First it was Hamilton, then Heras and Landis and now Beltran

Cor blimey! I only posted this as a light-hearted one, but it's gone off a bit.

2 schools of thought are either the rest of the team had to do something to keep up with him, or the whole team were doing the same thing.

My issue around never having tested positive is there are many sports where people never tested positive, like the East Germans and Russians in the 1970/80s etc or all those Chinese swimmers who appeared from nowhere in the last Olympics. Tests are only as good as the people designing them (and of course their knowledge of what they are testing for) and when there is more money at stake for those who manage to mask results than those who want to expose them then there is a problem (compare a multi-million pound endorsement deal for a tour winner vs the £20,000 annual salary of a lab technician).
There has to be stricter sentences for all involved from the sports man to the doctors, team bosses and even the sponsors. The idea of charging people with fraud is a nice one as is life bans in professional sport to avoid people profiting from wrong doing.

Too much emphasis is put on Lance as an individual in all this. The fairytale would be that Lance never did, but in my eyes cycling, and especially the Tour, is a team sport and if every member of the team (except Lance) was doping then does that make his wins fair even if he was in ignorance of the facts? Would he have been in place for those key sprints or breakaways? Would he have been dragged up those hills if his team wasn't pumped full of all sorts? How would he have fared in those all important team time trials with a 'straight' team. A leader is only as strong as his team.

I used to work for the company that gave Lance his second chance at life by providing his Cancer drugs, he was our pin up boy used in countless adverts and motivational speeches. I followed every year with a special interest and every time I see one of his team mates caught I just hope that the worse will never happen as I would feel a cheat as well as I sold the virtues of my company on his victories and so it would cut deep.
 
Never thought of it like that (well, never really thought about it at all until I started on this site), but suppose it is like Campbell et al being stripped of relay medals because Chambers was cheating.

I wonder how many competitors were not doping on the tours in question? It would be a lot easier to say 'well folks, everyone was doing it and rather than wait to find each person guilty individually, we will just write it off to experience and make sure it does not happen in the future'. Then follow it up with gaol sentences and fines that make sponsors run away. You might need to kill the tour and bring it back to life - at the moment it is a sad joke.

(another sad joke is football, but no-one wants to do the obvious thing and stamp out cheating and diving and hassling the refs by having cards awarded after the game and banning your golden boys on a squillion£ per week for 10 weeks)

What a sad old world.
 
Dear John!

I feel you have misunderstood me. I am the last person that would SNIPE as you put it. Having said that my only sin seems to have been to critisise your optimism, it seems unworthy of you to mock and belittle both me and my wife and impugn our understanding of cycling.
I try my best to respond in an adult fashion with maybe a little humour, i feel you misread this side of my nature.
Maybe my problem is i don't use the Smiley faces enough as to show how i feel!

Pete, you have put the case as you see it far better than i could have ,and i applaud you for it.Yes this thread has gone a bit west!! I think that the way this has gone is just a reflection of the passions we all feel for the sport we all love.

Lastly i appologise if i have caused offence to John or anyone for that matter. I just want to be loved!

All the best too all, Al :D :D :D :D
 
pete_mcc":1z1pf19e said:
Cor blimey! I only posted this as a light-hearted one, but it's gone off a bit.

2 schools of thought are either the rest of the team had to do something to keep up with him, or the whole team were doing the same thing.

My issue around never having tested positive is there are many sports where people never tested positive, like the East Germans and Russians in the 1970/80s etc or all those Chinese swimmers who appeared from nowhere in the last Olympics. Tests are only as good as the people designing them (and of course their knowledge of what they are testing for) and when there is more money at stake for those who manage to mask results than those who want to expose them then there is a problem (compare a multi-million pound endorsement deal for a tour winner vs the £20,000 annual salary of a lab technician).
There has to be stricter sentences for all involved from the sports man to the doctors, team bosses and even the sponsors. The idea of charging people with fraud is a nice one as is life bans in professional sport to avoid people profiting from wrong doing.

Too much emphasis is put on Lance as an individual in all this. The fairytale would be that Lance never did, but in my eyes cycling, and especially the Tour, is a team sport and if every member of the team (except Lance) was doping then does that make his wins fair even if he was in ignorance of the facts? Would he have been in place for those key sprints or breakaways? Would he have been dragged up those hills if his team wasn't pumped full of all sorts? How would he have fared in those all important team time trials with a 'straight' team. A leader is only as strong as his team.

I used to work for the company that gave Lance his second chance at life by providing his Cancer drugs, he was our pin up boy used in countless adverts and motivational speeches. I followed every year with a special interest and every time I see one of his team mates caught I just hope that the worse will never happen as I would feel a cheat as well as I sold the virtues of my company on his victories and so it would cut deep.

Good point well made.

Maybe I am being naive still being optimistic - perhaps I should get out more. However as mentioned before don't recall any of the USPS riders ever getting caught whilst riding for the team (stand to be corrected on that one).

Doping is nothing new in cycling (or many sports). After all Henri Pélissier, after abandoning the 1924 Tour was widely quoted as saying "We run on dynamite." However with the possible exception of track athletics cycling does seem to have a unique fascination with doping - cycling has the itch, and it's scratching. Does cycling really have more of a problem than other sports? Should we judge Rasmussen more harshly than Rio Ferdinand? Is it fair the endless suspicion over Armstrong's cleanliness means his doping is a fait accompli in many peoples eyes whereas half the world cheered Nadal to a Wimbledon victory the other week? Are Abdu or Delgado bigger cheats than Jaap Stam or Davids?

Seems to me however emotive the subject is we should move forward, not look back. I almost don't care, I don't want to find out what all my cycling heros over the years did or took.

Enough rambling....
 
al":33t1detv said:
Dear John!

I feel you have misunderstood me. I am the last person that would SNIPE as you put it. Having said that my only sin seems to have been to critisise your optimism, it seems unworthy of you to mock and belittle both me and my wife and impugn our understanding of cycling.
I try my best to respond in an adult fashion with maybe a little humour, i feel you misread this side of my nature.
Maybe my problem is i don't use the Smiley faces enough as to show how i feel!

Pete, you have put the case as you see it far better than i could have ,and i applaud you for it.Yes this thread has gone a bit west!! I think that the way this has gone is just a reflection of the passions we all feel for the sport we all love.

Lastly i appologise if i have caused offence to John or anyone for that matter. I just want to be loved!

All the best too all, Al :D :D :D :D

Gone west indeed. May as well end it here and call it quits I think. I didn't take especially kindly to a couple of comments you made, I responded in what I felt to be a similar vein, maybe you didn't see it as such. Anyhow no hard feeling from this side, let's move on and discuss something less emotive. Iraq anyone :LOL:
 
Actually Amstrong was tested positive in 1999 after a stage in the pyrenees. he argued that it was in a cream he was using and that was accepted as such .


What people dont realise is that Amstrong only raced for the Tour de france , nothing else .
In an average season he only raced just above 30 days ( including 22 in le Tour ) . He was a lot fresher than the rest .

A lot of doping in cycling since the beginning . and in other sports too . I dont think Nadal arms have gone this big by just going to the gym .


I am sure by now , all the samples of Amstrong have been tested and if one of them was positive it would have come out .
For info , L Equipe is a sport newspaper which is owned by the same company which runs the Tour and numerous races .
 
Corr! :shock:

Just read through this lot. I never realised how emotive a subject it was amongst folks who're not likely to lose their livelihoods over the outcome, but hay ho.
As for the tour, I always kind of guessed they were all on something 'cos I can't see how a natural human body can sustain that kind of effort for such a prolonged period without chemical assistance, but I look at it like this:

Most of my other heroes are or were drugged up when at their best, why should the cyclists be any different? :?
 
cherrybomb":wcsqtara said:
Corr! :shock:


Most of my other heroes are or were drugged up when at their best, why should the cyclists be any different? :?

Agree here, no one ever banned Jimi from playing the guitar :roll: :LOL:
 
Defiant":21jfd0d7 said:
who is still watching?,...i'm not,..do not like it anymore...

Only the time trials and Mountain stages till this point..... but I happen to go somewhere myself tomorrow :roll: ;)
 
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