Lance has had his few minutes of fame.
I personally am glad he was fortunate enough to get great medical care when fighting cancer and come back and race bikes. Most people in our country would NOT have gotten that much medical treatment. His racing comeback was inspiring for many. But....
Anyone out there who thinks Lance did not dope in order to enhance his performance is living in a Disneyland world. I cannot prove he did and you cannot prove he did not. You can speculate about what facts they have or do not have, but the truth is you do not know what they have for proof. It is logical to think they have enough to bust his fanny for drug use. I do not blame him for doing anything the other riders were not doing. Look at all the other riders sanctioned during his racing years. We could talk about all sorts of ways to find a common ground for dealing with all the drug use in the peloton in years past, but that is all we would be doing is talking about it. The governing bodies are the ones who need to address it at the individual and systemic levels. Just move on and let Lance end up where he ends up. Every person out there has their negatives. He has done much to help with Cancer awareness and maybe will continue with that work. Maybe in the end, that is what he will be remembered for in a sentence in some obscure history text.
As important as bike racers think the Tour de France is, it is really pretty small in the grand scheme of life. No more important than American football, basketball, baseball, Cricket, NASCAR or World Cup soccer. They bring people together, but are not essential for happiness. They are events that take place because the general public has enough leisure time to enjoy them. Having enough air to breath, your health and or healthcare, food to eat, a home to live in and being treated equally in your society is much more important than any of those sports.
Lance is in the situation he is in right now, not because some are out to get just him. You can think of many ways to rationalize my statement being wrong, but the truth is the USADA would not have taken these steps it they did not have enough proof.
Lance is not a bad person, he was just doing what others were doing and in the end, he did get caught like many others. Just because he is an American does not mean he was immune to needing that extra something to beat the others. It is sad in some ways, but when you make your living based on performance, you do what insures the best performance. Just riding lots and knowing the routes was not enough in his racing days.
It is getting better in cycling now. More racers are racing clean. I think.
Have a nice post-Lance weekend. Cross season is close and the Eugene Celebration Stage Race is up next for you roadies.
To some I am a fool, to me I am just living with almost 63 years of life experience.
ron
From: Mike Richardson
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 8:09 PM
To: Brooke Hoyer
Cc: OBRA
Subject: Re: [OBRA Chat] Armstrong
Against anyone's better judgement.
"Ringleader"? I doubt any athlete gets to make those calls, even for a weak DIrecteur Sportif Which they didn't have.
"biggest sports doper in US history"?
Not as long as we still have baseball. And football. And track, too, sometimes.
Their embarrassment, all of them, is they just KNEW he had to be and yet all their tests didn't catch him.
USADA's just trying to justify their budget, and busting people at Grand Fondos doesn't quite get it.
No-one cares about Capone. Really.
Mike
On Aug 24, 2012, at 3:50 PM, Brooke Hoyer wrote:
Against my better judgement, I will say something ...
Just as the FBI *needed* to get Al Capone for *something*, USADA needed to get Armstrong. Armstrong was ringleader of sophisticated and systematic PED distribution within his cycling team. He was an embarrassment to USADA. Their motivation was quite simple -- take down the biggest sports doper in US history by any means necessary. I claim that if you feel the FBI was justified in its actions with respect to Al Capone, then you really can't complain about USADA and Armstrong.
That said, I am conflicted and saddened by the whole affair.
Brooke Hoyer
On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 3:00 PM, mohair wrote:
There are already stirrings in the main stream press about the USADA's actions. The question is simple: Where does an American organization get the power to nullify Armstong's European victories. >From what I see, they don't. There are rumbles that the FIC and the IOC are staking out their turf. There is going to be a lot of legal action going on for quite some time.
If there is someone in OBRA-land that can show the legal basis for USADA's actions, I want to see. It smells very much like the USADA is looking to use Armstrong as an example of how powerful they are. The USADA appears to have "bought" witnesses with promises of no prosecution.
In my opinion the whole anti-EPO thing got off on the wrong foot. The problem was that hyper-elite athletes were dying from a combination of low heart rates and dangerously high red blood cell levels. So an industry was developed based on finding traces of EPO, pre-cursors, post-cursors, whatever. The simpler approach would have been to simply set a limit on red blood cell count, e.g., if your red cell count is above 50% it is taken as proof of drug use. Note: The argument that some people have naturally high red blood levels is easily dealt with: Take samples of all the family members. While there are cases where it does happen, it is statistically improbable, as in seven sigmas out on the curve.
I
_______________________________________________
OBRA mailing list
obra@list.obra.org
http://list.obra.org/mailman/listinfo/obra
Unsubscribe: obra-unsubscribe@list.obra.org
_______________________________________________
OBRA mailing list
obra@list.obra.org
http://list.obra.org/mailman/listinfo/obra
Unsubscribe: obra-unsubscribe@list.obra.org
=
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
OBRA mailing list
obra@list.obra.org
http://list.obra.org/mailman/listinfo/obra
Unsubscribe: obra-unsubscribe@list.obra.org