced me.

Well, "documentaries" can bend anything in any way they like. Until they have real proof, it's probably best to give the benefit of the doubt. Nobody drives 150 miles to dump garbage, illegal or not. That alone makes no sense even if it was cocaine.

 

[RaiseUp]

Well, they did.

 

[Nitemare]

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
They had video footage of his entourage driving 150 miles to dump some garbage in a can, and when they went threw it, there were syringes and other things.

That's what convinced me.

Was Michael Moorer filming it?

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: Nitemare

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
They had video footage of his entourage driving 150 miles to dump some garbage in a can, and when they went threw it, there were syringes and other things.

That's what convinced me.

Was Michael Moorer filming it?

Heh, that's what I was thinking.

I wonder what was in these syringes? Oh, that's right - probably vitamins. But then that wouldn't make it quite so interesting would it?

 

[Entity]

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
They had video footage of his entourage driving 150 miles to dump some garbage in a can, and when they went threw it, there were syringes and other things.

That's what convinced me.

Mind referencing what video this is? I'd be interested in finding it, but can't anywhere. All I've heard are the claims Emma O'reilley (sp?) has made, which at this point are old hat.

Rob

 

[Aquaman]

OMGWATERMELON

Fausto............. you should join the Tour De Gastown next year

Lance did it in 1991

Also the Tour De Delta has just finished.

ps. Gastown has some cobblestones

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[imported_theEman]

Lance is in second . Only 22 seconds behind! Way to go.

 

[godspeedx]

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I've been following this daily on sports illustrated. I was shocked to hear that lance killed 4 minutes off the lead yesterday and he's had a similar showing today. He's just making a joke out of the competition now. Greg lemond seems convinced that lance is a doper. I wonder...I mean others have admittedly doped and can't even compete with him. Eitherway, it's good for the whiny french who are telling him to go home if he can be the first to 6 consecutive.

But he hasn't failed a single drug test yet (TMK). It seems to me he is just a superior athlete. His lactic acid levels are far lower than the average biker, his resting heartbeat is something like ~34bpm.

Armstrong was given a test called the VO2 Max, which is commonly used to assess an athlete's aerobic ability: it measures the maximum amount of oxygen the lungs can consume during exercise. His levels were the highest ever recorded at the clinic. (Currently, they are about eighty-five millilitres per kilogram of body weight; a healthy man might have a VO2 Max of forty.)

Edit: More

Lance Armstrong's heart is almost a third larger than that of an average man. During those rare moments when he is at rest, it beats about thirty-two times a minute?slowly enough so that a doctor who knew nothing about him would call a hospital as soon as he heard it. (When Armstrong is exerting himself, his heart rate can edge up above two hundred beats a minute.) Physically, he was a prodigy.

I have this huge running book (Lore of Running) that talks about VO2 max's. There's a table of the highest levels ever recorded in endurance runners including Steve Prefontaine (a famous American Runner) who had an 84.4. There are two guys with 85's at the top.

"The highest value ever recorded in any athlete is a value of 93 ml O2 per kg per min, that of a Scandinavian cross-country skier."

You can only change your VO2 max level by about 5% to 15% also, so it's pretty much all natural.

 

[Excelsior]

Yeah, thats what I was getting at. He really was born a natural athlete.

 

[Chello02]

So where is lance now? 20 sec behind the leader or something?

My guess the only reason for not being in the lead is so he dosent have to deal with all the press confrences and stuff that the leader has to deal with. More rest time and no yellow jearsy is all part of his plan.

 

[RaiseUp]

Hehe. Just because the test's say he is clean doesn't mean anything, there was a rider, who got tested a lot and Came up clean. Then, he openly addmitted he was did DOPE up .

The footage was on Espn "Outside the Lines"

Also, there is a book about it as well "L.A. Confidential, The Secrets of Lance Armstrong"

 

[Entity]

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
Hehe. Just because the test's say he is clean doesn't mean anything, there was a rider, who got tested a lot and Came up clean. Then, he openly addmitted he was did DOPE up .

The footage was on Espn "Outside the Lines"

Also, there is a book about it as well "L.A. Confidential, The Secrets of Lance Armstrong"

Yeah, I know about the book. The footage would be more interesting to me, since the book is about as unbiased as a Michael Moore film.

Rob

 

[RaiseUp]

Look for it On Espn.

They caught them leaving, and followed them like 150 miles. Lance's associates threw a garbage bag in the trash, and the other people opened it when they left. They found syringes and other incriminating things.

 

[manly]

What sounded more incriminating was that Lance supposedly failed a test before the 1999 Tour, but had some excuse that was accepted by race officials.

 

[Feldenak]

Originally posted by: manly
What sounded more incriminating was that Lance supposedly failed a test before the 1999 Tour, but had some excuse that was accepted by race officials.

Are you talking about this episode?

The book and the AFP article also re-raises a bogus in-season drug testing issue. The AFP article says:

Armstrong has always strenuously denied taking performance enhancing drugs and has only tested positive once - for a corticostroid at the Tour de France in 1999, for which cycling's world ruling body the UCI did not sanction him.

Why didn't the UCI sanction him? Armstrong says in Every Second Counts:

I used an analgesic cream that contained corticsteroid to treat a case of saddle sores, so the press reported that I tested positive for a banned steroid. It was untrue. I had received permission from race authorities to use the cream, disclosing its contents. In fact, all of my tests were clean, and I asked the Tour to release the results, which they did.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
Look for it On Espn.

They caught them leaving, and followed them like 150 miles. Lance's associates threw a garbage bag in the trash, and the other people opened it when they left. They found syringes and other incriminating things.

And what was in those syringes? As I mentioned above, there is nothing illegal about syringes. It's what was in them. Considering that these people you're speaking of who supposedly went 150 miles to get the bag of garbage found nothing in the syringes worth noting, then the entire thing is a load of sh*t IMO.

For all the books and biased documentaries, he's still never been found to dope.

In regards to being found positive for something, there are thousands of over the counter legal medicines which can show up in drug tests. I remember in one of the olympics a female rower had some major issues because she was on a cough suppressent or something. She was found positive for a drug that actually decreases performance. If the UCI accepted what he had to say the case is closed.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
Look for it On Espn.

They caught them leaving, and followed them like 150 miles. Lance's associates threw a garbage bag in the trash, and the other people opened it when they left. They found syringes and other incriminating things.

And what was in those syringes? As I mentioned above, there is nothing illegal about syringes. It's what was in them. Considering that these people you're speaking of who supposedly went 150 miles to get the bag of garbage found nothing in the syringes worth noting, then the entire thing is a load of sh*t IMO.

For all the books and biased documentaries, he's still never been found to dope.

In regards to being found positive for something, there are thousands of over the counter legal medicines which can show up in drug tests. I remember in one of the olympics a female rower had some major issues because she was on a cough suppressent or something. She was found positive for a drug that actually decreases performance. If the UCI accepted what he had to say the case is closed.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Not to mention that in 1999 Lance Armstrong was a zero-time TdF winner. There was no reason for a cover-up if they had strong suspicions of doping at that time.

 

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: RaiseUp
Look for it On Espn.

They caught them leaving, and followed them like 150 miles. Lance's associates threw a garbage bag in the trash, and the other people opened it when they left. They found syringes and other incriminating things.

I'm honestly on the fence regarding Lance and doping. At any rate, if he is doping, he's using something that's currently undetectable. If this is the case, you can be damn sure everyone else is using it too. This means the playing field is essentially level and Lance is still the strongest guy out there.

As for the syringe thing; pro athletes use syringes whether they're doping or not for stuff like iron and B-complex injections. Without analysis of what was in those syringes, they're hardly a smoking gun.

 

[new2AMD]

I have to say, saturdays stage kept my interest. I got up @7am with my daughter (3.5months old) and intended to watch the full british open coverage on tnt and abc but ended up watching OLN a lot more. Especially the commercial free 1/2 hour. It was pretty cool to watch the way the blue train methodically destroyed the field. Tiger was on a birdie binge and I couldnt stop watching a bicycle race.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Given the drug scandal breaking in every other major sport at the moment, with athletes who are definitely more elite than Lance (at least when you start counting popularity and dollars), what's the chance that he's on something another generation ahead of those previously undetectable drugs?

I dunno... his performance is frankly unbelievable, but I don't think there's much choice except to believe it.

 

[Fausto]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
Given the drug scandal breaking in every other major sport at the moment, with athletes who are definitely more elite than Lance (at least when you start counting popularity and dollars), what's the chance that he's on something another generation ahead of those previously undetectable drugs?

Cyclists are pretty much the most-tested athletes around, so they're the ones who'd be ahead of the curve. There's certainly no shortage of money for the Div I teams either so that's not any kind of limiter. Again, not saying everyone's doping, just that they could if they wanted to.

I dunno... his performance is frankly unbelievable, but I don't think there's much choice except to believe it.

Like I said before, the playing field is basically level one way or another; he's just the strongest guy out there right now any way you cut it.