Really, what are these people who support Lance Armstrong on?

The Daily Mail Online ^ | October 12, 2012 | Des Kelly

[Uncle Chip]

So who else knew? There were too many people involved; too many mouths open and too much money was in play for this to remain a genuine secret for so long.

There must have been people in positions of power within the sport who had knowledge of what Lance Armstrong was up to long before this damning dossier was released.

Dragging the proof into the public domain was a difficult task, but only because it was hampered by what has all the appearances of an institutional cover-up, a co-ordinated conspiracy and the propagation of a huge lie that extends way beyond the disgraced rider’s circle of team-mates.

Of course people knew. Armstrong’s team used to sing a song about the drug use, for heaven’s sake. His fellow rider at the US Postal Service team, David Zabriskie, revealed how he would adapt the words to Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze when they were in meetings or on the bus. ‘EPO all in my veins, Lately things just don’t seem the same. Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why, ’Scuse me while I pass this guy.’

The bigger joke is that cycling tried to pretend the scandal wasn’t happening, or did they think it was too big a risk to bring Armstrong down?

It is certainly difficult not to laugh at the idea that the Union Cycliste Internationale governing body once accepted £78,000 from Armstrong for the ‘development of drug-testing equipment’. Seriously, what were these people on? Were they stupid?

[Uncle Chip]

Lance's real crime was winning without being French.

Oh it's more than that. He doped and he required that all his team members dope and if they didn't dope then they were thrown under the peleton:

"I hated the doping, period. I was never a hypocrite because I wanted my husband to compete clean. When he refused to dope for races in 2000 (especially the Tour) and competed clean, he was fired and his career as a pro was over. I have always and forever been an advocate of clean sport. I never ever excused it. He started his career clean, succumbed to the pressure, and ended his career clean. That's the truth and we've paid a hefty price for telling it." Betsy Andreu

[publana]

Exactly.

[jaydee770]

I’ve yet to understand the concern. Did the doping impair his faculties to the point where he was he a danger to others or the public at large? If not, why should I care?

I would offer this if it means that much to people: Continue testing, but only to flag all records/medals with an asterisk if they were juiced. That way, the “natural” competitors could be differentiated. But other than that, I could not care less about it.

[Venturer]

I don’t know. I stopped watching baseball when they outlawed Pete Rose from the Hall of Fame.

[Leto]

I don’t know if Armstrong is innocent or not. IMO the people who ‘testified’ against him were threatened and coerced and didn’t have the resources Armstrong had. He passed all the test that also included EVERY day he won a stage of the tour, which is >70 test just during the Tour IIFC.

[grey_whiskers]

In situations where EPO tests on recently dosed athletes were unavoidable, team doctors also could have injected saline, or salt water, to dilute a rider's blood and quickly drive down hematocrit. This kind of obfuscating saline injection was a common practice for Armstrong and his team, according to the USADA report.

I'd like to hear more of that: how much fluid could you reasonably inject? The human body has two *gallons* of blood; and the chance of throwing off the electrolyte balance and/or bloating might well outweigh the temporary advantage of a dose of EPO so small that it was cleared by morning anyway.

Face it, Lance survived Stage 4 cancer: and enduring that treatment probably made the Alpe d'Huez seem like a joke by comparison.

Cheers!