Lance Armstrong

Big Mouth

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7835271.stm

Back in action tonight, hopefully I'll get a chance to see him whizz past sometime in the next week. The hype here in Adelaide is huge and I for one have been sucked in to wanting to see one of the world best athletes in action. He's nowhere near peak fitness at the moment but I wouldn't rule him out for the Tour De France in July
 
This is quite high risk really. If he succeeds, his status will be beyond legendary, but if not, then his reputation will be tainted by a failed comeback.
 
possibly PJ but he's got balls :nervous: to even attempt a comeback and he's doing a lot to promote cancer awareness. He finished midfield tonight in the warm up event which was more suited to the sprinters than him.
 
I would actually really enjoy it if Lance could manage to win the Tour again, here in the Germany they have been kicking the arse out things due to the doping aspect and him winning would really put many folks knickers in a twist.
 
Cycling has been getting a bad press due to the doping scandals and it's good to see a legend coming back to bring a bit of excitement back to the sport.
 
Armstrong is a drug cheat as much as all the others before him, only he's not been found guilty yet.... there are serious questionmarks hanging over his head about epo & the like & I hope he's found out...

The authorities requested to retest his older samples with modern technology so to clear his name of these doubts & accusations - he declined to have them re-tested. I wouldnt either if i was gonna have 7 Tour De Frances taken from me!
 
Red Hand Devil said:
Armstrong is a drug cheat as much as all the others before him, only he's not been found guilty yet.... there are serious questionmarks hanging over his head about epo & the like & I hope he's found out...

The authorities requested to retest his older samples with modern technology so to clear his name of these doubts & accusations - he declined to have them re-tested. I wouldnt either if i was gonna have 7 Tour De Frances taken from me!
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Unless it is proven he is a cheat then I don't think you can take that for granted. I also don't think he would risk coming back if he was cheating because if he gets found out then his legacy will be ruined.
 
Red Hand Devil said:
Armstrong is a drug cheat as much as all the others before him, only he's not been found guilty yet.... there are serious questionmarks hanging over his head about epo & the like & I hope he's found out...

The authorities requested to retest his older samples with modern technology so to clear his name of these doubts & accusations - he declined to have them re-tested. I wouldnt either if i was gonna have 7 Tour De Frances taken from me!
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All Cyclists are using something or other there is no way that you can ride 3,000Km in 3 weeks including 10´s of thousands of meters in altitude with maybe a few days rest and an average speed of around 42kmh using the Tour as an example.
 
bill.s.preston said:
Unless it is proven he is a cheat then I don't think you can take that for granted. I also don't think he would risk coming back if he was cheating because if he gets found out then his legacy will be ruined.
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Thats fair points, but there's been so many testimonys against Armstrong in relation to him using EPO & everything else. The French sports paper L'Equipe, has opening accused him of using banned substances & he's had a cloud of suspicion for years & now that tests are more reliable they want to retest his urine & blood. This would clear it up one way or the other, but Armstrong wont allow it!

The new breed of drugs are sometimes impossible to detect, you have to know what you are looking for & thats the problem. Armstrong will most definitely have the finest doctors & designer drugs to compete again, something he has had throughout his career!

Here's one of many pieces you can find on the net in relation to Armstrong:


A journalist from the paper, Xavier Rivois told the BBC's Kirsten Webster, the lab at Chatenay-Malabry kept Armstrong's urine samples from the 1999 race.

XAVIER RIVOIS: They're only coming out now because in 1999 there was no precise detection, no tests reliable enough on EPO.

And therefore, what the organisers of the Tour de France did at the time was to take urine samples - those urine samples were frozen and later on, they were able to test them, and it appears that on six occasions at least during the 1999 Tour de France, Lance Armstrong was tested positive despite all his allegations that he has never used drugs.

DAVID MARK: This is where the story gets confusing. The lab at Chatenay-Malabry says the samples were anonymous and so it can't identify who the six samples belong to. But L'Equipe has published what it says is proof that the samples belong to Armstrong.

Lance Armstrong has been one of the most scrutinised sportspeople in the world. Sceptics doubted his ability to so consistently outlast his rivals in the mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees without the help of drugs, but he has denied the allegations throughout his career.

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1444921.htm

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=lance+armstrong+cheat&meta=
 
dogrob said:
All Cyclists are using something or other there is no way that you can ride 3,000Km in 3 weeks including 10´s of thousands of meters in altitude with maybe a few days rest and an average speed of around 42kmh using the Tour as an example.
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Precisely!

Was Cycling ever clean in the first place, thats the million dollar question!

I think most people who have a keen interest in sport dont watch much cycling or none at all now. The sport is littered with suspicion & positive tests that people just dont bother with it anymore!

I used to watch all the tours before i realised i was naive & all of them are taking something. Quite sick really, that blood transfusions are used so casually in the sport to cheat. Sick fecks!!

I like to watch cycling for the scenery now - saves me a fortune in holidaying there :)
 
Cycling's never been clean. The Tour hasn't been clean since about 1903.

Having said that, even with epo and blood doping, it still takes real men to ride and finish the Tour. Cheating doesn't make it any easier, it just makes it possible. That's why it's still worth watching.
 
It's probably true that most sports fans don't like cycling. It's cycling fans that continue to watch and love cycling.

I tried training to do a L'Etape du Tour one year - after a month I realised there was no way I was ever going to be fit enough to do even the L'Etape. Anyone who rides the full Tour, even pumped full of epo, is close to superhuman.
 
spinoza said:
Cycling's never been clean. The Tour hasn't been clean since about 1903.

Having said that, even with epo and blood doping, it still takes real men to ride and finish the Tour. Cheating doesn't make it any easier, it just makes it possible. That's why it's still worth watching.
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Alright Spin - the resident expert on Cycling for all you novices :cool:

Jesus, I wouldnt of thought its been that dodgy for that long, thats a long time for a sport to be dirty!

Its a gruelling race alright & i suppose since women use epidurals during labour, cyclist should be allowed to use drugs aswell. Its only fair :wenger:
 
:lol: expert? More like wannabe...

Tom Simpson, Britain's best ever cyclist, was high on speed and brandy when he carked it on the Ventoux, but no one seems to remember this here.

Anyway, the Tour was founded in 1902/3 and straight away people were cheating, dosing themselves with booze and pills, especially for the 24 hour stages that were common in those days.

In fact, in the first 10 years of the Tour you weren't allowed help with your bike, so the cyclists carried tools, spare inner tubes etc with them. One bloke got disqualified when he broke his handlebar, forged another one, but made the mistake of getting a little boy to blow the bellows on the forge...
 
spinoza said:
:lol: expert? More like wannabe...

Tom Simpson, Britain's best ever cyclist, was high on speed and brandy when he carked it on the Ventoux, but no one seems to remember this here.

Anyway, the Tour was founded in 1902/3 and straight away people were cheating, dosing themselves with booze and pills, especially for the 24 hour stages that were common in those days.

In fact, in the first 10 years of the Tour you weren't allowed help with your bike, so the cyclists carried tools, spare inner tubes etc with them. One bloke got disqualified when he broke his handlebar, forged another one, but made the mistake of getting a little boy to blow the bellows on the forge...
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Ahhhh, you do yourself an injustice man - your pretty clued in :cool:

Mad craic that those lads used to be boozed up whilst doing a energy sapping activity like that. feck sake taking a piss sometimes whilst sozzled is far too much hard work, so a pee in the pants would have to do :eek:
 
spinoza said:
:lol: expert? More like wannabe...

Tom Simpson, Britain's best ever cyclist, was high on speed and brandy when he carked it on the Ventoux, but no one seems to remember this here.

Anyway, the Tour was founded in 1902/3 and straight away people were cheating, dosing themselves with booze and pills, especially for the 24 hour stages that were common in those days.

In fact, in the first 10 years of the Tour you weren't allowed help with your bike, so the cyclists carried tools, spare inner tubes etc with them. One bloke got disqualified when he broke his handlebar, forged another one, but made the mistake of getting a little boy to blow the bellows on the forge...
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LOL or the tricks they used to get up to way back when, jumping on trains and sending each other off in the wrong direction.

One good example I got was from the shop here in Osnabrück where I bought my Racing Bike (now sold) and Mountain Bike, they kit out a lot of C class riders here in the area and one of the owners was telling me about some of these guys who ride in local races who were in france for the Tour before the race they took the chance to actually ride up Alp der Huez when it was used for the Mountain Time Trial must have been around 05 I think and needed at least an hour to get up there, a bit later the profis did the Time Trial and if I remember Armstrong won it needing something like 15 minutes to get up there Ullrich was about a minute behind him then came the rest, fine your looking at Amatuers for the C class riders but for the top ten around 40 minute time difference.

Having said that, even with epo and blood doping, it still takes real men to ride and finish the Tour. Cheating doesn't make it any easier, it just makes it possible. That's why it's still worth watching.
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The quote from spinozas comment is oh so true and anyone who had half an idea about cycling knew that they were doping anyway, but despite the drugs you need to have something to be able to ride those distances, I remember a couple of years ago when I rode 80KM on a sunday afternoon in 3.5/4 hours I was buggered and glad when I finally got home and could get off my bike, my legs, arse hurt like buggery and boy was I glad to finally sit down on the sofa.

One of the reason that I stopped watching was the witchunt and bollocks going on in germany regarding doping when you consider earlier I watched the likes of the tour everyday, then you had the Masseur Jeff de Hont who wrote a book about doping in Team Telekom then more or less all the riders from the 90´s and early 2000´s admitted to taking EPO but made sure that the time that had passed was enough that they couldnt do them for it, you had the likes of Erik Zabel (won the green jersey around 7 times) crying his eyes out on the telly saying I tried EPO by the tour but didnt like it, then came all the other riders from that period apart from Jan Ullrich who admitted to nothing, the best bit though for me was when Bjarne Riis made the comment by the press conference where he admitted to doping when he said that if the tour wanted his yellow jersey back they could pick it up as it was sat in a box in his garage.
 
Ride up Alpe d'Huez in an hour? That's pretty damn impressive.

Armstrong did it fresh in 37 minutes something in 2004 I think.

He was surpassed by Pantani a few years before, who did it at the end of a stage. :eek:
 
Most amazing individual performance in the Tour imo was Floyd Landis. I don't care if he was on drugs, it was phenomenal. I also take the view that EVERYONE was using something in those years, since they all got busted in the that year, the year after or the year after that.

That individual ride was amazing. If that is the kind of shit drugs let elite athletes do in the Tour, I say let them all juice ;p
 
Nucks said:
Most amazing individual performance in the Tour imo was Floyd Landis. I don't care if he was on drugs, it was phenomenal. I also take the view that EVERYONE was using something in those years, since they all got busted in the that year, the year after or the year after that.
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Agreed. The funny thing was that testosterone wouldn't have had much effect on him, except maybe giving him the guts and confidence to actually think he could pull it off.
 
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