grahame":2mn6ugju said:
Of the non-Armstrong samples, 8.5% positive for EPO (or anything else), so the "everybody was at it" defence appears to be blown out of the water.
Actually this wasn't used by Lance's defence BUT...was used by the witness's aiding the usda prosecution by giving statements against Lance
grahame":2mn6ugju said:
There are records of two positive tests from Armstrong - Cortisone in 1999 (covered by an illegal, retrospective prescription, despite the claimed cream not being on Armstrong's declared medical use list before the test), and an EPO positive at the Tour of Switzerland. There goes the "never tested positive" defence as well.
And yet again these were tests that never led to a positive award of a penalty. As in all sports tests somethings will show as positive to be seen later as a non positive. Lances unique position is around his cancer, treatment and meds to ensure a non return of that cancer. Not having a athlete in that situation before in professional cycling undoubtedly gave the testing body many firsts and not all of them would have been correct
Something that keeps coming back to those who use this 1999 test as a"definite proof" that he was a drug cheat..this was 1999, lance didn't retire till feb 2011 and during that whole time the governing bodies never felt they had enough to to ban him or convict him of any offence..why was that?
why did they wait till he retired and no longer professionally raced to start this up again? In truth the USDA have always hated the fact that Lance was successfull in his field in a way the usda have never been sucessfull in theirs
The simplest of facts are that Lance was never convicted or banned due to any of the tests he provided during his entire professional career, the usda have never been able to prove any different and the uci were happy to allow Lance to continue to race until Lance himself retired and the only people being held up as icons by the usda to try and convict Lance..are mostly self confessed drug cheats
The usda are the driving force for 2 reasons and two reasons only
they have hated Lance from day 1 and even to the point of trying to get him after he has retired they still want to stick it to him
secondly..The usda themselves have shown themselves to be inadequate as a testing body both by science and by public relations, so bad in fact that they have painted thereselves into a corner and are trying to cover up there embarrasment by bullying, blustering,piss and wind tactics on a retired champion
He had retired..nothing more to damage the sport from Lance and the usda could have fine tuned it's own house to make sure what they have suggested, never happens again..much of this could have been without damaging the sport and still obtained a far cleaner sport
The usda won't let this drop no matter what the further damage to the sport is and that is probably more questionable than anything Lance ever did
