Lance Armstrong

[jagilki]

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/lance-armstrong-stripped-tour-de-france-titles-lifetime-ban-olympic-sports-drops-doping-appeal-article-1.1143295

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong will receive a lifetime ban from Olympic sports Friday and be stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles after deciding to abandon his long fight against charges he led a sophisticated doping conspiracy throughout his career.

Armstrong notified the media Thursday night that he would disregard a midnight deadline the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency had given him to challenge the results of USADA’s two-year investigation of his legendary cycling teams, a probe that determined Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions.

'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH' - READ LANCE ARMSTRONG'S STATEMENT

Surrendering saves Armstrong from watching his former teammates testify against him in arbitration, but it leaves the iconic cancer survivor vulnerable to a tidal wave of legal claims from sponsors, promotion insurers and even the U.S. government, who are positioned to demand the return of tens of millions in sponsorship dollars.

Unless Armstrong changes his mind before 2:01 ET, he will be immediately disqualified from every competition he entered since Aug. 1, 1998, including the Tour de France races where he built his legend and the 2000 Summer Olympics, where he won a bronze medal.

READ: LAWYER'S LETTER ACCEPTS SANCTIONS

A lifetime period of ineligibility means Armstrong, 40, will be prohibited from participating, either as an athlete or team owner, at any event whose organizers are signatories to the World Anti-Doping Code â€" a list that includes elite cycling races as well as the triathlon events that Armstrong has entered since retiring from cycling in 2011.

A part owner of the RadioShack cycling team, Armstrong will be barred from receiving team-owner credentials at the Tour de France, an event that he dominated between 1999 and 2005, trouncing his rivals in an era that was rife with doping.

Three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond now becomes the only American man to have won cycling’s hardest race.

Floyd Landis was stripped of his title from the 2006 edition after losing an arbitration battle with USADA. Landis later served a two-year ban, confessed to doping and accused Armstrong, sparking a federal grand jury fraud investigation that ended earlier this year without charges.

Landis himself became the focus of a grand jury investigation following his 2010 confession, as federal prosecutors in San Diego explored whether Landis committed fraud in 2006 and 2007 while raising hundreds of thousands for a legal defense fund. Those prosecutors recently offered Landis a deferred prosecution agreement â€" a deal in which charges against him will be dropped if he pays back investors in the Floyd Fairness Fund.

USADA, which leveled its charges in June, has already banned one of Armstrong’s doctors, Luis Garcia del Moral, and a team trainer, Jose Marti. The World Anti-Doping Agency notified all member federations that the men are ineligible to participate in sports in any capacity.

Three other men USADA charged in the conspiracy â€" doctors Michele Ferrari and Pedro Celaya, and team director Johan Bruyneel â€" have told USADA they will contest the charges in arbitration. According to USADA, more than 12 eyewitnesses are prepared to testify, including 10 cyclists who rode with Armstrong on the U.S. Postal Service, Discovery Channel and RadioShack teams.

The U.S. Postal Service gave tens of millions in sponsorship dollars to Armstrong’s teams, and the government may yet try to claw that taxpayer money back. Armstrong is one of the defendants in a whistleblower lawsuit that Landis filed in 2010 under the False Claims Act, a law that allows the Justice Department’s civil division to join plaintiffs in lawsuits that allege a defendant defrauded the U.S. government.

Armstrong may also face litigation from SCA Promotions, a Texas company that paid Armstrong a $7.5 million performance bonus in 2006 after a bitter arbitration fight. The company’s attorney notified Armstrong earlier this summer that the company would seek to claw that money back if Armstrong was stripped of his titles

[Jerry McClean]

I found myself thinking the other day "why don't they just leave the poor fella alone?". Then I realised I have no idea whether he's a drug cheat or not but the fact that his old team mates say he was suggest he did cheat. If so...I have little sympathy with him!

He's done well with his PR though ha. I assumed he was being hounded for no reason before I read up about it all.

[Black Death]

Rick Reilly column  is right aligned with my thoughts



Lance still worth revering

I'm wearing something yellow Friday for Lance Armstrong. Not because I think he's innocent. He just gave up his chance to prove his innocence, so I suppose he isn't.

But I don't care. I'm wearing yellow just to say thank you. If he cheated in a sport where cheating is as common as eating, then I'm wearing yellow to thank him for everything he's done since he cheated.

I'm wearing something yellow for the way he changed cancer in this country from dread to hope. I'm wearing something yellow for everybody who got their chilling cancer diagnosis and said to themselves, "Lance did it. Why can't I?"

Want to join me?

Dig out your old Livestrong bracelet. Wear a yellow scarf, yellow socks, watch "Old Yeller." Just make yellow a part of your Friday.

Yes, the United States Anti-Doping Association -- riding roughshod on slippery rules and
sketchy standards -- declared Armstrong guilty of doping. Then last Friday, Armstrong stopped fighting them. "Enough is enough," he wrote. It might as well have been a firing squad. It was that one-sided.

When a man who never quits finally quits, you don't know how to feel.
"It was a somber moment," says his agent, Bill Stapleton. "He looked at his options and it was like, 'Which one is the best worst?' You can't go on with these kind of legal bills, with people tearing apart your work. It was just too hard on his family."
Sure, Armstrong could go to arbitration. But he's already spent over $5 million on his defense, according to friends. And would you go to arbitration, knowing that USADA sets up the rules of arbitration, sets up the rules of what can be admitted into arbitration and approves the arbitrators? Would you go, knowing it could take two or three more years? Knowing that even
if you won, USADA could appeal?

So, yes, USADA has stripped him of his seven Tour de France titles even though nobody's still quite sure they can strip him. If Switzerland investigates Roger Federer and finds he doped, can it take away his U.S. Open trophies?

It's all ugly. The whole sport is ugly. If the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling's governing body, upholds the penalty, do you realize that 14 of the last 17 TdF winners would be expunged? And what will they do with them? In five of Armstrong's seven wins, the second-place finishers were implicated in doping scandals of their own. One year -- 2003 -- you have to fish down to fifth place to find somebody clean.
Essentially, this is cycling: If you can get on your bike and make it around your local reservoir without doping, you might have just won next year's Tour de France.
So Lance Armstrong may have cheated, just like everybody else. Or maybe he gave up the fight because the whole thing was more crooked than San Francisco's Lombard St. After all, USADA convicted him on hearsay, not proof. They don't have a single failed sample to hang their hats on -- Armstrong has never failed one -- so they took the word of riders like self-admitted liar Floyd Landis. The whole thing, all their evidence, is based on testimony, not tests.

Maybe these riders are lying, maybe they're not. I don't care. I'm wearing yellow Friday because I want Armstrong to know what he meant to me, my family and the dozens of people I know who took Armstrong with them into those chemotherapy rooms and radiation labs and the darkest corners of their fears.
When my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, the first book she read was his "It's Not About the Bike." She was inspired. She lives. The man is a hope machine.
I'm wearing something yellow Friday because I know he never cheated the cancer patients who believe in him. I've sat with him as he spends his daily hour answering the emails of perfect strangers -- all suddenly cancer-stricken and panicked.

I've watched him pushing the Texas legislature, poking the California legislature, prodding the U.S. Congress to free up money for research. I know what he stands for -- $475 million raised to educate cancer patients so far -- and so do millions of others. That's why, the day after his decision to quit trying to prove his innocence, Livestrong took in 770 percent of what it had the day before. That's why every company he endorses has stuck with him.
Fine. If he cheated, wipe him out of the record book. Make him pay back the first-place money he won all those years. He gave it all away to his teammates anyway. There's some irony for you. Plenty of those guys -- George Hincapie, Landis, Tyler Hamilton - were suspected of, or admitted, using banned substance too.

But wear something yellow Friday just to return the favor. Wear something yellow to tell Lance Armstrong that they might be able to ban him for life, but they can't ban him from life. Wear it to tell him to keep going, to keep fighting for cancer-research legislation, to keep showing people through his Livestrong foundation how to fight through the red tape and get to the treatment that can cure them.
In five years, nobody will want to check to see if Lance Armstrong's name is still attached to those trophies. But in five years, they'll still want him leading any peloton that's trying to chase down cancer.
In an email reply to me Monday, Armstrong said, "Sorry, but I'm done talking about this, forever. I'm focused on what's ahead of me -- not behind. Regardless of the injustice that has been done. Onward and upward."
Friday, it's our turn to talk.

[Rob]

If you ask me I thought Amstrong was innocent because nothing was ever proven but as he has given up on fighting I think he has practically conceded guilt...

[Ian "Wolfie" Trumps]

Honestly...I couldnt give a shit. In terms of performance enhancing drugs and sports I dont really have a major issue with people taking them. Its there choice. I would take caffeine pills and what not at Uni to study for exams. Drink Red Bull. All of these things giving me some sort of unnatural edge.

Further to this Armstrong also has done a shit load outside of cycling for cancer research.

Didnt the bronze medalist of the 100m have a drugs taking past? I know Dwayne Chambers did...

[Dorling]

Honestly...I couldnt give a shit. In terms of performance enhancing drugs and sports I dont really have a major issue with people taking them. Its there choice. I would take caffeine pills and what not at Uni to study for exams. Drink Red Bull. All of these things giving me some sort of unnatural edge.

Further to this Armstrong also has done a shit load outside of cycling for cancer research.

Didnt the bronze medalist of the 100m have a drugs taking past? I know Dwayne Chambers did...

My view on performance enhancing drugs is the complete opposite. Taking drugs to make you better is just an admission that you don't have the talent and ability to win. Furthermore, you don't have the work ethic to do what needs to be done to actually make you the best, so you take a chickenshit, cowards short cut in the hopes of getting some kind of shallow victory over men and women who are actually respectable and hardworking.

If somebody dedicates their life to their sport but is denied their moment of glory by some morally reprehensible, low life, cheating scum then it annoys me. Performance enhancing drugs are wrong.

If he took them, then it's right to take his victories away. The trouble is, the people that should have won will never have their moment and it sucks. If he's guilty he's the lowest of the low (in sporting terms).

Any drugs cheat should be banned etc.

Rehabilitation is fine, however, so if Gatlin wasn't on drugs this time around and that has been proved then fair enough. You can't punish someone forever for their choices but they should definitely do the time that fits the crime in sporting terms.

And on the subject of Dwain Chambers he did more time than international athletics rules state due to the, deemed in court, illegal rules that the british athletics governing body subjected him to - he also delivers talks to kids and young athletes about doping and has been involved in anti doping work. He is an example of someone who cheated, was punished, and moved on. He didn't keep doing it for his entire career while installing himself as some kind of moral superhero like Armstrong has allegedly done.

[Ian "Wolfie" Trumps]

So really if we are going to be that pushy on drugs...maybe he shouldnt have been given a second chance.

I think its probably worth clarifying how much a performance enhancement works to make you better at something. I watched this documentary that made me really think I believe it was suggested by Cory called 'Bigger, Stronger, Faster'. I was pretty much on the otherside of the fence until a couple of scenes:

1. Guy battling HIV
2. Carl Lewis bit

and the killer being the guys who used medication for improved concentration in testing, beta blockers for nerves. The guys in the orchestra who did this and that and I honestly sat there and thought to myself...you know in principal this is a very similar thing. Someone is using something unnatural their body doesnt produce in order to get an advantage.

I'd highly recommend it Dorling as great viewing.

[Dorling]

The good thing about most drugs is that you can test for them. If you're clean, you're clean and if you're dirty you're dirty. Cheating in a race isn't the same as raping someone so you can't punish them forever - rapists get out of prison (clumsy analogy but it is Sunday).

Orchestras, as far as I know, don't compete against each other all that often, but I see your point. The thing is, sport can make somebody incredibly wealthy so there has to be rules. I'd hate to see a situation where performance enhancing drugs are allowed, it would change from whoever has the most talent and work ethic to whoever had the best drugs and did the most medical research. Not what I'm after.

I will see if I can find the time to watch that doc though Ian, sounds interesting.

I will try to find the time to watch that doc for sure Ian.

[Drama Queen]

The documentry does sound interesting, but is it going to sway my opinion that sports have rules and if the rules include a ban on drugs, then taking them calls for an instant dq.

I mean yeah, like most taboos it is probably not nearly as bad asit's made out to be, and I really don't know how much of an edge they give, but I certainly would not like to see athletes feeling compelled to take them because their opponents and/or team-mates are doing so. Remember this is not just at the top of pro sports but can trickle down to school teams where there have already been contraversies with asshole coaches encouraging kids to take shit.

[Dorling]

The documentry does sound interesting, but is it going to sway my opinion that sports have rules and if the rules include a ban on drugs, then taking them calls for an instant dq.

I mean yeah, like most taboos it is probably not nearly as bad asit's made out to be, and I really don't know how much of an edge they give, but I certainly would not like to see athletes feeling compelled to take them because their opponents and/or team-mates are doing so. Remember this is not just at the top of pro sports but can trickle down to school teams where there have already been contraversies with asshole coaches encouraging kids to take shit.

Agreed. Keeping sport clean is the only way to keep it fair.

The point you make about youngsters is very valid too.

[Ian "Wolfie" Trumps]

That is a very good point on the youngsters. I guess if I was relaxed on it, I would like to see some sort of age restriction on taking performance enhancing drugs. I am not a steroid advocat per say, but at the same point I don't think they have as much a dramatic effect are laid out. I mean I take protein shakes for lifting weights. I have developed biceps that measure 19 inches all the way around which was an increase I put down to a high protein intake and working the muscles a lot. I guess my question is, does that make me a drug cheat if I was entering professional sports?

Just an open question for people there...feel free to label me Ben Johnson Junior lol.

[Dorling]

My response to that would be no, you're not a drug cheat because I could just each a shit load of eggs to get protein. Protein is a natural substance, and while protein shakes deliver an intense hit of protein they're not concoctions of hormones and scientifically developed compounds that have been formulated in a laboratory to have a very unnatural effect on the human body.

Steroids mess with hormones and chemical balances in the body in a way that natural substances don't. I read an interview with an East German swimmer from the 70s and 80s (I forget her name now) and she was one of the generation that was plucked from school to be an athlete and injected with shit loads of drugs to make her into a machine. Her life is now ruined by the after effects of the drugs - her body developed in a way that means she suffers joint pain and muscle seizures daily, as well as numerous mental health problems.

Increasing protein intake won't do that - you might get fat if you don't work it off but it's essentially a product that the human body needs, not one that's been added for the explicit purpose of competitive advantage.