Less a smoking gun, more a nuclear bomb: USADA publishes Lance Armstrong evidence in full

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).

Forget Lance by all means but don't forget that the UCI, his main ally in his struggle with USADA, is still running cycling. What was their role in the whole sorry business? At best useless incompetents, at worst... either way unfit for purpose.

I`m begining to doubt he walked on the moon as well.

I've been saying for years there should be two levels of competition.
1. Anything goes - riders/athletes can take or do anything to win.
2. Totally clean - utterly undoped, unenhanced in any way.

The medals, kudos, public approbation goes to the clean winners and the doped winners get ignored.
Any clean athlete found to be cheating is stripped of his/her titles and all prize monies are forfeit - this will include all properties and assets bought with such monies and his/her name will be struck from the record books and all sponsorship or advertising deals will be immediately terminated and all rewards for such will be forfeit.

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.

On second thoughts, nice one wilsonhenry, you had me going for a while there. Doh!

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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

i have claimed the 1999 victory the second he got banned. i wasnt doping just drinking lots of vodka so im a clean champion

michopull: It's not incompetence. It's just fundamentally difficult to detect certain doping practices.

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'.

http://newsthump.com/2012/10/11/lance-armstrong-launches-livestrong-yell...

This could be devastating to... the environment. Think of all the landfill-space that discarded Livestrong bracelets are going to take up. That man really is a monster.

To be serious for a minute, I think the shear scale of the USPS doping operation, as set out in this report, will set a new precedent that will make future instances of one or two team members caught doping seem trivial - almost acceptable - by comparison.

In other words, even in retirement Lance Armstrong is fostering doping. Is there no limit to his evil powers!!?!?

All eyes now on the UCI. McQuaid to step down? Refreshed calls for a rival/alternative governing body/race series? Wishful thinking maybe...

I agree Dave - but some have argued that which is all I was stating.

Have a look at the letters page in this month's Procycling to see the way opinions can be from one end of the scale to another.