There is alot of ‘I think’ and ‘I reckons’ going on around here. A few facts- Has ONE single non negative test result for cortisone cream with a medical certificate in July 1999 from using saddle sore cream. Not a single positive test for performance enhancing drugs during his career, however the USADA are willy nilly handing out deals to convicted drug cheats so that Travis Tygart ‘can get his man’.

I will never be in his shoes but if I were pursued for that length time with no end in sight I would save myself some cash and heartache and give the fight away. USADA dont even have the authority to strip his tour titles.

I think he realised that the evidence was going to be pretty irrefutable and thought if I pull out of this and I pretend it is a witch hunt, he can forever say they convicted him because he didn’t mount a defence- thus, having many members of the public believe he was a scapegoat.

I am sure he was on the juice.

+1

maybe he decided he didn’t want to get on the stand and perjure himself and risk time in the slammer.

The options being- get up and defend himself…...if he is innocent, it should be easy to discredit known cheats with lots to gain by implicating him. That would surely be an easy line of defence. That’s pretty much legal defence 101.

Another is if he is guilty, admit guilt and face the backlash plus loss of millions in sponsorship and goodwill, not to mention all the millions being donated to his charity.

One more, get up defend yourself but ultimately be found guilty of said offences and also perjury. Not great. See above for ramifications, plus jail time and more shame.

Lastly, go down the path he is now and claim it is all a witch hunt that he shouldn’t dignify with a response. Probably the best tactic for someone with something to hide BUT not that clever if you really are clean.

If it truly a witch hunt, he will no doubt be getting his legal team prepared to sue the USADA for running this witch hunt without basis.

All logical jafflemaker if this was the first or second or third time that he’d defended the same charges. He’s been fighting this stuff for over a decade. Easy to say ‘If I was innocent I’d never not fight it’ but after this many years, and with no guarantee that even if he was totally cleared that the next investigation wouldn’t commence immediately, maybe you’d feel different.

when has he defended them previously weeties? Maybe rumours but I don’t remember any court or tribunal hearings.

He has been investigated multiple times. He even has a documentary with the case documented that first aired in about 2002. Road To Paris – was awesome, showed just how much he put into every tour and why he was the best

Has he just defended himself against rumours or actual legal defences?

maybe he decided he didn’t want to get on the stand and perjure himself and risk time in the slammer.

The options being- get up and defend himself……if he is innocent, it should be easy to discredit known cheats with lots to gain by implicating him. That would surely be an easy line of defence. That’s pretty much legal defence 101.

Another is if he is guilty, admit guilt and face the backlash plus loss of millions in sponsorship and goodwill, not to mention all the millions being donated to his charity.

One more, get up defend yourself but ultimately be found guilty of said offences and also perjury. Not great. See above for ramifications, plus jail time and more shame.

Lastly, go down the path he is now and claim it is all a witch hunt that he shouldn’t dignify with a response. Probably the best tactic for someone with something to hide BUT not that clever if you really are clean.

If it truly a witch hunt, he will no doubt be getting his legal team prepared to sue the USADA for running this witch hunt without basis.

Jaffle ..you need to understand the the way it works, the USADA is like the Home Security, they operate outside the legal system and there are no trials, only arbitration.
They can do what ever they want with no legal ramifications as they are protected by legislation this is what Armstrong has been fighting in the US courts and is currently appealing.
There is no jail time as it is not an official judicial court and they can only ban and suspend someone from sport.

IN Marion Jones case she was banned by the USADA but was given jail time by the US courts for fraud and lying to investigators during the Banco case, not for her drug taking.

Interesting comments from everyone. As a massive and long time cycling fan/follower/participant I would like to add a few things;

In my opinion, Lance was on the juice – most of the peleton was during that era. Look at the times and power outputs that they achieved on hors category climbs like Tourmalet, Galibier and Alp de Huez, they are humanly impossible and certainly not being matched today or in the decades preceding.

Interestingly, Lance has never said that he didn’t dope, he has always maintained his statement that, “I have never failed a single drug test.” That is a massive difference in my opinion to saying I have never taken performance enhancing drugs. I also think that this is a calculated move on behalf of Lance as now, by pleading ‘no contest’ and giving up – the USADA will now not have their day in court so there will be no public hearing where all the evidence comes to light.

Furthermore, the USADA does not have the authority to strip Lance of his 7 TdeF titles, only the UCI can do that. I’m not convinced that will happen as the ‘also rans’ in those events consists of names like Ullrich, Zulle, Pantani, Beloki, Virenque etc. All of these guys, and others, have either been convicted of doping or under heavy suspicion so to award the title to one of these guys would be hugely hipocritical – it would become a complete farce. So Lance will probably keep his titles, the evidence is never publicly aired and part of his credibility is maintained.

It is what it is, he doped but most of them did in that era. So he still won 7 TdeF titles and is a legend of the sport and a legend in general. Maybe in this case the value of the legend and all that he has achieved (particularly outside of cycling) is more important than revealing the truth. They should just let it be in my opinion…..

The UCI have effectively forced the USADA’s hand by saying they will only act when the USADA provides the evidence to prove their case.This could mean that Armstrong and his legal team will more than likely get access to the evidence that the USADA have until now refused to produce. Only then will we find out the truth….....Maybe.

The UCI have effectively forced the USADA’s hand by saying they will only act when the USADA provides the evidence to prove their case.This could mean that Armstrong and his legal team will more than likely get access to the evidence that the USADA have until now refused to produce. Only then will we find out the truth……..Maybe.

I believe that Lance has already seen the evidence in the USADA’s case. That is why he went to the courts in the first place to try and make sure it never saw the light of day in sports arbitration (which is where it is ironically meant to go so as to not clog up the federal court system with trivial sport matters). The federal court handed down their decision that it should go to arbitration because he can only appeal to the courts if the decision was unjust – not the due process. Once that occurred he pleaded ‘no contest’ so that the USADA wins by default and the arbitration process never occurs and the evidence doesn’t come to light because he probably realised they had him by the short n curlies. It’s his last roll of the dice.

Some sports just seem to attract pharmacists, and some do not.

Cycling has in fact, been the home of the pharmacists for many a long year now, and it’s a known fact … not some idle speculation …..... that the sport is rife with drug cheats.

The higher up the food chain the actual cyclists go, the better standard of pharmacist they seem to attract.

For years some pharmacists managed to stay ahead of the testers, swapping drugs of choice whenever they got a whiff that the testers were about to go after a specific type of drug.

It should come to no real surpise to anyone that Armstrong has been targeted, and indeed, that has now run away from fighting the charges leveled against him.

He’s not the first to suddenly retire, or run, when faced with allegations of drug taking. That too seems to be a pattern these days.

I have always viewed his Tour wins with more than a healthy dose of scepticism, both in his own performances, and just the fact that it is a team event, and that the teams conspire to block other riders, and give their chosen man the best chance possible.

I must say I applaud the sporting bodies who go after drug cheats, be they so called “legends” of their sports or not.

More power to the drug testers I say.

I now look forward to seeing the presentation on the Champs De Elysee …... where they present 7 back dated Tour De France trophies to the real winners …. and not some yellow jerseyed drug cheat.

Given the amount of drug use in the sport, just wondering if people think Cadel is clean?

Personally I do, just throwing it out there…..

I rode the Mont Ventoux stage in L’Etape du Tour two days before Armstrong gifted the stage to Pantani. Insane. Completely and utterly insane. I’ve done some stupid things in sport before, this was the pinnacle. And these guys do it for 23 days (if you think they lie around reading magazines on their “rest day” you’re wrong). Let them take what ever colour jelly beans they want.

Since when is hearsay enough to convict someone? Does no-one trust science (drugtests) anymore?

If a couple of testimonies is good enough for the USADA to convict someone and dole out bans then why do they even bother with tests in the first place?

I did not want to believe it was true, but evidence against Armstrong keeps mounting. Accusations not against Armstrong only, but against damn near EVERYONE who raced at this time. Armstrong wasn’t the only doper, but he was the best at it.

Tyler Hamilton’s incredibly detailed book I think will be the final nail in the coffin of the Armstrong legacy, and also calls into doubt damn near every cycling victory during this period. Sad sad sad.

Where to start? It’s hard to describe the impact of The Secret Race by boiling it down to seven or eight shocking anecdotes. The book delivers them—make no mistake—but its real power comes from Hamilton’s unprecedented attempt at full disclosure. And I mean full. The book is the holy grail for disillusioned cycling fans in search of answers. In a taut 268 pages, Hamilton confidently and systematically destroys any sense that there was ever any chance of cleaning up cycling in the early 2000s, revealing the sport’s powerful and elaborate doping infrastructure. He’s like a retiring magician who has decided to let the public in on the profession’s most guarded techniques.

Beginning with his first doping experiences as a member of the U.S Postal Service team in 1997, Hamilton reveals not only what he and other riders were doing and taking (EPO, steroids, testosterone, Actovegin, blood transfusions, and on and on), but also how they were taking it (in the case of EPO, intravenously—and Hamilton has the scar to prove it). He tells us how most riders evaded detection (one trick: French laws bar testers from showing up between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., so cyclists “microdosed” EPO at ten and the drug was gone by morning) and how the game was rigged in a way that made testing nearly irrelevant (“If you were careful and paid attention,” writes Hamilton, “you could dope and be 99 percent certain that you would not get caught”). Supporters still clinging to the claim that Armstrong passed more than 500 drug controls will be shocked to learn how insignificant those tests really were.

Not that all this doping and evading was a cinch. Hamilton describes the exhausting deceptions and logistics required to obtain the drugs, hide the drugs, store the blood bags, schedule the dosing—the hundreds of details necessary to maintain the high-40s hematocrit level that keeps a racer competitive on the course and safe in the control room. At times the evasive measures sound like techniques from a cheap spy novel. There are disguises, prepaid cell phones, clandestine meet-ups in random hotel rooms, and lots and lots of code names, including “red eggs” (testosterone pills), “Edgar” (EPO), and “oil” (testosterone drops). At one point, Hamilton got a text from his doctor on his prepaid phone during a Tour de France rest day: “The restaurant is 167 miles away.” Translation: Meet me in room 167 for your blood transfusion.

The drugs are everywhere, and as Hamilton explains, Armstrong was not just another cyclist caught in the middle of an established drug culture—he was a pioneer pushing into uncharted territory. In this sense, the book destroys another myth: that everyone was doing it, so Armstrong was, in a weird way, just competing on a level playing field. There was no level playing field. With his connections to Michele Ferrari, the best dishonest doctor in the business, Armstrong was always “two years ahead of what everybody else was doing,” Hamilton writes. Even on the Postal squad there was a pecking order. Armstrong got the superior treatments.

What ultimately makes the book so damning, however, is that it doesn’t require readers to put their full faith in Hamilton’s word. In the book’s preface, which details its genesis, Coyle not so subtly addresses Armstrong’s supporters by pointing out that, while the story is told through Hamilton, nine former Postal teammates agreed to cooperate with him on The Secret Race, verifying and corroborating Hamilton’s account. Nine teammates. That fact is the first punch thrown at Armstrong’s supporters—and it might be the most damaging one. Next Wednesday, when The Secret Race comes out, backers will probably make the familiar claim that Hamilton is a disgruntled, bitter ex-rival who got popped for doping and is now looking to cash in. But that doesn’t explain why nine former teammates agreed to cooperate.

A sampling of the book’s revelations:

• In 1999, Postal hired Armstrong’s gardener, nicknamed Motoman, to follow the Tour in a motorcycle, carrying a thermos full of EPO and a prepaid cell phone. “When we needed ‘Edgar,’” writes Hamilton, “Phillipe would zip through the Tour’s traffic and make a drop-off.”

• Armstrong has always tried to downplay his relationship to Ferrari, but Hamilton and other teammates describe him as being obsessed with the man. “Kevin [Livingston] and I used to say that Lance said the word ‘Michele’ more often than he said ‘Kik,’ ” says Hamilton, referring to Armstrong’s nickname for his wife at the time, Kristen. Multiple teammates, including Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters, and Floyd Landis recount how strange it was to hear Chris Carmichael described in the press as Lance’s coach. “I don’t recall Lance ever mentioning Chris’ name or citing a piece of advice Chris had given him,” writes Hamilton. “By contrast, Lance mentioned Ferrari constantly, almost annoyingly so.” Landis is more pointed, calling Carmichael “a beard.”

• The 2011 60 Minutes story on Armstrong’s doping reported that he had once failed a drug test in 2001 at the Tour of Switzerland, a story Hamilton backs up: “Yes, Lance Armstrong tested positive at the Tour of Switzerland.” He describes an encounter with Armstrong just after Stage 9 of the race. “You won’t fucking believe this,” he allegedly told Hamilton. “I got popped for EPO.” According to the 60 Minutes investigation, the UCI stepped in after the positive test, requesting that “the matter go no further,” and then set up a meeting between the lab’s director, Armstrong, and team director Johan Bruyneel. The insinuation is clear: Lance was using connections within the UCI to help his cause. Hamilton describes a climate in which this doesn’t seem at all far-fetched. “Sometime after that, I remember Lance phoning Hein Verbruggen from the team bus … and I was struck by the casual tone of the conversation. Lance was talking to the president of the UCI, the leader of the sport. But he may as well have been talking to a business partner, a friend.”

These kinds of stories are everywhere in the book, and it almost seems silly to catalog them. The book’s power is in the collected details, all strung together in a story that is told with such clear-eyed conviction that you never doubt its veracity. Hamilton describes a doping culture that is so pervasive that one loses track of all the players involved in keeping the fraud going: doctors, coaches, trainers, soigneurs, politicians, wives. When a drug tester shows up in a town full of cyclists, the word spreads through the community within minutes, tipping off anyone who might still be in their “glowtime” (the period when drugs in their system are still detectable).

Sometimes the authorities couldn’t be anticipated, but there was always someone to help cover for a vulnerable cyclist. For Hamilton, that was his long-suffering ex-wife, Haven. When a tester would show up unexpectedly at their home, Haven would lock eyes with Hamilton and ask, “You’re good?” before answering the door. Most of the time he was. Once, when he wasn’t, they both hit the deck and stayed quiet until the tester left the premises.

This is a world that disgruntled cycling fans have long suspected existed, but the reality is so much more elaborate than we could have imagined. Lies upon lies upon lies. And everyone in on the secret. It’s the weight of all those secrets that inevitably takes its toll on Hamilton and his teammates. No one understands the burden of maintaining a double life more than Hamilton, a once proud cyclist whose career and private life went off the rails the moment he failed a test after his gold-medal performance at the 2004 Olympics. In the book’s preface, Coyle describes his first meeting with the disgraced cyclist, in a booth at the back of a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, in 2011. As they sat down, Hamilton looked like he was going to cry—“not from grief,” writes Coyle, “but from relief.”

“Sorry,” Hamilton says. “It just feels so good to be able to talk about this, finally.”

This exchange establishes the real arc of the book, which is less about destroying Armstrong and more about rehabilitating Hamilton—not for fans, necessarily, but for himself. The Hamilton that viewers saw on 60 Minutes was nervous and visibly conflicted about his decision to come clean and tell the truth. The Hamilton in The Secret Race is a different being altogether. It may just be the strength of Coyle’s writing, but the more Hamilton reveals—the more exhaustive his accounting of all the sins—the more confident his voice becomes. You sense the weight of all the lies being shed, chapter by chapter. By the end, Hamilton has journeyed so far beyond a mere thirst for revenge that he confesses that he feels sorry for Armstrong—a teammate who once tried to destroy him. He understands the pain involved with keeping the lies going for so long.

“I was sorry in the largest sense,” he writes, describing his emotions this past summer when he stared at a photo of Armstrong that he found in his garage. “Sorry for him as a person, because he was trapped, imprisoned by all the secrets and lies. I thought: Lance would sooner die than admit it, but being forced to tell the truth might be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

After finishing The Secret Race, I can’t help but agree. The morning after I finished it, I watched a video that Armstrong had released online for his supporters, looking them in the eye to boost their spirits and telling them it’s “time to move forward.” I could no longer see the famous self-confidence. His eyes looked tired. His voice sounded as though he were trying to convince himself. I felt sorry for him, too. I could feel the weight of all the deception.

Sorry to say but the whole deal is a circus…..I was a LA believer early on but it doesn’t look good for him.

To make it fair…...they should all make the ultimate sacrifice to ride in the Tour de Farce…...be castrated and then u can take whatever gear you want.

Now that would be a spectacle!

Bye bye Lance….it was a nice dream while it lasted :-(

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Mind you let’s not paint him out to be the lone devil, as Tyler Hamilton says, if you wanted to be above the middle of the pack, you had no choice but to dope. Sad sad sad.

Won`t watch that race ever again, didn`t watch this year.Every winner dodgy, no exceptions now.Too see Contadour back winning after no events is dodgy too.Other riders know it can`t be done.Takes a year or two to get it back.

A million dollars in payments to Dr Ferrari, must be a clerical error.Cadel next???

Just let them juice up to the eyeballs, and remove the conspiracy theories and scuttle-butt…

Was he a cheat if they ALL do it?

I will still watch it

I just do and I will still enjoy it

why? because I still love seeing guys compete – clean or drugged up

Was he a cheat if they ALL do it?

http://www.golflink.com.au/...

Yes.

The confessed dopers I’ve read excerpts from say they started clean, tried their best, and even won clean. But they realised that the drug users could keep hammering themselves harder, for longer, and come up easier the next day, so they couldn’t compete long term with them. So that’s why they started doping themselves.

So there are clean riders, and they deserve a chance to compete fairly.

All top ex riders are saying no one in the last 8 years who has won is clean in Tour de Farce.I`d agree when theres cover ups internally still going on.