dogmile wrote:
I'm not sure what the two of you are really arguing about though. Is it just whether LA had a doping advantage over the other dopers? Seems likely he did.
"Julian" has convinced himself that Lance barely had the talent to make it above Cat 1. This, of course, presents a bit of a problem: How did such an athletic chump beat the elite of the elite, all of whom were doping. The answer apparently is super dope. Lance must have doped more than everyone else or was on some secret drugs no one else had access to or some other hand waving about Lance being ahead of everyone else.
Thus we get the cockamamie theory that Armstrong invented blood transfusions in cycling. Apparently since LA was using transfusions in 2000 and little information exists about what other riders were doing that year, LA must have been the only one. This, of course, ignores that transfusions were used before 2000; there was no reason to switch to transfusions in 2000 because EPO was undetectable; and the next year (2001), when EPO testing by the UCI began, even sprinters were using transfusions.
He still refuses to deal with the question why would it matter if Armstrong did use transfusions a year earlier than some other riders, who were using EPO instead. Riders switched from transfusions to EPO in the first place because EPO is far easier to use. It is safer. It does not have the same problems with storage and transport, A rider does not suffer days of sub par training after a blood withdrawal. It could be used year round. It is not at all clear that Lance had an advantage by using transfusions in 2000. Given the advantages of EPO, he may have been at a disadvantage.
Allegations of other drugs that were not available to other riders also proved to be fanciful. The USADA affidavits are clear. Postal used the same drugs that everyone else was using. Not only that, the team was quite conservative compared to other teams. Key riders like Landis did not even get anything until he was scheduled to ride the Tour. This was not an operation that doped everyone to the gills with three dozen drugs like what was used at Spanish teams like Kelme, Liberty Seguros and, presumably, Euskatel.
The simplest answer is usually the correct one. Instead of being a hopeless rider who used super dope to beat the elite, it is far simpler to accept that LA was super talented and doped, just like everyone else. He was also very very lucky. Seven Tours with no punctures and no crashes; what are the chances of that? As Landis said, Lance was a badass bike racer. He beat the dopers at their own game.