UCI backs the ban and strips Armstrong of his seven TDF wins.
Lance Armstrong to be charged with doping offences - Washington Post
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Neutral
BTV
Correct decision...in fact it was the only credible decision.
Rooney24
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Stripped of all results as far back as 1998.
Gio
★★★★★★★★
Are the titles now void or is there the possibility or re-awarding them to clean riders further down the peloton?
Neutral
BTV
Are the titles now void or is there the possibility or re-awarding them to clean riders further down the peloton?
In some of the races that means 8th place...lol.
Think they'll just leave them blank.
Zen
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99 - Escartin 3rd (Nardello 7th)
00 - Beloki 3rd (Nardello 10th)
01 - Beloki 3rd (Kivilev 4th)
02 - Beloki 2nd (Azevedo 6tj)
03 - Zubeldia 5th
04 - Azevedo 5th
05 - Evans 8th
The still clean by all accounts winners, though a few have been mentioned in certain investigations, though no true proof they were truly involved though, ones in brackets haven't been mentioned in anything at all. tbh, I think they should just hand to them, they might feel like winners(like Andy Schleck doesn't), but just leaving them blank is a just, even though a very very minor one, a victory for doping really.
Out of the last 30 Top 10 finishes, only 3 are dodgy, Contador, Schlect and Basso. 03-05, 23.
00 - Beloki 3rd (Nardello 10th)
01 - Beloki 3rd (Kivilev 4th)
02 - Beloki 2nd (Azevedo 6tj)
03 - Zubeldia 5th
04 - Azevedo 5th
05 - Evans 8th
The still clean by all accounts winners, though a few have been mentioned in certain investigations, though no true proof they were truly involved though, ones in brackets haven't been mentioned in anything at all. tbh, I think they should just hand to them, they might feel like winners(like Andy Schleck doesn't), but just leaving them blank is a just, even though a very very minor one, a victory for doping really.
Out of the last 30 Top 10 finishes, only 3 are dodgy, Contador, Schlect and Basso. 03-05, 23.
I don't know much about this sport or this story. But how exactly is the evidence credible when there's no actual proof showing that he is a cheat? Or is there proof? Am I missing something here?
x42bn6
Full Member
I don't know much about this sport or this story. But how exactly is the evidence credible when there's no actual proof showing that he is a cheat? Or is there proof? Am I missing something here?
26 witnesses, 11 of which are former teammates, one of which had everything to lose and nothing to gain by testifying (Hincapie); emails; bank records; and analysis of his previous tests.
If anyone is able to dodge a drugs test, it doesn't make them clean.
rednev
There is non worthy of worship except God
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I haven't been following this since the report was released a couple of weeks back - is he still denying everything?
The cnut should just come clean.
The cnut should just come clean.
utdalltheway
Sexy Beast
if there's no proof that the 2nd rider (for each of those 7 yrs) wasn't doping then why wouldn't they be awarded the wins?
Elliott
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The UCI had no choice in the end but I've got a nasty feeling they explored all other avenues thoroughly before realizing as much. Pat McQuaid might not be as corrupt as his predecessor Hein Verbruggen but he's still the kind of guy who'd rather see a cheat get away with it than to deal with the mess of another scandal. And that's exactly the sort of short sightedness and warped logic which threatens the future of the sport. He might have had stern words for Lance today, but he's had much sterner ones for the likes of Dick Pound in the past.
Will Absolute
New Member
The UCI had no choice in the end but I've got a nasty feeling they explored all other avenues thoroughly before realizing as much. Pat McQuaid might not be as corrupt as his predecessor Hein Verbruggen but he's still the kind of guy who'd rather see a cheat get away with it than to deal with the mess of another scandal. And that's exactly the sort of short sightedness and warped logic which threatens the future of the sport. He might have had stern words for Lance today, but he's had much sterner ones for the likes of Dick Pound in the past.
What sports bureaucrat wouldn't?
Elliott
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Well, I'd like to think a belief in fair play would be enough not to think that way. But even if that's naive - as long as a high enough percentage of cheaters keep getting away with it, the problem won't go away. And that's not something the sport can afford for too much longer. So if a moral UCI Prez is too much to ask for, at least give us one who's able to see the big picture.
surf
Full Member
Are the titles now void or is there the possibility or re-awarding them to clean riders further down the peloton?
The TDF director Prudhomme says he wants no replacement winners declared, so presumably the UCI will support him.
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Armstong's sponsors are now lining up to sue him for bonus payments for his wins.
surf
Full Member
Just when you thought this had been settled, more bizarre stuff from the UCI and McQuaid:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/oct/23/lance-armstrong-appeal-usada-uci
It sounds like bluster to me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/oct/23/lance-armstrong-appeal-usada-uci
It sounds like bluster to me.
if there's no proof that the 2nd rider (for each of those 7 yrs) wasn't doping then why wouldn't they be awarded the wins?
I think in many cases the second and third placed riders have since been found to be drug cheats. In one year you need to go to Cadel Evans at 8th before you come to a clean rider.
utdalltheway
Sexy Beast
annoys the hell out of me, it really does. I've spent a lot of time over the years watching the TDF and now most of it has been for nought it seems.
Badunk
Shares his caf joinday with Dante
The same thing will happen with our athletic heroes as well. We're all amazed at the likes of Usain Bolt, but if he gets outed as a cheat we'll all be saying 'It was obvious'.
rednev
There is non worthy of worship except God
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I just came across one of the most ridiculous articles I've read in months. According to some psychiatrist writing for Fox News, Lance Armstrong cheated because his father abandoned him as a child, and this is also the reason for his cancer. And the only way he's going to cure his deep-rooted psychological problems is by finding God..or something. Here's the article with the best bits highlighted.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012...-ever-fess-up-and-face-truth/?intcmp=features
Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from cycling. Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body, said Armstrong, “deserves to be forgotten.”
It may be that Mr. McQuaid’s words were exactly wrong and also a key to understanding the weakness in a man named Lance Armstrong.
Armstrong’s life story is, from a psychological perspective, less noteworthy for its triumphs than its tragedies, and his racing away from them seems to have failed, as it always does. In life, the truth always wins, no matter how cagey a person might think he is in outsmarting it.
Armstrong’s truth—and likely the driving force in his winning seven Tour de France titles while allegedly injecting himself with steroids and mainlining his own blood—is that his father abandoned him at age 2. To this day, Armstrong has refused to meet him. His mother then married another man with whom Armstrong did not get along, and with whom he has had no contact for years.
An abandoned and forgotten boy is—absent extraordinary healing—forever an abandoned and forgotten boy. Two years old is plenty old enough to be torn apart at the level of the soul by the abrupt severing, without explanation, of a father-son bond. It is plenty old enough to be shredded by the haunting suspicion that one is unworthy and unlovable. It is plenty old enough to set the stage for a decades-long race for enough fame and adulation to fill the emotional black hole inside you that keeps threatening to make you disappear into it.
And, so, Armstrong seems to have pedaled faster and faster. And if his teammates and adversaries wondered how a man could be so driven as to declare himself a winner when he was not, again and again and again, to have seemingly no compunction about celebrating hollow victories, and to maintain a synthetic fiction in the face of seemingly incontrovertible fact, they need only remember the hollowness inside that man, born of being a forgotten boy—that black hole and the threat of complete psychological disintegration it represented to him, if only unconsciously.
If the contentions of the officials who banned Armstrong are correct, the vacuum of real self-esteem that could reside within him predicts that he will continue—probably forever—to deny that he ever used performance enhancing substances and keep fleeing his core feelings, until he can’t come up with any other way to dodge them.
So, he is likely now to try to reinvent himself—perhaps by starting his own cycling league, perhaps by starring in a reality show. Anything, but anything to avoid the reality that he was unloved by the first man in his life.
I hope my readers will not mind terribly much if I burden them with some of the finer psychological poetry of this forgotten, weak , boy-man named Armstrong. Because it is not lost on this psychiatrist that Lance Armstrong, in a game of tragic of one-upmanship spent his life racing away from other men, when his father raced away from him.
It is not lost on this psychiatrist that he allegedly spent decades injecting himself with male hormones, as if to be male enough to be a worthy son, rather than forgotten one.
It is not lost on this psychiatrist that the very attempt to cheat the truth—to bury grief and rage, rather than facing them—could turn one’s very manhood into a cancer and make malignant the most graphic anatomic symbol of masculinity and fatherhood.
And it is not lost on this psychiatrist that Pat McQuaid, president (father, if you will) of the International Cycling Union, would stumble into repeating the biggest psychological trauma in Armstrong’s life, by calling him “forgettable.”
Everything in the world and every person in it and every act is explainable. And, very often, the explanations are very sad, indeed.
You see, to truly Livestrong after being injured catastrophically as a boy by abandonment requires looking at your pain, sitting with it, really feeling it, not trying to outdistance it—which is impossible and a race to oblivion. It requires realizing that you were always loveable, even if you were unloved, and that false fame and a Superman-lean frame will only separate you from that healing reality, which many people correctly call God.
And, so, it is with that knowledge that I wish Lance Armstrong Godspeed on his continuing journey toward the certain knowledge that he was always a worthy person, even if his father was too broken to love him. That is the only race worth winning in Lance Armstrong’s life, and it is the beauty of this miraculous existence of ours, that it can still be won.
It may be that Mr. McQuaid’s words were exactly wrong and also a key to understanding the weakness in a man named Lance Armstrong.
Armstrong’s life story is, from a psychological perspective, less noteworthy for its triumphs than its tragedies, and his racing away from them seems to have failed, as it always does. In life, the truth always wins, no matter how cagey a person might think he is in outsmarting it.
Armstrong’s truth—and likely the driving force in his winning seven Tour de France titles while allegedly injecting himself with steroids and mainlining his own blood—is that his father abandoned him at age 2. To this day, Armstrong has refused to meet him. His mother then married another man with whom Armstrong did not get along, and with whom he has had no contact for years.
An abandoned and forgotten boy is—absent extraordinary healing—forever an abandoned and forgotten boy. Two years old is plenty old enough to be torn apart at the level of the soul by the abrupt severing, without explanation, of a father-son bond. It is plenty old enough to be shredded by the haunting suspicion that one is unworthy and unlovable. It is plenty old enough to set the stage for a decades-long race for enough fame and adulation to fill the emotional black hole inside you that keeps threatening to make you disappear into it.
And, so, Armstrong seems to have pedaled faster and faster. And if his teammates and adversaries wondered how a man could be so driven as to declare himself a winner when he was not, again and again and again, to have seemingly no compunction about celebrating hollow victories, and to maintain a synthetic fiction in the face of seemingly incontrovertible fact, they need only remember the hollowness inside that man, born of being a forgotten boy—that black hole and the threat of complete psychological disintegration it represented to him, if only unconsciously.
If the contentions of the officials who banned Armstrong are correct, the vacuum of real self-esteem that could reside within him predicts that he will continue—probably forever—to deny that he ever used performance enhancing substances and keep fleeing his core feelings, until he can’t come up with any other way to dodge them.
So, he is likely now to try to reinvent himself—perhaps by starting his own cycling league, perhaps by starring in a reality show. Anything, but anything to avoid the reality that he was unloved by the first man in his life.
I hope my readers will not mind terribly much if I burden them with some of the finer psychological poetry of this forgotten, weak , boy-man named Armstrong. Because it is not lost on this psychiatrist that Lance Armstrong, in a game of tragic of one-upmanship spent his life racing away from other men, when his father raced away from him.
It is not lost on this psychiatrist that he allegedly spent decades injecting himself with male hormones, as if to be male enough to be a worthy son, rather than forgotten one.
It is not lost on this psychiatrist that the very attempt to cheat the truth—to bury grief and rage, rather than facing them—could turn one’s very manhood into a cancer and make malignant the most graphic anatomic symbol of masculinity and fatherhood.
And it is not lost on this psychiatrist that Pat McQuaid, president (father, if you will) of the International Cycling Union, would stumble into repeating the biggest psychological trauma in Armstrong’s life, by calling him “forgettable.”
Everything in the world and every person in it and every act is explainable. And, very often, the explanations are very sad, indeed.
You see, to truly Livestrong after being injured catastrophically as a boy by abandonment requires looking at your pain, sitting with it, really feeling it, not trying to outdistance it—which is impossible and a race to oblivion. It requires realizing that you were always loveable, even if you were unloved, and that false fame and a Superman-lean frame will only separate you from that healing reality, which many people correctly call God.
And, so, it is with that knowledge that I wish Lance Armstrong Godspeed on his continuing journey toward the certain knowledge that he was always a worthy person, even if his father was too broken to love him. That is the only race worth winning in Lance Armstrong’s life, and it is the beauty of this miraculous existence of ours, that it can still be won.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012...-ever-fess-up-and-face-truth/?intcmp=features
JustAFan
The Adebayo Akinfenwa of football photoshoppers
I think in many cases the second and third placed riders have since been found to be drug cheats. In one year you need to go to Cadel Evans at 8th before you come to a clean rider.
Which brings us back around to the question of why not just leave the titles in place with Lance. Basically everyone was cheating so the playing field was level for everyone.
Now of course I can't really say this would be the best thing to do, or even a good thing. But obviously getting beyond Lance Armstrong, the larger question here is how dirty is cycling and is there such a thing as a clean rider or just riders who have not been caught?
Does the question really become "Who is to blame here?" The cheaters? The sponsers? The sport itself? The ruling bodies and their testing agencies who seem unable to police the sport (and to be honest are not the only sport with this problem)?
Of course they could do nothing else but strip him of the titles, but to just have the titles sit there unawarded to anyone speaks volumes.
Amir
Full Member
While it may be true, I don't like the idea that 'so many were using drugs, so surely EVERYONE was'. Anyone who hasn't failed a test, admitted to using drugs or had a stack of evidence against him like Armstrong, is clean in my books.
Though I'd probably still avoid giving those Tour titles to anyone. If you can give it to the second placed rider or third placed rider, it's OK. If you have to get down to seventh, it becomes a little silly. And that period was indeed.
Though I'd probably still avoid giving those Tour titles to anyone. If you can give it to the second placed rider or third placed rider, it's OK. If you have to get down to seventh, it becomes a little silly. And that period was indeed.
x42bn6
Full Member
It wasn't, as some might have cheated more than others.Which brings us back around to the question of why not just leave the titles in place with Lance. Basically everyone was cheating so the playing field was level for everyone.
Dr. Dwayne
Self proclaimed tagline king.
"Who is to blame here?"
Lance Armstrong.
Dr. Dwayne
Self proclaimed tagline king.
The cnut should just come clean.
He doesn't know the meaning of the word, frankly.
Jimy_Hills_Chin
Desperately wants to be ITK
American perceptions are definitely skewed on Lance. ESPN.com's highest rated posts are absurd and baseless defences of Armstrong.
senorgregster
Last Newbie Standing
I don't think his wins should be handed to anyone. There's so many cheats that I doubt any single team was clean and the reality is this is a team event.
senorgregster
Last Newbie Standing
Totally bizarre comments...
Alberto Contador has expressed his support for disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong during what he has dubbed a 'lynching'.
The Texan has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life for his part in a wide-ranging doping scandal.
"It seems to me that at certain times and in certain places Lance is not being treated with any respect," said Contador, a double Tour champion who returned from a doping ban in August.
"He is being humiliated and lynched, in my opinion. He is being destroyed.
"Right now people are talking about Lance but there has not been any new test or anything. It's based exclusively on witness statements that could have existed in 2005.
"I respect each rider's decision but I would have liked it to happen a bit earlier.
"What there is (in terms of evidence) I don't know, what I do know is that if cycling is popular in the United States it's thanks to him.
"There is little that needs to be changed at the moment. The tests we have are as rigorous as possible, we have to be able to be located at all times.
"There will be people who will have doubts, given everything that has come out, and I understand it.
"I say to them that they should believe completely that riders win races without help, also on the Tour."
Alberto Contador has expressed his support for disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong during what he has dubbed a 'lynching'.
The Texan has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life for his part in a wide-ranging doping scandal.
"It seems to me that at certain times and in certain places Lance is not being treated with any respect," said Contador, a double Tour champion who returned from a doping ban in August.
"He is being humiliated and lynched, in my opinion. He is being destroyed.
"Right now people are talking about Lance but there has not been any new test or anything. It's based exclusively on witness statements that could have existed in 2005.
"I respect each rider's decision but I would have liked it to happen a bit earlier.
"What there is (in terms of evidence) I don't know, what I do know is that if cycling is popular in the United States it's thanks to him.
"There is little that needs to be changed at the moment. The tests we have are as rigorous as possible, we have to be able to be located at all times.
"There will be people who will have doubts, given everything that has come out, and I understand it.
"I say to them that they should believe completely that riders win races without help, also on the Tour."
Elliott
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As if Cuntador has any credibility on the matter.
Also, all this "level playing field" stuff is nonsense. There are clean riders.
Also, all this "level playing field" stuff is nonsense. There are clean riders.
Brophs
The One and Only
Totally bizarre comments...
Alberto Contador has expressed his support for disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong during what he has dubbed a 'lynching'.
The Texan has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life for his part in a wide-ranging doping scandal.
"It seems to me that at certain times and in certain places Lance is not being treated with any respect," said Contador, a double Tour champion who returned from a doping ban in August.
"He is being humiliated and lynched, in my opinion. He is being destroyed.
"Right now people are talking about Lance but there has not been any new test or anything. It's based exclusively on witness statements that could have existed in 2005.
"I respect each rider's decision but I would have liked it to happen a bit earlier.
"What there is (in terms of evidence) I don't know, what I do know is that if cycling is popular in the United States it's thanks to him.
"There is little that needs to be changed at the moment. The tests we have are as rigorous as possible, we have to be able to be located at all times.
"There will be people who will have doubts, given everything that has come out, and I understand it.
"I say to them that they should believe completely that riders win races without help, also on the Tour."
Couldn't agree more. If you're going to do the right thing, do it right away in case the person doing the wrong thing is put out by any sort of delay. It's the timing that's key in all of this, not the institutionalised cheating.
surf
Full Member
Which brings us back around to the question of why not just leave the titles in place with Lance.
Because he broke the rules, so has to be disqualified. That's how sport works. Whether or not others were also breaking the rules is irrelevant to Armstrong's disqualification. You get caught, you pay the price.
Then there are the points that not everyone was cheating and some were cheating more than others.
Zarlak
my face causes global warming
Wiggins awarded 3rd place for 2009 Tour.
mariachi-19
Full Member
Wiggins awarded 3rd place for 2009 Tour.
See this is bullshit, where is the proof he cheated in his comeback?
peterstorey
Still not banned
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For feck's sake he would have been banned for life and not even in the race, if the truth had been provable earlier.See this is bullshit, where is the proof he cheated in his comeback?
mariachi-19
Full Member
For feck's sake he would have been banned for life and not even in the race, if the truth had been provable earlier.
And the same cannot be said for half the sportsmen out there? You cannot retrospectively ban somebody for life from a time period that has already passed. Lance was stripped of his titles for use of PED's during his winning years. There is yet to be a shred of proof to show he used during the comeback and if I was him, i'd fight tooth and nail to retain that 3rd place if I was clean.
Doping allegations aside. I'd recommend everyone who is interested in cycling/Lance Armstrong to read his book Every Second Counts. It is mainly about his four first Tour wins and his life around those years. Lots of interesting stories there. Just finished listening to the audio book, liked it a lot.
Sassy Colin
Death or the gladioli!
I don't doubt it's entertainment value, but presumably it's a pack of lies, like his entire cycling career.
17Larsson
Not a malefactor just a lagomorph
There is no way I could read a book of his now
And the same cannot be said for half the sportsmen out there? You cannot retrospectively ban somebody for life from a time period that has already passed. Lance was stripped of his titles for use of PED's during his winning years. There is yet to be a shred of proof to show he used during the comeback and if I was him, i'd fight tooth and nail to retain that 3rd place if I was clean.
If you were him I'd hope that you wouldn't have been a cheat and a bully who deserves our contempt so it is probably a moot argument.
Wiggins awarded 3rd place for 2009 Tour.
The yellow for 2005 (I think it was) should be given to Cadel Evans then.
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