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Tour De France Director say Armstrong made fools of the World 8-24-05

D

dmcowen674

No Lifer
This will upset many AT'rs especially those in OT that are heavy into bicycling.

I don't know between the Chemo and who knows what else but his body certainly performed.

Whether he had unfair advantage or not, I do not know.

So now what?

Does he get stripped of all 7 yrs???

If there is no doubt, he must be stripped.

8-24-2005 Tour de France director: Armstrong ``fooled'' the sports world

The director of the Tour de France claims Lance Armstrong has ``fooled'' the sports world and that the seven-time champion owes fans an explanation over new allegations he used a performance-boosting drug.

Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc's comments appeared in the French sports daily L'Equipe on Wednesday, a day after the newspaper reported that six urine samples provided by Armstrong during the '99 Tour tested positive for the red blood cell-booster EPO.

``For the first time -- and these are no longer rumors, or insinuations, these are proven scientific facts -- someone has shown me that in 1999, Armstrong had a banned substance called EPO in his body,'' Leblanc told L'Equipe.

``The ball is now in his court. Why, how, by whom? He owes explanations to us and to everyone who follows the tour. Today, what L'Equipe revealed shows me that I was fooled. We were all fooled.''

EPO, formally known as erythropoietin, was on the list of banned substances at the time Armstrong won the first of his seven Tour's, but there was no effective test then to detect it.
 
"Separately, the lab said it could not confirm that the positive results were Armstrong's. It noted that the samples were anonymous, bearing only a six-digit number to identify the rider, and could not be matched with the name of any one cyclist. "

Didn't someone break into his room last year looking for drugs?
 
Penis envy. He's been down this road before (and won).


`Never to such an extent, probably, has the departure of a champion been welcomed with such widespread relief,'' the paper griped the day after Armstrong's record seventh straight win.


Yea, of course there's relief; perhaps Jacques Pierre Fromage can actually win their own race now and make their country semi-proud.
 
No, he won't be stripped of anything, at least not yet. Apparently the 1999 samples cannot, by regulation, be used for any substantive purpose, as they are officially anonymous. L'Equipe apparently took the anonymous sample readings and matched them up against a roster of the tested subjects to reach the conclusion that Lance had trace amounts of EPO in his system. To me, the fact that Jean Marie LaBlanc is talking the way he is, is strong evidence that their conclusions are valid.

In 1999, there was no scientifically valid means for testing for EPO, which I guess is why they kept the frozen samples.

My take on all this, as a Lance fan, is that Lance may well have been doping, but to the extent he was, it was more or less universal in the pro peloton at the time. Keep in mind, the Tour had actually had a work stoppage in 1998 after the riders stopped racing to protest the drug investigations going on at the time.

Drug use in cycling is nothing new, even if the current drugs themselves are. The greatest cyclist in history, Eddy Merckx, once said, "you don't win the Tour on nothing but bread and water." One of strangest revelations of the 1998 Tour was that team doctors had, for years, been giving riders something called a "Belgian Pot," a mix of amphetamines, cocaine, heroin and cortisone.

What we know for sure is that Lance has, since his cancer, been the hardest-working, most disciplined member of the elite circle of the top riders in Le Tour. His work ethic is simply unsurpassed, and his most formidable rival, Jan Ullrich, has shown a relative lack of discipline and preparation for most of the time Lance has been dominating the Tour.

I don't know the truth about Lance's drug use, and I'm not sure I want to.
 
Just another case of SOUR GRAPES. Something the "FROGS" and their "WINE" are famous for.

6 year old samples ?? Most riders are saying that the samples were to be destroyed before the next race was run and the next samples were taken !!
 
Originally posted by: BushBasha
Given that 15 other samples tested positive, it just shows that dope or no dope, Lance is the man 🙂
Click to expand...

yeah to have come back from where he was about a decade ago, dope or no dope he's freaking superman. i met him back around 01, and he is just an incredibly friendly and inspiring person, and we met in really lax surroundings with no audience to appease, just us and my best friend and his cousin that was dying in a dallas hospital.

edit: it was either '99 or '00. btw my friend's cousin was on good morning america with lance, if any of you remember that.
 
Originally posted by: Medicine Bear
Jean-Marie Leblanc? Gimme a break. How can anyone take a "man" with two female names seriously?
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I agree...analogous to eating British food. Clearly, anyone who does cannot be taken seriously. 🙂
 
Meh, I call BS... They had a thing on CNN how his heart was 2x as big as the average human heart...etc etc etc

The guy is a machine, get over it and go whine about baseball.
 
Originally posted by: BushBasha
Given that 15 other samples tested positive, it just shows that dope or no dope, Lance is the man 🙂
Click to expand...
Good point, if all the other top riders were using the substance at that time, it's part of the game not cheating.

And since they have had better testing in more recent years, and have testing Armstrong more than any other rider, they can't whine about his more recent victories this way.
 
I certainly wouldn't immediately dismiss it, but I'm sceptical of the source. The French view Armstrong as an undesirable who should be eliminated. I would not be surprised if they use their intelligence agencies to assassinate him if this fails. If he suffers any harm, you can bet the French are involved.
 
This just in Tour De France Director is a JEALOUS SCUMBAG and potentially a Ethnocentrist who hate the fact that an American is the SUPERIOR CYCLIST
 
Luckily for those of us here who can rationalize anything Lance isn't French. Then we'd have to listen to what a worthless bastard he is.
 
Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Luckily for those of us here who can rationalize anything Lance isn't French. Then we'd have to listen to what a worthless bastard he is.
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Possibly, but he wouldn't have to worry about being assassinated.
 
Originally posted by: dahunan
This just in Tour De France Director is a JEALOUS SCUMBAG and potentially a Ethnocentrist who hate the fact that an American is the SUPERIOR CYCLIST
Click to expand...

Ahem - I side with Lance, but your post reveals you as the ethnocentrist in this equation.
 
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
I certainly wouldn't immediately dismiss it, but I'm sceptical of the source. The French view Armstrong as an undesirable who should be eliminated. I would not be surprised if they use their intelligence agencies to assassinate him if this fails. If he suffers any harm, you can bet the French are involved.
Click to expand...

This is just absurd. You've been reading too many John Le Carre' novels. Why would the nefarious French kill Lance AFTER he retires?
 
Originally posted by: DonVito
Originally posted by: dahunan
This just in Tour De France Director is a JEALOUS SCUMBAG and potentially a Ethnocentrist who hate the fact that an American is the SUPERIOR CYCLIST
Click to expand...

Ahem - I side with Lance, but your post reveals you as the ethnocentrist in this equation.
Click to expand...

Why would he bring up some 6 year old samples after the man retires and try to make Lance look like some criminal fraudster instead of one of hte Greatest Cyclist Ever?
 
Originally posted by: DonVito
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
I certainly wouldn't immediately dismiss it, but I'm sceptical of the source. The French view Armstrong as an undesirable who should be eliminated. I would not be surprised if they use their intelligence agencies to assassinate him if this fails. If he suffers any harm, you can bet the French are involved.
Click to expand...

This is just absurd. You've been reading too many John Le Carre' novels. Why would the nefarious French kill Lance AFTER he retires?
Click to expand...

Revenge? Jealousy? Punishment for meeting with Bush? Perhaps by the simple fact that he is an undesirable? etc. I'm not discounting the possibility that they attempted to assassinate him before his retirement, too.

You've been reading too many Dr. Seuss books. This is the real world.

I don't think that it's far-fetched.
 
Originally posted by: dahunan

Why would he bring up some 6 year old samples after the man retires and try to make Lance look like some criminal fraudster instead of one of hte Greatest Cyclist Ever?
Click to expand...

He didn't. The samples were tested by an independent lab using them for research to perfect testing for EPO (the prohibited substance he's tested positive for). Some of the samples, identified only by anonymous specimen numbers, tested positive. The lab provided the test results to the World Anti-Doping Agency at some point in 2004. L'Equipe apparently secured the test results, and Lance's medical certificates from the 1999 Tour, which showed that his specimen number matched some of the positive tests.

Jean Marie LeBlanc is just commenting on what he's seen.

What remains unclear is why the lab used these particular samples for their testing (other than that they may have thought these samples would be likelier to yield a mix of positive and negative samples than, say, a sampling from the general public). It's also not clear why the samples were kept for six years.

Apparently the positive result was based on testing the second of two sets of samples provided by each rider, and the first set was consumed in testing in 1999. As such, the current positive result can't be used to discipline Lance.
 
Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Revenge? Jealousy? Punishment for meeting with Bush? Perhaps by the simple fact that he is an undesirable? etc. I'm not discounting the possibility that they attempted to assassinate him before his retirement, too.

You've been reading too many Dr. Seuss books. This is the real world.

I don't think that it's far-fetched.
Click to expand...

Maybe I need my sarcasm sensor recalibrated. This is a joke, right?
 
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