

Lance Armstrong's epic downfall - codegeek
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/22/sport/lance-armstrong-controversy/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

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jlgreco
My understanding is that all the samples taken from him and other cyclists
over the years are stored in case they need to be retested in the future. My
understanding is also that currently no tests have ever returned a positive
for him, and the evidence that he doped is in the form of testimony.

I imagine people will keep on checking those samples for years to come. It
should be interesting what history will eventually decide.

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bunderbunder
> My understanding is also that currently no tests have ever returned a
> positive for him

True. However, consider the following anecdote: The most prominent doping
agent in professional cycling during the 1990s, erythropoietin, was
undetectable for a long time. Eventually in 2000 a test that could distinguish
the endogenous and pharmaceutical versions of the hormone. But even then, all
that needs to be done to render this test ineffective is to come up with a way
to produce a synthetic version with the same chemical structure as the natural
one.

So there's that. And there's the amount of money wrapped up in doping in
professional cycling, which seems to be enormous. Given that, it would seem
that this is a situation where absence of evidence is by no means evidence of
absence.

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jlgreco
Absolutely. The negative tests mean little today considering it is unlikely he
would use anything that we can already detect.

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pohl
I don't understand why the article refers to "drug tests". I thought blood
doping had nothing to do with drugs, and was particularly difficult to detect.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_doping>

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bunderbunder
It doesn't (and didn't) always involve drugs, but it can. From the "Methods"
section in the article you link:

    
    
      The term blood doping originally meant doping with blood,
      i.e. the transfusion of red blood cells. . . In the late
      1980s, an advance in medicine led to an entirely new form
      of blood doping involving the hormone erythropoietin (EPO).

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antidaily
Hacker news?

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astrodust
If anyone was a hacker, it was Lance Armstrong and his team of doping-dodging
experts. They hacked the system but didn't get away with it.

These guys had cheating down to a science. Casino cheats would be envious.

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holograham
that's not the definition of hacker by this site's standards

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taligent
This has NOTHING to do with Hacker News.

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gm
People submitting these stories should be banned from submitting anything to
this site. A waste of our time.

If you want cycling news go to a cycling news site.

