Posted on 07/02/2010 11:30:15 AM PDT by Ready4Freddy
Damn. Hate it for him and his legacy. I wish he had stopped after #7 and I bet he does too. Wonder what the last great athlete to ever go out on top and stay out was...
They said elimination.
” I’m pulling for anyone/everyone else over Contador.”
I’m with you/some others.....
Looks like Shleck and Cadel have an opportunity to do it.
Sad to see Lance go out this way, but better early than late...
I’m with you/some others.....
Oy, yes, heartache today but I'll be rooting for ABC (Anybody But Contador)from here on out too, which actually makes it easier for us, doesn't it, since the odds that somebody will beat him are better than any one particular rider will.
Andy Schleck sure filled that role quite nicely today. Ha!
I started to watch it this morning but stopped it to go to church. When we got home I was ready to watch it again but this kid who is living with us this summer said to me “Uh oh! You’re not going to like what happened today in the Tour!!”
Needless to say, I was not pleased. I have now read several accounts of what happened and can’t bring myself to watch it. It’s just too painful. Thank goodness tomorrow is a rest day. I need time to recover (if that is possible).
Just an awful day. I am so bummed.
I think this just highlights the tremendous amount of luck he had during his run. I would like to think he was outworking everyone else too, but the amount of luck involved can’t be overlooked. A bad crash during that time, and his legacy is much different.
(I just moved here in June)
Hi lainie, what do you mean?
no, no, this is why he won’t fail the drug test: once upon a time he was give EPO legally, and it’s always there to mask future illicit injections! My mom confirms.
to Vegas
But it was only 2 years ago? or three? that Vino was indeed doping for Astana. So :shrug:
I was such a big Vino fangirl at that time, too. I’ll never believe in him again.
Jeez.. talk about awful luck for Lance Armstrong. He’s paid back 7 years’ worth of good luck for bad in one tour.
I’m just now watching the coverage from today — it was a Euskatel rider trying to obtain a musette outside of the feed zone that caused the crash just before the last climb. wtf?
It sucks to see Lance go out this way. I’ve been getting emails all day from my anti-Lance friends rubbing it in pretty hard.
This one though did make me laugh-
WARNING, WARNING, WARNING, FOUL AND CRUDE LANGUAGE ALERT. IF YOU ARE OFFENDED AT AT FOUL AND CRUDE LANGUAGE, PLEASE DO NOT CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK. THANK YOU.
Lance & Johan Chat After Stage 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVFKx-Zb_Mk
???That's the first time I've heard this.
Are you saying that exogenic EPO remains detectable even after years-ago use (LA's post chemo treatments) so a positive blood or urine test wouldn't provide evidence of more recent exogenic EPO? Or are you saying that one dose forever masks more recent use & so it just doesn't show up in the blood or urine testing?
If it's the former, why do they continue to test him then if his legal EPO (which would have had to have been one of the first-gen synthetic EPO's I guess) is still present.
And if it's the latter, if another cyclist who'd been caught using it (David Millar, say) and has started cycling again after a suspension, wouldn't their previous usage also mask current usage? In other words, if all it takes is previous usage to mask current usage, then Floyd Landis could pass a test now?
Or (& this far-out possibility just came to me, so please bear with my ignorance) if he was given non-synthetic allogeneic hematopoietic cells as a cancer patient, are you saying he's essentially a chimera now, so he always has genetically different cells that show up in testing? You're suggesting he's continuing to use allogenic EPO to boost RBC instead of synthetic like all the other riders?
In which case, we're back to why do they even bother to test him for EPO! I'm confused.
Mr. Blonde, I started contemplating exactly that at about the 2nd crash that LA was involved in. He's had plenty of crashes, plenty of punctures, but nothing so bad that he couldn't recover from it. Good support, great teamwork, etc, got him back in the saddle and back up to the front.
'You make your own luck', as they say, which can be looked at as expecting the bad stuff and planning how to ameliorate it with support / teamwork, etc. But even given that, Lance has had a remakably charmed career since returning to the peleton in the late 90s.
Lance got caught today in a perfect storm of ain't-gonna-happen. I think the Cadel / Schleck / Contador camps were going to fight it out no matter what today, not to get LA but to start the eventual fight early. What was thought to be a relatively minor climbing stage turned into a showdown at a pace not anticipated by many. Three relatively minor crashes, maybe some domestiques who weren't up to the challenge today, & a 38-yo body later, and Lance was simply left in the dust.
And maybe it's also because I never really believed 100% in the first place that he came here this year to win it but perhaps to start getting his baby RS team off to a well-financed, I also disagree that this has to be a sad epilogue to a fantastic career.
Come on, ten years from now, no one will remember he lost one. They'll just know he won seven, seven SEVEN! freaking ones.
In fact, if he provides some spectacular heroics in getting his teammate to a podium position, then the statement he makes by finally paying something back to others on his team & ushering them to glory could be an amazing coda to a career which might restore, glory alleluia, some sense of sportsmanship which has been lost, IMHO, from cycling for a while now.
There is no dishonor in being a domestique! They are the real heros. (Viz: George Hincapie, who's NEVER won a tour but has had an amazing TdF career.) Lance could make everybody appreciate them more & that would be a great thing for the sport.
Maybe he could even teach Alberto something by getting Levi to Paris in yellow.
Sorry, I haz sleepy head.;-)
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