Author Topic: Bye Lance  (Read 282766 times)

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1050 on: 26 October, 2012, 11:44:56 am »
sometimes people have a legit reason for failing a test. The classic example being the same over the counter medicine in two different countries having different ingredients and one of them is a banned substance.
That isn't a "legit" reason for testing positive - just ask Alain Baxter.

Yes it is, it's inadvertent and at the most careless but it isn't the same as deliberately taking something to increase performance. Even the regulatory authorities in most sports accept the difference and hand out very minimal punishments for such cases. There still needs to be repercussions or lots of people would do it deliberately and claim it was an "accident" but morally and in the way its treated by governing bodies its a completely different matter to deliberate doping.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1051 on: 26 October, 2012, 11:48:32 am »
Yes it is, it's inadvertent and at the most careless but it isn't the same as deliberately taking something to increase performance.

Still doesn't match my understanding of the word "legit".

d.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1052 on: 26 October, 2012, 12:24:06 pm »
I thought Julich was outed as a doper years ago.

Seemed pretty obvious at the time.

It's more about what happened after 1999, to Julich and to Vaughters. They moved on to Credit Agricole. That was the last manifestation of the old Peugeot team.

Quote
In the late seventies and early eighties, the team signed many Anglophone riders. Many of these came from a Parisian Amateur club Athletic Club de Boulogne Billencourt (ACBB) that acted as a feeder club for top amateurs to turn professional. Phil Anderson, Robert Millar, Stephen Roche, Sean Yates, and Allan Peiper all started their careers with the Peugeot team. The last time that the team had the yellow jersey of the Tour was the 1983 Tour de France when Pascal Simon wore the jersey, but had to abandon the Tour, due to a broken collarbone. The team had its last chance at a Grand Tour win in the 1985 edition of the Vuelta a España with Robert Millar. Millar was wearing the leader's yellow jersey on the penultimate day when Pedro Delgado attacked him, to take the stage and the leader's jersey.[7]
 
In its final year of existence (1986), the team was managed by Roger Legeay.
 
After 1986, Legeay created the Vétements Z-Peugeot team as a continuation of the Peugeot cycling team. Legeay's team was subsequently renamed Z-Peugeot (1988–89), Z-Tomasso (1990), Z (1991–92), GAN (1993–96) and Crédit Agricole (1997–2008), before being disbanded in 2008. Legeay's team is best remembered for being the team which the American cyclist Greg LeMond rode for when he won the Tour de France in 1990 (when the team was known as Z-Tomasso).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_(cycling_team)

Vaughters has been quoted as saying that CA was 'clean'. Certainly the results of Vaughters and Julich post 2000 would tend to support that.
The big question for cycling fans is whether Roger Legeay was ever involved in the doping culture. Everything else is froth.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1053 on: 26 October, 2012, 12:31:11 pm »
Legeay tested positive for amphetamines during his riding career. Personally, I don't believe he was involved in systematic doping as a DS (I believe Lemond won the TdF clean, I believe Boardman was a clean rider) but that's purely a position of faith, based on no evidence.

d.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1054 on: 26 October, 2012, 12:34:06 pm »
ISTR someone calculated that, if you exclude known dopers, suspected dopers and former dopers, Wiggo has won the TdF three times already.
If you exclude suspected dopers, some would say there hasn't been a single winner since 1904.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1055 on: 26 October, 2012, 12:44:17 pm »
Legeay tested positive for amphetamines during his riding career. Personally, I don't believe he was involved in systematic doping as a DS (I believe Lemond won the TdF clean, I believe Boardman was a clean rider) but that's purely a position of faith, based on no evidence.

d.

What Legeay did or didn't do is the base datum around which we have to judge everything else in this case. Many of the key characters involved in Wiggins' success have been through his teams, Vaughters, Yates, Julich and Boardman, Wiggins himself. That's why Legeay is important to us. If there isn't an honestish kernel in this whole rotten affair then we can give up.

Toady

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1056 on: 26 October, 2012, 01:18:30 pm »
I see that the links to the years 1999-2005 have completely disappeared from the letour website

http://www.letour.fr/HISTO/us/TDF/

But the underlying pages are still there, eg

http://www.letour.fr/HISTO/us/TDF/1999/index.html

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1057 on: 26 October, 2012, 01:37:18 pm »
Why do people think Lemond, Boardman and Wiggins are "clean"? These are the three names that are always mentioned.

I start with the assumption that all pros dope.

LittleWheelsandBig

  • Whimsy Rider
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1058 on: 26 October, 2012, 01:41:06 pm »
Lemond almost certainly was clean. He was blasting away national-class seniors as a teenager, so reaching a very high level as a pro isn't unexpected. There were no strange leaps in performance.

Boardman probably was clean. Both have had few or no rumours regarding drugs throughout their careers.

I'll wait a few years to have an opinion on Wiggo.
Wheel meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

RJ

  • Droll rat
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1059 on: 26 October, 2012, 01:51:36 pm »
Why do people think Lemond, Boardman and Wiggins are "clean"? These are the three names that are always mentioned.

I start with the assumption that all pros dope.

The logical conclusion (no matter what the evidence) of that stance is that all pros dope, as it's impossible to *prove* a negative.

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1060 on: 26 October, 2012, 03:27:34 pm »
Legeay tested positive for amphetamines during his riding career. Personally, I don't believe he was involved in systematic doping as a DS (I believe Lemond won the TdF clean, I believe Boardman was a clean rider) but that's purely a position of faith, based on no evidence.

d.

From what I recall of what Jonathan Vaughters has been saying this summer, Credit Agricole were clean, or at least, cleaner than the norm at the time. Legeay refused to bend the rules so that JV could get a cortisone injection to treat an allergic reaction to a wasp sting.

From http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2009/jonathan-vaughters-interview

Quote
schmalz You always go there and have terrible things happen to you. I don't know if you wanna relive that whole thing, but you did crash out, and then after Postal you went to Credit Agricole.

JV Yep yep yep, 2000.

schmalz And that's when you got your infamous wasp sting.

JV That was 2001.

schmalz You were going to try to ride the stage the next day, correct?

JV Yeah. That was a very complex situation, and a lot of people don't quite understand it, so I will explain it. A lot of my anti doping angst for reform comes from that whole incident.

So, basically, I got stung by a wasp. Obviously I had an allergic reaction to it, it was sealing my eyes closed, so I couldn't see. That was the major issue as far as riding, was that I couldn't see. So initially I thought the swelling would come down, it didn't. Go to the hospital, they said you need a cortisone injection, our team doctor was like, "Oh no no no no no, can't do that can't do that."

At that point in time I said "That's ridiculous. We have these health booklets, if you need cortisone for asthma, if you need cortisone for a knee injury, you just take it. This is obviously a medical condition, this isn't just me wanting to take cortisone, so why don't we just do it and write in the booklet 'Face swelled shut needed cortisone.'"

At the time, the anti doping regulations had not taken into account the possibility of an allergic reaction, so there was only an exemption for asthma or knee injury, joint inflammation. So that night, I'm basically fighting with Roger (Legeay) and the team doctor. To me, it was just a ridiculous injustice. "Let's just write in my health booklet knee injury, and somehow it made my face swell up and we don't know why, and we'll just take the cortisone and it'll be gone". And they just wouldn't let me do it, "We're not going to do that".

It upset me to no end that I wasn't going to be able to race and finish the Tour de France, this was just a couple of days from the end. I wasn't going to be able to finish the Tour de France because of a stupid thing that was overlooked in the rules.

So I went to the stage the next day and said, "Ok, fine. I'm going to get this rule changed." And the way I was going to get this rule changed, I'm going to show up and everyone's going to look at my face, I look like the Elephant Man, and there's going to be a million photographers... Sometimes the media is a good medium to impart change in the world. It's going to be such an embarrassing story for WADA and the UCI that they're going to have to revisit this rule and change it, and that's exactly what happened.

But the thing that...two things came out of that. One, had it not been for Roger Legeay and our team doctor at the time, had it been left up to me, had it been left up to my 27 year old competitive athlete mind, I just wanted to finish, man, just gimme the shit, lemme finish. But it was the management, in a more logical, been around the block a few more times, bigger picture oriented, it was them that shut it down and said no. To this day I really thank Roger for that, because basically he save me from blatantly lying to the world.

And maybe no one would've known about it, right? What's the difference? Knee injury, you just write down knee injury and you can take cortisone and it's great and the wasp sting goes away and voila! But end of the day, from a big picture point of view, that's just how it starts. "There's this little loophole, let's just go ahead and do it." And that's really it. If you're willing to take that little loophole, what about the next one and the next one and the next one and on and on and on? And then you've taken so many loopholes that you're winning everything and the guy next to you is like, "Well, I should do this too". It seems like such a stupid little thing, but it's just like dominos. One guy decides to be untruthful on his health booklet, and all of a sudden all that spirals downward.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1061 on: 26 October, 2012, 03:36:03 pm »
Lemond almost certainly was clean. He was blasting away national-class seniors as a teenager, so reaching a very high level as a pro isn't unexpected. There were no strange leaps in performance.

Boardman probably was clean. Both have had few or no rumours regarding drugs throughout their careers.

I'll wait a few years for have an opinion on Wiggo.

Out of interest did anyone consider David Millar as suspect before he was caught?
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1062 on: 26 October, 2012, 03:39:28 pm »
Out of interest did anyone consider David Millar as suspect before he was caught?

Yes. He was under suspicion for a while, iirc.

d.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

simonp

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1063 on: 26 October, 2012, 03:49:57 pm »
He’d have got away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky kids syringes. Was implicated by a fellow rider, but no failed test (sound familiar?).

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1064 on: 26 October, 2012, 04:05:32 pm »
The cowardly weasels who are no better than Gaddafi have dropped their action against Kimmage.

Wonder if he's tempted to counter sue...  :demon:

d.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1065 on: 26 October, 2012, 04:11:52 pm »
The cowardly weasels who are no better than Gaddafi have dropped their action against Kimmage.

Wonder if he's tempted to counter sue...  :demon:

d.

Kimmage has been a thorn in the UCIs side for 20 years now. Seems he was right all along.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1066 on: 26 October, 2012, 04:14:12 pm »
The cowardly weasels who are no better than Gaddafi have dropped their action against Kimmage.

Wonder if he's tempted to counter sue...  :demon:

d.

Whilst the action against Kimmage named McQuaid, Verbruggen and the UCI as the plaintiffs, I do wonder whether the Dutch organ grinder and his dancing monkey had run things past anyone else before filing at the local courthouse. I imagine that members of the management committee have been receiving a lot of e-mail traffic in the last few days from concerned/angry members of their respective federations, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was a case that the presidents were out-voted.  :demon:

Also, note that the court action has merely been suspended, pending the outcome of the inquiry - which begs the question as to how genuinely independent the commission tasked with looking at the UCI/Armstrong relationship will be.  :-\

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-management-committee-will-not-reallocate-armstrongs-tours
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Justin(e)

  • On my way out of here
Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1067 on: 26 October, 2012, 04:33:28 pm »
Out of interest did anyone consider David Millar as suspect before he was caught?

Yes. He was under suspicion for a while, iirc.

d.

His denials were eloquent and forceful.  Walsh was his main protagonist.  In my mind, he denied with the same slipperiness as tricky Richard Virenque.  Just as the French brought the 'human' Virenque into their hearts, so too did the British.

There was a nice article by Syed in the Times a couple of days ago re Millar's cedibility.  This may be behind the firewall, but it says what I have thought for a long time. 

Another here.

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1068 on: 26 October, 2012, 04:53:00 pm »
Lance, the apology:

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/10/23/the-apology-lance-armstrong-will-never-give/

Written from the back of a flying pig.
Working my way up to inferior.

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1069 on: 26 October, 2012, 04:55:22 pm »

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1070 on: 26 October, 2012, 05:03:36 pm »
It looks like Jesús Manzano isn't working off the same script as other notable Spanish cyclists:

http://www.as.com/english/articulo/you-don-t-win-seven/20121023dasdenspo_10/Ten

Mind you, he blew the lid off doping in the Kelme team after nearly dying due to botched doping, and it was his confessional testimony that was a trigger for Operation Puerto.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche


"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1073 on: 27 October, 2012, 01:20:35 am »
Working my way up to inferior.

Re: Bye Lance
« Reply #1074 on: 27 October, 2012, 05:51:02 am »
The FP/Verbruggen dynasty is slowly falling apart.

Here's another story about a UCI doping cock-up, this time well into FP's tenure..

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/unnamed-australian-rider-tests-positive