
Lance Armstrong's Statement - eliajf
http://lancearmstrong.com/news-events/lance-armstongs-statement-of-august-23-2012
======
richardw
The Lance Armstrong I've followed and read about all these years wouldn't give
up now, if he were innocent. He'd follow it up like he did investigating
cancer. He'd consider it a challenge, which if won would make the world
finally admit that he was right. Every hour riding in the snow and rain in
training is worth a few months or a year of fighting, especially when he can
afford the best resources money can buy.

He's still a hero of mine - he's the consummate professional, checking every
tiny box that could possibly affect his performance, despite having some
serious physiological advantages that might have left others feeling confident
that they had it in the bag. He rode in the worst weather, just because he
might compete in that weather. He lived for his life's work like most of us
never will.

I believe he simply competed in a time where many really good racers were
doping, and if you want to check all the boxes, that was one you had to
seriously consider.

This is not he-said-she-said rumours. It includes 2009 and 2010 blood samples
consistent with blood doping. Witnesses aren't enemies, they are some of his
closest allies, people who he relied on for tens of thousands of kilometres.
At some point the weight of evidence starts to mount up.

Keep in mind that the doctors (like Ferrari) who (allegedly) helped him, were
experts in their field. They would have known every technique used to catch
doping, and would have tested their methods against them. That's how you beat
testing - you do your own testing, and if you can mask doping well enough, you
use it on your top athletes.

Armstrong says he's willing to take people to court for this. If so, he's not
only interested in moving on with his life. Moving on with his life would be
ignoring it, and moving on.

So: still a hero and one of the most amazing athletes ever, but guilty.

~~~
kamaal
>>It includes 2009 and 2010 blood samples consistent with blood doping.

You need to back that up with some data. Especially when the agency that
refuses to accept his _'hundreds'_ of previous tests says this.

Besides your proof is:

a. Team mates that say he was doping. Must be taken at face value.

b. Doctors who are super experts and _might_ be supplying drugs which no body
else can detect.

Regarding b)- If its true then dope testing is seriously broken. And with that
now everybody who has every played a sport needs to be rechecked again.

I think all the man is asking is to give him evidence based on tested samples.
And why is it so difficult for the test agencies to disclose those reports
when they claim to have found it in 2009-2010.

~~~
richardw
Absence of previous proof of guilt is not proof of innocence. No smart doping
doctor would employ a technology that was detectable, and from what we know of
Lance, he sure wouldn't use it unless he was absolutely sure.

And, no, _I_ don't need to prove it, the USADA does. And the only person
currently standing in the way of proof being submitted is Lance. Google
_armstrong "fully consistent" "blood doping"_ and you'll see the USADA is
widely reported as having this evidence. There's no doubt that they would
bring it to court. And how would they convince 10 ex-teammates to testify
against him if it wasn't true? Why would 10 different cyclists all decide
now's the time to make up a story, if it meant their victories were also
nullified?

If you want evidence, pressure him, not me. It's his legacy that's at stake
here.

I've got all of his books, have followed him since forever, still have his
victories on tape. I'd love, love for him to be innocent.

~~~
kamaal
>>Absence of previous proof of guilt is not proof of innocence.

Or in other words guilty unless proven innocent?? Sorry I don't think how
standard justice system works any where in the whole world.

>>No smart doping doctor would employ a technology that was detectable, and
from what we know of Lance, he sure wouldn't use it unless he was absolutely
sure.

So we first totally convince ourselves that he is a cheat and then set up a
game totally designed to prove that. Again presumption of guilt is not
compatible with natural justice.

>>and you'll see the USADA is widely reported as having this evidence.

This is like person A accusing person B of being a thief. When asked to
provide the proof- person A says he won't. But rather we must first decide
that B is actually a thief and must prove his innocence other wise he is
guilty by default.

I don't think his legacy is at stake here. It was clear that if USADA had any
proof they would not be holding it since past 3-4 years.

~~~
richardw
>>>>Absence of previous proof of guilt is not proof of innocence.

>>Or in other words guilty unless proven innocent??

Would you not put words in my mouth, please? Here are the facts:

1) You can't prove innocence, you can only prove guilt. 100 tests that fail to
prove guilt do not prove innocence. That does not make him guilty, that just
means the burden of proof is still on the accusers.

2) They say they will bring forth evidence that proves guilt. Their case rests
on 10+ witnesses and blood tests.

3) He's stopping the process, which prevents them from submitting the
evidence.

4) His current behaviour is not consistent with his previous behaviour. He's
never given up without a fight before.

~~~
kamaal
>>You can't prove innocence, you can only prove guilt. 100 tests that fail to
prove guilt do not prove innocence.

Sorry you can. A person is either innocent or guilty. Never both. So as long
you don't prove him guilty he continues to remain innocent.

>>They say they will bring forth evidence that proves guilt. Their case rests
on 10+ witnesses and blood tests.

'They' should! Seriously. What are they waiting for, from the past 3-4 years?

>>He's stopping the process, which prevents them from submitting the evidence.

No body is stopping anything. All they have to do is give out their proof in
open which can be validated.

>>His current behaviour is not consistent with his previous behaviour. He's
never given up without a fight before.

That basically happens when you torture and trouble a person for years without
proof, the person realizes that the other side has gamed the system to beat
him hence playing more only means legitimizing their staged game.

~~~
dagw
_So as long you don't prove him guilty he continues to remain innocent._

In a legal sense this is true under most jurisdictions, but it isn't true in
any absolute sense. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all
that

------
kamaal
>>The only physical evidence here is the hundreds of controls I have passed
with flying colors. I made myself available around the clock and around the
world. In-competition. Out of competition. Blood. Urine. Whatever they asked
for I provided. What is the point of all this testing if, in the end, USADA
will not stand by it?

And.

>>Tygart and the antidoping agency were basing their case not on a positive
drug test but rather on other supporting evidence. (From
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/sports/cycling/lance-
armst...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/sports/cycling/lance-armstrong-
ends-fight-against-doping-charges-losing-his-7-tour-de-france-
titles.html?pagewanted=all))

Well I don't know the complete story of what tests and when he passed them.

But what are the odds of 'hundreds' of tests turning out out to be false
negatives? And I suppose these tests are carried out all round the world in
various competitions in various countries, in various labs, by hundreds of
people over the years?

Its like their only evidence is he-said and she-said rumors over the years
combined with the perceived impossibility of a cancer survivor making it
through that high levels of endurance required to make it where Armstrong has
made it.

>>The idea that athletes can be convicted today without positive A and B
samples, under the same rules and procedures that apply to athletes with
positive tests, perverts the system and creates a process where any begrudged
ex-teammate can open a USADA case out of spite or for personal gain or a
cheating cyclist can cut a sweetheart deal for themselves. It’s an unfair
approach, applied selectively, in opposition to all the rules. It’s just not
right.

If what I'm reading is true. This is something like a murder happens at a
lane, then you and your enemy pass by that lane. Now your enemy complains to
the police that you did it. And now the system has all rights to punish you on
that statement alone.

This agency looks like to formed to increase their kill ratio. And to some how
punish a few famous athletes so that they can justify their own existence and
show the world why they are so important.

~~~
bunderbunder
> But what are the odds of 'hundreds' of tests turning out out to be false
> negatives?

The Tour is one of the most heavily drug-tested events in international sport,
and yet it's still notorious for rampant doping. (About half of people who
have finished in the top 10 in the Tour over the past decade have also been
caught doping.) The odds that thousands of drug tests can be false negatives
is virtually zero. . . but it's certain that they regularly fail to catch
doping.

Doping is harder to catch in the Tour, because doping in multi-stage bike
racing is very different from doping in most sports. It's not about taking
anabolic steroids to give you the physique of a pro wrestler, it's about very
carefully tweaking your metabolism to help give you just a bit more endurance
than you would have otherwise, or to help you recover from the exhaustion of
the previous day's stage just a bit more than you would have otherwise. There
are lots of ways to do this, and many of them don't even involve drugs. For
example, a nightly blood transfusion will give you more red blood cells with
which to keep your muscles oxygenated.

Another popular agent, EPO, is a natural part of human metabolism that plays a
part in red cell production - and it's impossible to distinguish EPO that a
person's body produces from EPO that's been injected. So instead officials
have just set an upper limit on how much EPO can be detectable in your
bloodstream. Which essentially codifies doping as just another part of the
strategy of winning the Tour: The goal is to skirt as close as you can to that
limit without going over.

------
timmyd
"The only physical evidence here is the hundreds of controls I have passed
with flying colors. I made myself available around the clock and around the
world. In-competition. Out of competition. Blood. Urine. Whatever they asked
for I provided. What is the point of all this testing if, in the end, USADA
will not stand by it?"

I assume the USADA is stating that all these tests we wrong ? Or that his
'doping' technique was too advanced ? Seems a pretty long stretch of the bow
in my mind.

~~~
smacktoward
Armstrong's claim of passing "hundreds of controls" obscures the actual issue
in this case. It's true that Armstrong passed many drug tests over the course
of his career, but the USADA charges that he was engaged in "blood doping"
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_doping>), a technique generally
associated with a substance called EPO
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythropoietin>).

A new process made EPO widely available in the late 1980s. But because EPO is
chemically similar to substances the body produces naturally, nobody was able
to come up with a way to test athletes for EPO usage at all until the year
2000 (<http://www.wada-ama.org/en/Resources/Q-and-A/EPO-Detection/>), and it
took a few more years after that for anti-doping agencies to have confidence
in the accuracy of the test. So there was a 10 to 15 year window of time where
athletes could use EPO with a degree of confidence that no contemporary test
would be able to definitively prove they did so.

The result was that many of the results of cycling's top races during the
1990s and 2000s had to be re-examined when it finally became clear that many
of the contenders had been blood doping during that period (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France#Do...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France#Doping_histories_of_Top-10_finishers.2C_1998_-_2012)
for examples from the Tour de France).

So the "hundreds of controls" defense is a bit weasel-wordy. It doesn't mean
so much to pass hundreds of tests if those tests were given at a time when the
testers didn't know how to catch the thing you're accused of doing.

~~~
kamaal
>>It doesn't mean so much to pass hundreds of tests if those tests were given
at a time when the testers didn't know how to catch the thing you're accused
of doing.

It doesn't mean so much to for testing agencies to collect those samples when
they themselves know they cannot test them. And then certify them to be clean.

------
vimota
It's ridiculous that the government pursue these charges as criminal. Any such
issues should be dealt by the sport's own committee and not by a government
body.

~~~
soperj
meh, if it's true he made a lot of money from it. Fraud?

~~~
warmwaffles
I don't think it constitutes as fraud.

~~~
soperj
maybe not, still makes him a phony.

------
prezjordan
What a shame for the sport and community as a whole that this happened.

EDIT: HNers might enjoy this [0] relevant Wikipedia article

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling#1886)

~~~
warmwaffles
This would have dragged on for months and the witch hunt would have found
something. Remember the Barry Bonds case took AGES to complete and his case
was easy.

------
mgiedt
Must read: <http://inrng.com/2012/08/lance-armstrong-quits/>

