Agreed that the sport of cycling is far from being clean and that where their is smoke, there is fire. I am not an Armstrong zealot in any way, but in his defense, he is likley tested more than most pro cyclists and the testing now is closing the gap and getting so sensitive, that they can even find the most minute traces of drugs, and the metoboloic by-pruducts of drugs in an athlete's system even months after he stopped taking them.

Fleck

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

>> I hope you're right about the testing improving. The speculations and constant denials put everyone under a cloud and put all sport into disrepute.<<

That idea is total garbage.

So let me put the question back to you. This assistant said the product was androstenedione. Androstenedione is a precursor to testosterone and could at one time (not sure now) be had as a supplement because you can isolate it from some tree and is therefore considered a “supplement” (I hate the supplement industry) though it is really a drug and is the substance McGuire the ball player took before it was banned.

This shows up on tests as 19-norandrosterone. 100% of athletes who take dosages of androstenedione above 100mg daily for a week (typical dose would probably be higher and longer duration) tested positive for 19-norandrosterone. 19-norandrosterone shows up in testing for about 18 months. Why would it make sense to use androstenedione? Why wouldn’t he use Masteron which is pretty much cleared in 7-10days, or Testosterone enanthate and Arimedex? Any of these are going to clear the system much earlier than 19-norandrosterone. How did LA thwart 100% of his drug test for the last year and a half? It has nothing to do with my love or hate for LA, until you can explain this to me I do not believe you. It doesn’t add up. If he is on a drug program this isn’t it.

If he is testing negative for doping then he is NEGATIVE for doping. If you aren’t going to believe the tests then why do them?

 
>>Because sometimes they work (today they snagged another top rider). BUT, I think in the case of cycling, they should stop testing.<<

So sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t but regardless of what the tests say, it therefore means that everyone is doping. UCI enjoys throwing money away on tests in the off chance that someone gets unlucky.

>>Cycling is a joke and if you really believe that the riders are clean, you are naive. <<

Other joke sports include football, rugby, soccer, baseball, basketball, cricket, weightlifting, triathlon, most all of track and field (who can forget BALCO, whole bunch of sports in there), hockey, gymnastics, tennis, and volleyball.

I will let you get back to watching darts and curling because there have been no drug scandals in those sports and so those must be the only clean sports and therefore not a joke.

Great post.

I agree with you. At some point we HAVE to put faith in the tests and the testers, if we are going to beat the drug game. It was not to long ago that the gap between the sensitivity and the accuracy of the tests, and the drugs and strategies that athletes were using was wide. I believe that gap has been narrowed significantly. I believe, some of the high profile positives in the last year or so have come as a big surprise to the caught athletes, because, they may have felt that they could cheat the system and still get away with it, but not now.

If the stakes are high, the athletes will allows be a bit ahead. The encouraging news is the gap is getting narrow.

As for Lance, as I have said before, I am no LA zealot, a fan just like many other people, but he would likley NOT use what was "found" due to his frequent testing.

Fleck

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

>>At some point we HAVE to put faith in the tests and the testers, if we are going to beat the drug game.<<

Without this any sport’s future is doomed. I am responding to you, but really I am responding through you (thanks for your patience) to the people who say, “That Fleck, huh… what a lemming.”

People cheat, of course. You catch the people involved and get rid of them. This has been a problem with European governing bodies in the past as different countries have gone through various denials and sometimes actually use doping controls for political advantage.

This is starting to change. Look at the countries/athletes caught. US (Hamilton), France (Gaumont), Italy (Pantani; along with his death), Spain (Manzano, etc.), Switzerland (Camezind), Belgium (Museeuw), Germany (Hondo) and the list goes on. These are BIG names. If doping controls were a joke, these guys wouldn’t be getting caught. Governing bodies are finally realizing that there needs to be action or people, both fans and athletes will leave. Same for triathlon, same for mountain biking, same for baseball, same for track etc.

When the public perception is that in order to win you have to take drugs, the future of the sport will no longer be viable. End of story. How many people go around High Schools promoting the health benefits and competitiveness of bodybuilding? Few. Why? In order to be at the highest level it is accepted that you need to get jacked on all kinds of drugs. If you see a HUGE bodybuilder sitting at a restaurant what do you think? “Hmmm, I wonder what that guy’s taking.” What would you say to your 12 year old who said “Hey dad, I want to be the biggest body builder in the world, can we get a gym membership?” Would you be cautious, or 100% for it? There was a time when it was impressive and encouraged to be a big strong guy, now … well maybe not.

Athletes don’t mind competing against one another. They enjoy it. They just want to make sure everyone is under similar rules. It’s up to those who like the sport and want it to be around in the future to do the best you can to ensure that. Those who say “Let ‘em dope, who cares?”, are dooming the sport’s future. You either get this, or you don't.

>>End of rant

Heard Lance call into 'The Jim Rome Show' to address this most recent allegation. Great interview.

In no uncertain terms, without equivocation or clever omission, Lance refuted every charge made directly. He did not make any 'I've never tested positive' type statements, but rather, "I've never taken performance enhancing drugs." Honest and direct.

After the accusor was fired by Lance, he sent Lance a letter making very thinly veiled threats about a threat to go to the press if he wasn't paid $500,000. Lance of course refused. This kicked off this latest round of 'I saw a vial/syringe/bag of powder' type statements. Lance has requested a summary judgement from the presiding judge, and is using the extortion letter as evidence. Look for Lance to win this one soon.

The fired assistant was clearly a fame whore, with a clear agenda in mind when he began to work for Lance. Lance sniffed it out, and fired the guy. No basis here at all.

I'll tell you when the sport's future is "doomed"...It's when society loses sight of the fact that sport is not about the end result and proceeds to convince every last child to think the same way. Could we just get over this whole "winning" crap already?! Sport isn't about winning and it doesn't need to be about making a living off of either, it's about the journey, the actual playing, that mystical time where we transcend ourselves in the company of others or maybe just the company of the environment around us. To quote you, "you either get that or you don't."

Fact of the matter here is that the pharmaceutical industry's slimy tentacles pervade damn near every aspect of our entire lives. Is it any surprise that our world, that welcomes many of it's newborns with epidurals/narcotics, lays it's elders to rest on a variety of overpriced drugs, and in between those two glorious moments subscribes whatever else can be synthesized in a lab to make us feel better, would be suffering from drug abuse problems in sport as well? Singling out people like Tyler Hamilton (if he is even guilty), Bernard Lagat (again, if he is actually guilty), etc. is going to do absolutely nothing to curb humanity's addiction to being everything but sober.

Sport won't be cleaned up until humanity as a whole has matured enough to see that sobriety is where true power lies, death is not to be feared, and synthetics are a ball and chain. Authoritarian laws are by nature stagnant and strip away freedom/self-realization, and as such the ongoing inquisition is only slowing the learning curve down, and reinforcing the putrid myth to our children that drugs allow us to be all we can be.

To be clear, I think drug use fouls up sport, or rather shows a lack of awareness of sport's true nature. The more grievous crime though is to be spending millions/billions of dollars on what is effectively placing these poisons on a pedestal in front of the populace and telling them not to touch them because they work so damn well.

Interesting post, Sojourner. I think I agree with much of your sentiment, but have a quibble or two...

"I'll tell you when the sport's future is "doomed"...It's when society loses sight of the fact that sport is not about the end result and proceeds to convince every last child to think the same way. Could we just get over this whole "winning" crap already?! Sport isn't about winning and it doesn't need to be about making a living off of either, it's about the journey, the actual playing, that mystical time where we transcend ourselves in the company of others or maybe just the company of the environment around us."

Well...I think you and I have the luxury of looking at sport in this way. But for those that have made sport their livelihood...sport is a lot more. In many ways it is no different to them than the job you or I do. The difference is often that individual performance is acutely measureable...they either win or they don't. If you don't perform...you lose your job. So perhaps sports were doomed the moment it became possible for an athlete to earn a living solely from their sporting activities.

And although I agree with your idea that we are too dependent on drugs for "improving" our lives....I'll stop short of damning the entire pharma industry. Please remember this is the same industry that conquered smallpox and polio. It is the same industry that produces anesthetics that allow surgeons to repair the damage we sometimes cause through our participation in sports. So NO, I don't think that the pharma folks have a corporately nefarious agenda. They develop drugs based on perception of need. I think the industry and its government regulators can and do get it wrong (Thalidimide, Vioxx)...but I don't ascribe ne'er-do-well to the industry as a whole.


Lastly...funny you should mention our societal fear of death. I was just discussing this with my wife after listening to the news rhetoric over the Pope and Terry Schiavo...I don't know how many times I heard reporters utter the phrase "Praying for the best, preparing for the worst" Why do we assume that death is "the worst"? Death is a part of life. It is 100% confirmed fact that 100% of the people on earth are going to die. Why do we fear it so much? Why is it bad (particularly for those that believe in an afterlife?)? You'll find in many other cultures that death is NOT bad...This is a mystery to me...

I remember an ad that Merck ran once about PETA. It showed a bunch of those lunatics protesting, with the caption beneath it reading something like "Thanks to prescription drugs, they will each be able to protest an average of 20.2 years longer." Thanks to the pharaceutical industry's slimy tentacles being in everything, you were inoculated against illnesses that used to kill a significant number of infants (4 of my mother's nine brothers and sisters died in the first 18 months of life), you can take numerous OTC drugs to treat injuries and illnesses far beter than at any time in history, you will be able to take other drugs to cure problems that took invasive surgery to fix or that had no cure (i.e., high blood pressure) only a short time ago.

As someone said earlier I am not replying to you but through you. I saw the segment on ESPN(2)? yesterday morning. Anderson claimed he found the drug, but he seemed more interested in talking about how Lance had done him some huge disservice. The announcers all agreed that it sounded like sour grapes to them. One (Skip Bayless) talked of the guy who was Armstrong's mechanic before Anderson. He said that guy now has the largest bike shop in California. He commented that if within the bike world you can't take being Armstrong's personal mechanic and make money from it you aren't too bright.

Another comment from the show was that Lance has been quoted as saying "4 months and I'm outta here". The conclusion is that he will ride the tour because of his contract and then retire. They even talked of his lack of training for this one. Implying he is going for show and because he has to to keep the Discovery Channel money. Interesting to a cylcing fan.

Do I believe he is clean? I want to but I have my doubts. Is he racing fair? Absolutely. If he is using a drug that is not on the banned list then it is not illegal to take. May be immoral but not illegal.

Do you really want to live in a world where the paradyme is doing anything that the law does NOT expressly prohibit? It would be impossible to try to close the gap of things that are clearly wrong and should (at least "clearly" and "should" in the sense that the majority deems the activity to be wrong) be illegal...and the actual laws that prohibit such activity. It would also be just as impossible to enforce such a code in its entirety...even with the most Draconian measures.

Whether or not taking non-banned performance enhancing drugs is immoral in your book or mine...it IS unethical, and against the intent of the rules and laws governing the activity in that it creates an unfair advantage for those who take the substances. You would not look so blithely on the activity if you sponsored clean athlete X who always lost to dirty athlete Y.

Lance is not only testing positive but he is heavly invistigated by the French goverment and numerous media sources from all over the world. His every move is watched, his trash is dug through and anyone working with him is given the same anal probe.

I am a not much of a cult of Lance guy but I admire him and find the fact that so much effort has been taken to catch him that he seems more clean everytime someone gaes after him.

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

tribriguy, you obviously make a good point of the fact that I'm not making a livelihood out of performing, and so it really is a different perspective I have in comparison to somebody who is making their house payment based upon whether or not they are making the podium.

i wasn't trying to insinuate it's the people in the pharmaceutical industry that are "slimy", it's the entity that it's become as a whole. of course with the bad there is also good. for certain, my life may be saved some day due to a synthetic chemical, and i'm sure i'd appreciate the chemists who came up with it and the doctors that knew how to administer it. i may have also have already had my life saved due to being innoculated against some illness/disease that previously helped keep the population count in check, but life always finds a way, and viruses are alive and morphing as well so there will always be a need for a new vaccine. maybe some day there will be a great battle between the cockroach and some super-virus. now that would be a sport worth seeing the outcome of.