Right on, mannnnn.....
He won... and this decision is just more Kabuki, too!
Posted on 10/22/2012 7:23:47 AM PDT by AmericanSamurai
GENEVA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life on Monday after the International Cycling Union (UCI) ratified the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) sanctions against the American.
The long-awaited decision has left cycling facing its "greatest crisis" according to UCI president Pat McQuaid and has destroyed Armstrong's last hope of clearing his name.
"Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. Lance Armstrong deserves to be forgotten in cycling," McQuaid told a news conference as he outlined how cycling, long battered by doping problems for decades, would have to start all over again.
"The UCI wishes to begin that journey on that path forward today by confirming that it will not appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and that it will recognise the sanction that USADA has imposed.
"I was sickened by what I read in the USADA report."
On Oct. 10, USADA published a report into Armstrong which alleged the now-retired rider had been involved in the "most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen".
Armstrong, 41, had previously elected not to contest USADA charges, prompting USADA to propose his punishment pending confirmation from cycling's world governing body.
Former Armstrong team mates at his U.S. Postal and Discovery Channel outfits, where he won his seven successive Tour titles from 1999 to 2005, testified against him and themselves and were given reduced bans by the American authorities.
"It wasn't until the intervention of federal agents...they called these riders in and they put down a gun and badge on the table in front of them and said 'you're now facing a grand jury you must tell the truth' that those riders broke down," McQuaid added.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Right on, mannnnn.....
He won... and this decision is just more Kabuki, too!
They’d have to go back and award the titles to the 151st finisher.
“If the USADA has proven anything, it is that apparently everybody in cycling is doping”
Truth in taht. I mean, if everyone is doping then Lance still beat them on equal terms.
I can see a time when a group of riders from weak teams will petition the UCI to put in a rule that sprinters have to ride at the front and do a fair percentage of the work or they will be penalized - stripped of the stage win. Maybe the strong teams will counter by wanting a rule that you can't draft off a rider who isn't on your team. Maybe someone who is lactose intolerant will bring charges against the next tour winner if he puts milk on his muesli.
Thank you.
"doesn't excuse using government force to persecute private citizens outside a fascist or communist country."
I can't speak to that issue. You may be correct. I don't care enough about the sport(s) to look up what the legal issues are.
I'm only posting to the delusional people who still think Armstrong didn't cheat and threaten people.
They are all doping. Cycling and track wins are all really rentals. The vast majority of them are expunged within a few years due to later testing of stored samples. NCAA football is on the same path with recruiting violations.
Dozens of people are lying. The phone records are fabricated. The perjury is not perjury. Retaliation and witness intimidation? All bosh. Lance is as pure as wind-driven snow.
My mistake: I should have written: “almost nothing”.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE LAB RATS
“If Lance Armstrong went to jail and Livestrong went away, that would be a huge setback in our war against cancer, right? Not exactly, because the famous nonprofit donates almost nothing to scientific research. BILL GIFFORD looks at where the money goes and finds a mix of fine ideas, millions of dollars aimed at “awareness,” and a few very blurry lines.”
It’s funny how a sport defines what things are acceptable, and what things are not, and how every athlete pushes the limits. Rackets in tennis, weird golf clubs, special shoes, special swim suits and oils, entirely new techniques of performing the sport.
It was interesting watching water polo from under the water, and realizing that the entire sport is cheaters. Everybody was always grabbing people, which is against the rules. The ones who were best at it would not get caught, and would win.
Or the best offensive linesmen, who are the best at hiding holding from the referees. Or the best wide receivers who know how to push off and get the defenders called for pass interference.
Or the point guards who every day work on their techniques for palming the ball, and taking that extra step, without getting caught.
Or the best catchers, who know how to drag the ball back into the strike zone.
Or the athlete who finds the new natural enhancements, before the sport gets wise and tries to ban them. Hypobaric chambers, steroids, protein, carb loading, training at high altitudes, blood “doping”.
Every serious professional athlete is looking for any edge they can find. Look at how the wheels have changed in cycling. Some poor guy couldn’t even afford to try to break into the sport anymore, the bikes cost so much.
Want to know who the best cyclist really is? Lock the 50 best guys up in prison, feed them all the same food for 6 months, then hand them all identical off-the-shelf bikes, and send them out without any team support, as individuals.
Of course, they’ll still form a peleton and choose who gets to win. They’ll still try to cheat drafting the TV crews. They’ll still cut each other off when people aren’t looking.
I don’t want to watch athletes who are just doped up, cutting years off their lives. But I also thought it was unfair when the first guy won a tennis championship with a hugely oversized racket, while Jimmy Conners was still playing with that old wooden stick of his.
They will always have their marijuana economy to get high off of.
Well, it’s nothing new.
About 30 years ago my aunt’s chapter of Catholic Daughters wanted to make a big donation to the Jerry Lewis telethon, until they discovered that less than 6% of the take actually goes to the charity.
That figure may have changed over the years, so YMMV.
I mean, if everyone is doping then Lance still beat them on equal terms.
thats the problem with all of this. no one comes out a “ clean” winner
And if forces competitors who don’t want to dope, to feel like they have to dope in order to compete.
So many of these charities are big into “awareness” and “educating the public” and telling disease stricken people “that they can get over it” and showing them “where to go for help” and lobbying the government to spend more tax dollars,
but when it comes to actually opening up their own wallets to help the victims with living expenses, or pay some cancer treatment bills, or fund some promising research, or doing what most people think that are doing, it’s just not part of their mission.
Thus far (recent memory), titles have only been stripped from three cyclists. Contador, Landis, and now Armstrong. How it must gall the international uro-twits of cycling (UCI) send all those advertising dollars across the pond. Don’t think the next tour is going to be as interesting....
Do like the idea of dredging up the “no statute of limitations” past though! Could be illuminating.
Live strong..........
Yeah, and OJ Simpson is not guilty either.
LOL
Hope all the lancebots don`t get too despondent if Nike has a clause that demands 100% repayment if he was stripped due to doping.
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