Thanks for your insight as usual.

Get a room, you two.

should have been stripped of his titles for what he did to sheryl crow

There's no evidence of doping beyond pissy former teammates who were caught doping claiming he did. It's basically a troll argument. They pissed him off long enough that he wasn't willing to keep replying anymore.

Yeah 10 of them. In a fact based world positive blood samples and a positive epo test in 1999 count too. As does the fact that the doctor who nursd him black to health was banned for doping cyclists. His entire team has been found guilty.

They've just said the samples are "consistent with doping" not that there's anything specifically in them. It's the vaguest language possible.

The 1999 one was the one he had a doctor's note for, right?

It is not vague, blood manipulation is a type of doping and far worse than epo.

It doesn't matter all that much. If he doped, that's bad, and he deserves to be punished for it, but it's not like everyone else wasn't doping too, and he's still going to be remembered as the best cyclist in history.

Think of Barry Bonds, they never proved it, but it's pretty commonly accepted that he was doping. There'll always be an asterisk by his name, but he still holds the home run title.

It means Armstrong is a liar in addition to being a nasty bully.

Please help me, sports fans: will this have any impact on my life whatsoever?

Yes. Now after you lose a testicle, you're allowed to use steroids.

Nicely done trap topic, waiting until someone voiced an opinion to launch a diatribe. My hat's off to the superior trolling.

Typical " Mass media " hype topic. You want to believe what you read....

The fact that he is a great sportsman has no connection to his balls ( although he claims so ). Most men cure from this type of cancer. If man sets a goal for himself, it is the determination that will bring you there...

I didnt wait. But not call anybody who disagrees with you a troll, that always works.

I dunno, Tolstoy, does reading about Moorish Spain impact your life? Do you approve of anything?

I thought discussing a famous sportsmans fall from grace might be of interest. Clearly the forum has better things to do.

Hey I'll debate with you. It's summertime, and the living is easy. What's the topic of discussion?

Drugs testing was not particularly effective 10 years ago, for instance in 1999 there was no test for EPO, and we /still/ cannot detect all forms of blood doping. There is a disputed positive test for EPO from Armstrongs blood (the dispute is about whether it was stored properly etc. the test was not contemporary to the racing). We also know that cheating was very widespread. (see this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling#2000 )

The effectiveness of EPO and blood doping at boosting performance is sufficient that it is unreasonable for someone to consistently win against cheaters in the way Armstrong did. The leading racers today output around 10% less power (for the same weight) than Armstrong consistently managed, in spite of advances in training technology. We also know that the peloton rides substantially slower now than it did then, further indicating that cheating was the norm. Many cyclists have reported that the widespread nature of doping was an open secret among the riders. David Millar reports that team directors routinely used euphemism to tell their riders to dope, and that he was told by his to "Go to Italy and train properly".

Armstrong was consistently able to ride away from that doped-up peloton on climbs. This does not seem feasible.

Armstrong's team was also able to dominate that peloton consistently, and many of them have been implicated in/ banned for drug taking, and have also accused Armstrong of it. Added to which, Armstrong has had doctors of his be subsequently banned for organising and carrying out doping.

When you consider how dominant Armstrong was, how much doping was going on among his competitors, the extent to which those people working with him have been found out as cheats, I'm not sure it is possible to maintain that it is more likely that he achieved all of that clean than that he managed to carefully plan his drug taking to (almost) avoid being caught.

The 1999 samples from Armstrong tested positive for EPO, however the tests are disputed by Armstrong. (source: http://velocitynation.com/content/interviews/2009/michael-ashenden )

Ow we're discussing cycling. I have an opinion on cycling. Next Tour de France I'll register myself as a participant. I don't do doping. Then I'm going to win, just because I'm counting on all the other racers using doping, because that's the way I see the "cycling sport" today.

This summer, I made a doping-free, dextro-energy enhanced tour of Europe. I loved it. Don't do drugs. Don't even do alcohol. Find your inner self, is what I recommend to the world.

If the race is now 10% slower than it was at the height of the doping days, it begs the question who will now take the titles Lance will be stripped off?

Interesting point. Should Lance be stripped of his titles, they would all go to admitted dopers or cyclists with doping scandals of their own.

1999: Alex Zülle (confessed to EPO use)
2000: Jan Ullrich (suspended from 2006 Tour; banned this year and stripped of all results from 2005 on)
2001: Jan Ullrich
2002: Joseba Beloki (kept out of 2006 Tour while under doping investigation, later cleared)
2003: Jan Ullrich
2004: Andreas Klöden (accused of illegal blood transfusion in the 2006 Tour)
2005: Ivan Basso (confessed to attempted doping, suspended)

It hardly matters. All cycling from that era is tainted and no one will ever be certain of any of them. A load of cheats riding what in reality is a very boring sporting event when watched.

Strip Lance of his titles if he is guilty, but don't give them to any one person. Award the victory to all those who rode clean despite the pressure to do otherwise, and they will know in their hearts who they are, though we sadly never will.

All cycling is still tainted, Octavious. I wouldn't be surprised if Wiggins came under fire soon. As long as cyclists have the incentive to dope, there will be cheaters who will always be one step ahead of the testers and international codes.

"If the race is now 10% slower than it was at the height of the doping days, it begs the question who will now take the titles Lance will be stripped off?"

Nit Pick: 10% greater power =/= 10% faster.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Wiggins came under fire soon."

There are plenty of accusations, but mostly from laypeople. His performance is not beyond what sports scientists expect, which Lance's was. That makes a big difference in how confident we should be.

Why punish the winner when everyone else was doing it?

And I mean everyone. The pacers were running time faster than the winners from 10 years earlier.

The guy paid off the uci and got special rules put in place for himself including a retroactive exception for the 1999 positive. Why does everypne else get punished but not Lance? Why is he above the law? Not to mention his witness intimidation tactics. The fact is the tests in 1999 were blind, they knew about his cheating way back then but because its Lance he got away with it.

Lance looses all titles.....On statements of witnesses....ehhhhr where is the proof?
A person is guilty until it has been proven, and where are the positive tests? Okay, you can say where there is smoke there is fire.
He is not my favorite sportsman, but nobody deserves this.

y'all should come play a live game

Wait...if you agree with me that he should be punished if he cheated, Putin, why the opening hostility when my position is your position? O.o

It's not even politics where you can give a half baked claim that just because I don't support every single last Democrat ever and try and listen to both sides that I'm somehow not Left-leaning but a deluded ass who is somehow a pretender to the title...

It's CYCLING?

So, in the words of my generation--

Y U Mad, Bro?

Has anyone made the point that even with steroids winning 7 times is quite the feat?

it doesnt justify that taking them is good or moral or any of that, personally I think they should just have all cyclists banned from cycling ;)

I agree. Especially when competing against others that were doping. Doping doesn't make you a world class athlete. The incentive to dope is higher than the incentive to find dopers. Dopers will keep finding ways to beat the system.

@F4shark

Did you read my above post. His 1999 urine samples had EPO in them, they were since tested, but there was no test at the time, so he got away with it.

Add in a 2 yr ban, and he's just lost 3 titles right there.

Sorry TheGhostmaker....missed that and had to do my homework better ;-) So your suggestion for a 2yr ban and losing 3 titles looks more like it, but then again a mistreated blood sample...??

Again. They are doing it all wrong. Who wasn't doping in 1999? They are head hunting. Not to mention going in front of CAS is a waste of time. 58 of 60 americans have lost. The guy who won the Tour a few years ago was found to have less drug then can be deemed taken on purpose but was given a 2 year ban. Then one of the members of the CAS said his sentence was harsh because the PM of Spain spoke out against them. WTF

"but then again a mistreated blood sample...??"

You are going to have to elucidate for me to be clear what you are talking about. (A reference would do)

@TheGhostmaker:

Forget my last remark...it was typed and posted before I even thought of it...

Im pretty sure the defenders of Armstrong arent even reading at this point. They have an iron clad case, which is MrCancer wont even put up a fight. They have two samples of blood doping. They have his entire team willing to testify that he doped as far back as 1996. They dont prezent more of the case now because of Fraudstrongs long history of witness intimidation. The guy paid off the uci to get special rules for himse
lf. Hes a cancer on the sport. The sport is being cleaned up and hes obstructing it. Hes a symbol of all that is wrong in sports.

It's going to be tough to clean up drugs in sports. I personally think it's impossible because of the stem cell units coming around. They are undetectable by my knowledge, but hey, so was a bunch of this stuff 10 years ago.

The tour de france in 2008 was clean. When armstrong first retired they did a lot to move it in a clean direction. As soon as he comes back they give him a doping control exemption. Imagine if Barry Bonds bought off the Mlb. Would everybody here say well everybody was juiced?

There are a lot of baseball players that are juiced. Barry Bonds is a good example, but Barry was different in personality than Lance. Lance was an inspirational person for a long time; Barry was just a fatass that lifted weights.

So the special treatment is based on using a cancer as a shield. Before Fraudstrong got cancer he was an average cyclist. Before Bonds juiced he was already a hall of famer.

Before Bonds juiced he was 150 pounds. After he juiced he might have hit 300.

And yes, before he juiced, he would have been a very, very talented player. He might have gotten the record either way; we'll never know. My high school coach played with him in Pittsburgh and has pictures of the changes within two years, presumably when he began using steroids.

Lance is a character; what he did in cycling honestly stopped mattering a long time ago. Barry Bonds is an outspoken asshole. At least Lance had some sense of community about him.