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news
Lance Armstrong after crashing on Stage 8 of the 2010 Tour de France © PhotoSport International.jpgLess a smoking gun, more a nuclear bomb: USADA publishes Lance Armstrong evidence in full
Less the smoking gun that many expected and more a nuclear explosion, the fallout from which will continue for months, years, to come. That’s the initial impression given by USADA’s publication this evening of its full reasoned decision plus supporting documents in the Lance Armstrong case on its website.
It also shatters the myth that many Armstrong supporters continued to cling to, that the agency's evidence was based on "hearsay," backed by statements from a handful of self-confessed dopers.
The material USADA has made public damns not only Armstrong, but many others active in the sport during what is now termed the "dark years," and who continue to be involved in it. It's not an exaggeration to say that after today, none of us will view the sport in the same way ever again.
The sheer volume of evidence, and the minute detail it goes into, is astonishing and there is little chance of making sense of the whole so soon after its publication on USADA’s website, apparently brought forward due to the main document being leaked on the internet while still under embargo.
We’ll be analysing the contents and their implications more fully in the days ahead, but for now, here are some key points that emerge:
Armstrong was invited to meet with USADA prior to his being charged. He declined that offer, “setting in motion the sequence of event that led to USADA’s charges and ultimately [his] sanction.”
USADA says “the achievements of USPS/Discovery Channel… including those of Lance Armstrong as its leader, were accomplished through a massive doping conspiracy… Armstrong’s career on USPS/Discovery Channel… was fuelled from start to finish by doping.”
For reasons of transparency, USADA has discussed its evidence “in significant detail, just as an arbitration panel would have done had Mr Amstrong been willing to allow the evidence in his case to be heard by independent arbitrators.”
It’s worth pointing out that had Armstrong elected to go to arbitration, he would have had to allow the retesting of suspect samples or accept USADA’s findings on those issues; as it is, he can continue to protest that incorrect testing protocols were used, or that the samples were just suspect, and not hard evidence of doping. Such protestations now have an increasingly hollow ring.
Witness testimony from a number of former USPS riders including George Hincapie and Jonathan Vaughters asserts that Armstrong was openly using EPO and cortisone from the time he joined the team following his return to the sport in 1998 after beating cancer.
Following the arrival of Johan Bruyneel and Dr Luis Garcia Del Moral from ONCE in 1999, doping is alleged to have been systemic at USPS in pursuit of the sole ambition of winning the Tour de France. Dr Michele Ferrari, who had been working with Armstrong for several years, was closely involved in team training camps. By now, it is said that a system was in place to ensure distribution of EPO to riders.
USADA has witness statements asserting that Armstrong was able to escape sanction in repect of a positive test for cortisone on the 1999 Tour de France only because of a backdated prescription from Del Moral for a saddle sore cream containing the substance. Witnesses state that the saddle sore cream story was a fabrication and that the presence of cortisone was due to an injection.
The agency say that by the 2000 season, doping at USPS had gone beyond the use of EPO and testosterone and now also encompassed blood doping at Bruyneel’s instigation.
During the same season, Armstrong allegedly abandoned a race in Spain after Hincapie, who says in his affidavit that he knew that his team leader had just taken testosterone, texted him to warn him that drug testing personnel had arrived at the team hotel. By the year end, Hincapie, like other team mates, would have been invited to work with Ferrari in exchange for a substantial slice of his annual income.
By now, Armstrong had become the biggest story in sport; the man who had beaten seemingly terminal cancer and come back to win possibly the toughest event in any sport. True, uncomfortable questions were already being asked, but at that point, the doubters were a tiny minority.
However, USADA’s documentation reveals how year after depressing year, as the myth of Armstrong was being carefully nurtured, the doping programme at USPS was being carefully nurtured.
Its evidence for that isn’t from a handful of jealous rivals or former team mates who had lied under oath about their own drug use – yes, Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis are among the witnesses, but they are heavily outnumbered by riders who, before opening up to USADA, had unblemished reputations.
In painstaking detail, USADA catalogues the allegations made against Armstrong by a succession of those who provided it with detailed affidavits; the training with Ferrari, the team’s systematic approach to doping, the clandestine transfusions in hotel rooms, the evasion of drugs testers. The attention to detail is immaculate, each assertion carefully footnoted with a direction to the affidavit where it is made.
Revelations in the reasoned decision and its supporting documentation range from the truly mundane to the absolutely shocking.
An example of the former lies in a trip by Armstrong to Italy to meet with Dr Michele Ferrari being identified because his then wife Kristin, who accompanied him, asked Betsy Andreu, wife of US Postal rider Frankie Andreu, if she “would make some risotto if the Armstrongs brought the ingredients from Italy.”
An illustration of the latter is the allegation by former US Postal rider Jonathan Vaughters that Armstrong had told him that he blamed the UCI for the extent of the cancer that nearly killed him, because its doping controls had not picked up high levels of HCG in his system when the disease was at its early stage.
Vaughters claims that Armstrong told him: “If I ever have a doping problem, I have this card to play.”
As it turned out, Armstrong folded his cards the moment a US district court judge ruled that USADA did have jurisdiction in the case.
Whatever his protestations that he was the victim of a witch hunt, and that USADA lacked powers to sanction him, the body of evidence made public by the agency today leaves one with the overriding impression that Armstrong knew his opponent had been dealt an unbeatable hand.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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http://newsthump.com/2012/10/11/lance-armstrong-launches-livestrong-yell...
Oh good grief! Thought I’d scan the comments here just because I was curious to find YOU. I knew there had to be some deluded fool still clinging to Armstrong’s soundbites about being tested blah blah ad infinitum.
Read the report. Or any of the several exposé books that have been released. They all detail – in depth – exactly how he beat the tests…but let’s face it, you’re not gonna read it are you? If you were at all inclined to learn the unpalatable truth, you wouldn’t be here babbling inane nonsense about how wonderful the emperor’s clothes look.
Erm...I didn't say I'm doubting the evidence and no I haven't read all of those USADA online reports. Frankly I've got better things to worry about. So, can someone tell me in plain English how he got round all of the doping controls when so many didn't ?
Dullard - wrong end of the stick mate. I've read it several times. They're all guilty as charged.
Maybe re-read my post again?
When I say I don't buy it, I mean I don't buy the inference that once Armstrong retired everyone cleaned up. It's scapgoating. They're as guilty as Armstrong but taking none of the flack. Their fame, earnings and endorsements all increased as well. Hamilton and Landis continued to dope long after they left Armstrong.
My statement about post 2006 refers to those who claim they've been clean since then (Hincapie).
If another scandal breaks contradicting these claims then their evidence in the USADA case will be tainted.
There were lots of ways to beat the tests:
*When Armstrong first used EPO there was no test for it so he could use it to win in 1999 and not get caught.
*After the EPO test was introduced he switched to mainly using blood doping of which there was no test for.
*For a long time there was little out of competition testing and no whereabout system. So if he wanted to take drugs he could just go somewhere the testers could not find him.
*He used a altitude tent to mask the taking of micro-doses of EPO.
*He used saline drips to reduce his haemocrit levels to below the 50% allowed limit before being tested.
*He used expensive doctors who knew what amount of drugs could be taken to avoid detection and how long the drug would remain detectable.
*Dr. Ferrari knew exactly how the EPO test worked because he was a friend and colleague of Conconi who developed the test.
*He used medical exemption certificates for fake injuries to allow him to take drugs including one that was backdated after he failed a test.
*He made late changes to his whereabouts submissions in order to confuse out of competition testers.
*On occasions he had prior warning of testers arriving or used delaying tactics to allow him enough time to mask his dug taking.
I get the 2006 date, they're all basically saying that their doping was enabled through being part of USPS/Discovery and when Lance quit and they all went their separate ways the culture changed. Some moved to cleaner teams (by the sounds of it they couldn't have found a dirtier one) and others, out from under the influence of LA, decided it was time to change and clean their act up. From reading the report you get the feeling that without LA many may not have chosen to dope and that their was immense pressure on them to 'join the gang'. Once the pressure was gone it's not surprising that some changed their habits.
I just feel the 2006 watershed is all a bit convenient and ducks what's been happening since then. If they'd admitted to doping after 2006 we would be talking about more people than Armstrong.
Anyone care to discuss the illustrious carer of Bjarne Riis? How many riders have now been caught/confessed to doping on his teams?
To tar Armstrong as the Bogeyman, and i'm not for one minute saying he's not guilty as charged, but it's simplistic and ducks a lot more questions than it answers.
I don't believe things magically changed in 2006 when he retired.
There are more clean riders now but doping is still a huge problem.
SiD - thanks for clarification. Still think it's a side issue though and still think that Armstrong's part in driving the doping programme is key, critical and wouldn't have happened without him. Doping still occurred after 2006 I agree, Leipheimer confessed to doping into 07 when on the Discovery team (begs the question what El Pistolero was up to at the time being on the same team) and the chances of Armstrong not doping in 09 and 10 are put at less than a million to one in the report, but that wasn't the focus of the investigation, which was Armstrong. The witnesses were testifying to USADA about the investigation into Armstrong and USPS; they were bit players and confessed. I don't think in any event that Hincapie, Barry et al have much to hide now - their careers as riders are over anyway, and they've already confessed to the fact of doping so why say 'hey but I was a good boy after 2006'.
Thank you Neil. That's all I wanted to know. What's equally damning about this is the rank incompetence of the TdF doping controls. When one considers that the French had it in for Armstrong from the off it's ludicrous that he wasn't caught in the act. The big question now of course is who *really* won those seven tours if Armstrong didn't ?
michopull: It's not incompetence. It's just fundamentally difficult to detect certain doping practices.
i have claimed the 1999 victory the second he got banned. i wasnt doping just drinking lots of vodka so im a clean champion
What this sorry episode really makes clear is that the doping in USPS (and probably most other teams) was organised and systematic involving riders, doctors and managers.
So perhaps a new approach is required - don't punish the riders if they are caught, but give the manager / DS a 2 or 3 year ban and similar for the doctors. That way they have an incentive to actively stop the doping rather manage and facilitate it knowing if someone is caught, they get off scot free. And it would effectively close whole teams down. Might concentrate few minds...
Also, if doc gets found caught twice in this way, take away his medical licence so he can no longer practice as a doctor anywhere in the world - the prospect of flipping burgers for the rest of his life won't be entirely appealing I'm sure. Or alternatively, the doctors are employed and paid by the cycling federation of the country where the teams are based I.e. not the teams themselves.
So come on UCI stop sueing small fry through the courts and show some leadership, or are you just as bad as FIFA (oops think I answered my own question there
Another point which has I'm sure already been made, but beware any team that is particularly dominant, crushing all before them. Merckx in the 60's and 70's for example - just reading Daniel Friebe's excellent biography - Merckx got caught 3 times in his career. Just hope I don't read a similar exposé of Sky in a few years time....
[[[[[[ Yes...and if, as has been suggested, half the riders in the Grand Tour pelotons have been at it for years, then why are all the fingers pointing only at Armstrong? Signed, Mystified.
P.R.
Take a look at this:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/24/sports/top-finishers-of-th...
List all the finishers tainted by doping during, or after, each tour de france.
Not many names left...
Greg LeMond called it. Lance Armstrong has perpetrated the "greatest fraud" in cycling history.
If Armstrong had been more like Jacques Anquetil, who defiantly acknowledged the reality of doping, "get over it", instead of cynically escalating ever more strident denials, making smarmy TV commercials and encouraging hero worship, then maybe I could empathize with him.
By refusing to deny doping and drugging he might not have earned seven Tour victories, but he would have a fighting chance for my respect and admiration.
I hope Kevin Costner is cast to portray him in a Hollywood bio-pic.
Perhaps doping will become accepted as a result of all this?
Medically irresponsible "back room infusions" hold the potential for fatal accidents. Consider Ricardo Ricco's lucky escape after poisoning himself in a botched autologous blood transfusion.
This should not be happening in a professional sport today.
And while deregulating performance enhancing drugs won't exactly level the playing field, it might make playing less dangerous and players less duplicitous.
But, just like the political cowards who are too afraid to decriminalize street drugs, making the whole sordid reality a public health mission rather than a criminal justice boondoggle, the ubiquity of unsanctioned doping and PEDs in sports will just entrench a culture of cowardice and callousness.
Viro, No doping shouldn't become accepted. Not just because of the spectacular risks (like bad transfusions) but because of the less visible, long term risks. Young athletes should not be faced with having to enter into incredibly damaging long-term use of substances that have significant side-effects even when used *properly* if they want a career in sport.
ok, that was a bad joke about OxiClean (but their guy does look a lot like Lance), I doubt he'll ever have to give back so much that he ends up shilling soap.
Especially once the Costner film comes out.
Paul, I agree with you in principle. Doping seems like a crazy risk to take. Ditto most PEDs.
But "cheaters gonna cheat". Isn't it more practical to acknowledge that and explore tiers of tolerance for the sake of (relative) safety through transparency?
I really feel for the coaches and managers trying to inculcate a spirit of competition in the younger generation.
With every new scandal I find it increasingly more difficult to enjoy professional sports (olympics included) with any genuine passion, suspecting I'm the one getting played.
Perhaps the only way through this is to redouble the zero tolerance attitude. But I suspect that "Just Say No" will be as big a flop on the Tour as it is in the Town Centre.
I'm pretty new to cycling and have loved watching it for the last few years, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to defend my new passion to my friends with the history the sport has in this area.
It goes to show that punishments for doping are simply not stern enough. Some of the riders who have come forward are apparently facing a 6 month ban, so they can return in time for Paris-Nice.
!!!!!THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!!!!
How can you possibly serve a six month ban for taking part in what seems to be emerging as the biggest doping conspiracy ever. Doping, in any form, in any sport, should be a lifetime ban. The only way the sport is going to recover form stories like this, which are all too common is if the cycling community is seen to be taking a zero tolerance attitude towards cheating. The deterrent clearly isn't strong enough when it seems that so many people are still willing to risk it every year. Obviously in the short term this would result in a shockingly large number of pro riders being unavailable next year, but at a certain point you have to cut your losses and start again. Allow the young, clean talent, to develop in an environment when they're not fighting against an unfair advantage.
Lifetime bans are a tempting idea, but the problem is a younger rider pressured into doping would have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by coming clean at a later date.
I agree that the bans are very short and it's disappointing that most of it covers the off season. It is irritating that someone like Hincapie can cheat for 10 years, earning huge sums of money and then get away with a 6 month ban after he has retired.
However, if they were threatened with life time bans these riders would have continued to lie and Armstrong and Bruyneel would continue to profit from a massive fraud.
Has anyone here actually read any of the affadavits? I have and to be honest GH's contains nothing of substance. For example he referes to a conversation he and LA had in about 95 where LA said referring to use of EPO by others in the peleton "We have to dom something about this" GH then says he interpreted this to mean that LA wanted to start to use EPO. Not once in the whole thing does GH ever say that he actually saw or was with KA during doping - it is all circumstantial. Additionally in LL's statement, he says "FL told me LA was doping" and this is about as strong as the evidence gets. I haven't read them all - who has the time (well the UCI do) but what I have read from these big names which supposedly damn LA are weak at best. If I can start to pick this apart, any lawyer worth their salt can too. The only people who say they actually saw and took drugs with LA were FL and TH as far as I can tell - these two men well known for telling the truth all the time. Where is this gardener who was supposed to be cycling around France with a bottle full of EPO, or the massuer who supposedly looked after plenty of peoples EPO for them. I am all for believing the evidence if it is actually there, but I think that innocent until proven should hold and I have seen nothing which convinces me beyond reasonable doubt.
Nothing? Not the scientific evidence? Or the paper trail linking LA with Dr. Ferrari? (Which exposes LA as a perjurer, as well as a doper). If you are not convinced now you never will be.
On second thoughts, nice one wilsonhenry, you had me going for a while there. Doh!
I repeat my question - did you actually read any of the affadavits? Of course there are the paper trail links to Ferrari, but honestly I have had that much surgery on my knee and cortisone injections you could probably link me to a doping doctor if you really wanted to.
I could link you to a doping doctor that you swore under oath you had no dealings with? I'm intrigued. Do tell me more.
Well I'm still gonna ride me bike - whether there's doping or not. Armstrong was a talented rider but fatally flawed - he cheated others but mainly himself and now he looks like a 'true fool' as the true scale of his treachery unravels. Forget him and talk about Greg Lemond, Brad and other who are clean - or those do the utmost to make it so that others can be.
So, forget Lance, seriously - please do. He'd hate that the most.
wilsonhenry - I agree with you it sounds very odd that a moped could follow the tour without being noticed, leaving aside the fact that a moped would struggle to keep up if it's carrying mini fridges. The picture I've seen online is a motorbike and would be very noticeable. I would expect Tyler Hamilton to know the difference between a motorbike and a moped by now.
I also see online that an individual has rung up the gardener and challenged him about the evidence in Tyler Hamilton's book, so he could have ruined a police investigation. Ironically he claims that the French Authorities should take the gardener in for questioning but if I'm right he'll be the one taken in for questioning.
(I've put this on the guy's blog I doubt he'll publish it).
From what I've read USADA claim that they have evidence beyond reasonable doubt (a far higher test than in a civil case which is on the balance of probabilities). Given that the witness evidence is coming from admitted dopers they must have something more impressive than that, eg video and independent witness evidence.
Anyway, I'm posting nothing more online until I've read the entire report. I'm going to have a busy time working through it. I'll be looking for extremes with the witness statements, either they are too similar (indicating collusion) or that they don't support each other (indicating that they are probably made up).
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