From Cyclingnews.com. Floyd sends a letter with drug use revelations. Is he relieving his conscience, helping the sport, or bitterman burning bridges??
Letter claims of widespread drug use Cyclingnews.com has been sent a letter purportedly from Floyd Landis to a senior cycling official with revelations of drug use in cycling in the period up to his Tour de France victory. We are awaiting responses from individuals involved and hope to bring you full details shortly.
Yawn… doping in cycling, doping for the yellow jersey old news.
The bigger news to me anyway would be for someone to actually win a TDF or other major stage race without taking something.
It would be interesting to see if first hand accounts of doping within a team (ex. EPOstal) would be enough for the UCI to look at sanctions (I’m not holding my breath).
I met FL at the 2003 TdF. He was a genuinely nice guy (so was Tyler). They are put in a difficult position where virtually everyone cheats (and your team often has an organized cheating program), but then when you get caught you are demonized.
I blame those caught in the system far less than those who actively seek to keep it from changing: LA, JB, Verbruggen, etc.
Lance Armstrong is clean. He has never been caught has he?
He has had numerous samples test positive, but has never been sanctioned.
-He tested positive for cortico-steriods in '99, but the UCI accepted a post-facto prescription for a skin creme and let him off.
-Retroactive testing of his TdF samples from '99 came back positive for EPO. There is no extra sample available for counter-analysis, so no sanction.
-In the 2009 TdF Lance had a hematocrit in the 40-42 range…he managed to have readings in the 46-48 range in the years he was winning the TdF. That would fail the biological passport systems big time if they had been in place earlier in the decade.
Just curious why everyone always talks/posts about the PED use in cycling but then, and this is not necessarily direct at the OP but, makes comments or suggestions that triathletes are any better.
Who here truly believes that pro Triathletes are clean?
Really we have no way of knowing if pro triathletes are clean. The doping controls in place for triathlon don’t come anywhere close to those of cycling. There is no reason that a triathlete should have any trouble getting away with doping given the relatively lax testing in the sport.
Saying that 10% or 80% of pro triathletes dope is really nothing more than an uneducated guess for the large majority of us. Sure, there may be a few people very intimately connected with the sport who know of dopers, but if there are, they don’t seem to be talking - and the incentive to keep quiet is always stronger than the incentive to spill the beans.
Doping exists in every sport. Triathlon is an Olympic sport and there’s a lot on the line. It’s naive to think people don’t dope. I personally think they need to spend more money and resources on doping control because I am sure there are people who get away with it and have been getting away with it for a long time.
Lance Armstrong is clean. He has never been caught has he?
He has had numerous samples test positive, but has never been sanctioned.
-He tested positive for cortico-steriods in '99, but the UCI accepted a post-facto prescription for a skin creme and let him off.
-Retroactive testing of his TdF samples from '99 came back positive for EPO. There is no extra sample available for counter-analysis, so no sanction.
-In the 2009 TdF Lance had a hematocrit in the 40-42 range…he managed to have readings in the 46-48 range in the years he was winning the TdF. That would fail the biological passport systems big time if they had been in place earlier in the decade.
no, those numbers have nothing special. And it would not be a sanction as it s a number that can change in a few weeks… i move from 41-45 within weeks depending if sick, dehydrated, not running, etc… nothing alarming there… using altitude tents etc…47-48 is possible…
It’s funny how quickly people will jump on something around this place. CyclingNews has only published a statement saying “Cyclingnews.com has been sent a letter purportedly from Floyd Landis to a senior cycling official” yet, reading some comments you would think they said we have a letter from Floyd, confirmed by Floyd.
Exactly. Lance was just one guy doping when everyone doped. It doesn’t make him any worse than anyone he raced against, and given his spectacular results, he was obviously a lot better than all of them. The fact that he doped doesn’t mean much as far as how great he was. It was a level playing field and he won consistently.
Exactly. Lance was just one guy doping when everyone doped. It doesn’t make him any worse than anyone he raced against, and given his spectacular results, he was obviously a lot better than all of them. The fact that he doped doesn’t mean much as far as how great he was. It was a level playing field and he won consistently.
The ‘everyone does it, so therefore it is fair’ argument is so flawed. First, not everyone does it (maybe most). Secondly, not everyone is on the same doping program or responds to the dope in the same way. Finally, and most importantly, that argument will lead to a sport in which the winner will be determined by the guy willing to go the most extreme in their drug use.
Lance advanced the game of doping. He was ‘not dragged into doping, he did the dragging’.
I think LA’s admission is the only one that can save this sport.
