NickM
Veteran
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- Darwin's birthplace
Which made it all the more sickening to see McQuaid handing out cycling medals. Couldn't they have found somebody honourable?
Armstrong charged and banned
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RWright
Guru
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We should find out the answer to that by about 2024.
For the first time in the 100+ years of the TdF, I doubt it!
Boris Bajic
Guest
I'm not sure your first point either disagrees or agrees with my point you quoted next to it.
Your second point (which I quote in bold) is quite valid. But if the TdF was rendered invalid between 1999 and 2005 by cheating through doping, which were the years when it was a valid competition?
Some would argue that a Londoner with sideburns and Olympic medals would never dope. So 2012 was valid...
Some say that a cuddly-looking cobber with a melancholic facial expression could never dope. So 2011 counts too.
The sucker for a sweet tale will tell you that a lumbering farmer from the Basque region with an abnormally large heart is too much the agrarian hero to dope. That's another five Tours in the clear.
I don't entirely agree with all of the above, but if they were 'good' years, which others were?
We all seem to like Greg Lemond these days (although I remember him as a Yank interfering in a European race). He has to be clean because he was shot while hunting and speaks out against doping.
Cav is also clean, of course, because he's a Manxman who sounds like a Scouser and we love them. Or something.
I adore the TdF but I'm not sure which year qualifies it as a valid competition if we use your criteria. I'm pretty sure that in some way, for one jersey or another (sometimes all of them) there has never been a year in which cheats didn't falsify the outcome.
That is the TdF. Long live, the filthy, cheat-ridden, doped-up, dirty-blooded TdF. I adore it.
If you rgue that doping render it a circus, then you are free to glory in the past century of TdF circuses. I still see it as a race.
A grimy, sometimes seedy, often tainted but always glorious and romantic and heroic race.
Smokin Joe
Squire
- Location
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This affair is a long way from over. Armstrong won a court case against SCA in '06 when they tried to withhold a 5 million dollar bonus for his Tour wins because of a suspicion that he had been doping. His win came about because he committed perjury by denying it. I can't see how they won't sue to get the money back and land him with a criminal conviction and a jail term.
As for the "Fed up with fighting" line, he's spent ten years fighting tooth and nail against anyone who questioned him, spending a fortune on lawyers. The idea he would abandon before arbitration - where the decision would be final - is ridiculous, unless of course he is terrified of the evidence against him coming into the public domain.
As for the "Fed up with fighting" line, he's spent ten years fighting tooth and nail against anyone who questioned him, spending a fortune on lawyers. The idea he would abandon before arbitration - where the decision would be final - is ridiculous, unless of course he is terrified of the evidence against him coming into the public domain.
NickM
Veteran
- Location
- Darwin's birthplace
That's a well reasoned response, Boris. I too am not sure that the outcome of any Tour de France, ever, can be taken entirely at face value. I seem to feel more cheated by that than you do - perhaps because for many years of avid following I assumed (perhaps naively, perhaps out of wishful thinking) that the sport was essentially kosher, and now it has become all too clear that it is more usually bent.
I suppose that it's a matter of individual response, and that that is all it ever can be.
I suppose that it's a matter of individual response, and that that is all it ever can be.
NickM
Veteran
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- Darwin's birthplace
Now there's a sporting outcome that might be worth a punt. I wonder what odds are available?
Smokin Joe
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I don't know if this has been posted in the interim, but USADA have confirmed they will publish the evidence against Armstrong. Up to ten former team-mates have testified.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...im-to-strip-Tour-titles-and-ban-for-life.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ot...im-to-strip-Tour-titles-and-ban-for-life.html
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thats somewhat of a stretch, he didnt win a court case by just going "no i didnt"..
He won because not only did he say 'that wasnt what was said' , it was also backed up by everyone else and medical documentation.. The issue was someone said they overheard him talking to his cancer doctor... Of course the defence was that these were treatments during the cancer treatment, which was backed up by the medical records..
So actually it was one person said they overheard something and 8 said otherwise....
Obviously none of this proves he didn't, but it certainly doesn't prove he did.... It would of course be interesting if there was ANYONE involved who didn't have an axe to grind, wasn't doing it to avoid prosecution.. but compared to the convictions of people like Landis, there seems to be nobody.
They haven't confirmed when they will release the information though ! Because of the ongoing allegations they can't publish at the moment, but I think that there might be "delays" even after that.
Interesting spin in that article....
As I said before, Armstrong had the opportunity to have that evidence "judged on it's merits". He knew how walking away would interpreted.... but he still chose to do it. The only doubt I see cast is over Armstrong's motivation for refusing arbitration.
He knew that some people would interpret it as guilt, and that some people would interpret it as a witchhunt.
They'll release the evidence after Bruyneel and Martin have had their hearings, and the dates for that hasn't been decided yet. Isn't that a sufficient statement for now? Believe me, they'll do it if they can. It really is not in USADAs interests not to.
rowdin
Terence david
Just in.
Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and given a lifetime ban by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
USADA decided he used performance-enhancing drugs to achieve his success.
Armstrong, who retired a year ago, strongly denies doping.
But the anti-doping agency said Armstrong's decision not to take the charges against him to arbitration triggers the lifetime ineligibility and erased his results from 1 August 1998.
Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and given a lifetime ban by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
USADA decided he used performance-enhancing drugs to achieve his success.
Armstrong, who retired a year ago, strongly denies doping.
But the anti-doping agency said Armstrong's decision not to take the charges against him to arbitration triggers the lifetime ineligibility and erased his results from 1 August 1998.
I'm not sure what you're saying so, I agree, yes and yes. But I think that was obvious so I'm not seeing your point.
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