So who won the tour from 1999 to 2005

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hairlikeeddy Aug 2012 8:41am, 25 Aug 2012 1,077 posts	0 hairlikeeddy Armstrong will come out smelling of roses somehow, is he trying to gain support by playing the victim? He'll blame the nasty men in the USADA. I think they should draw a line under it now and move on. Amend the records - it's only a spreadsheet or two, ban him for a couple of years - what's the point in a life ban? Let him carry on with the sterling work for his cancer foundation. Whether he doped or not, he's changed the lives of many people by doing this. I hope their dreams are not destroyed. The whole era is tainted and this smacks of witch hunt. But then, it's no worse than any era before. I'd like to see this conclusive evidence and how many people it implicates and how they are treated in comparison. As for those who would have won Le Tour, what are they going to do? Have retrospective podiums? Just ignore it and carry on. At the moment, today's cycling seems brighter and cleaner in terms of dopage. But then, I seem to remember that was said about Armstrong's era. Ten years from now, who knows what we'll find out about the current era.
Bazoaxe Aug 2012 8:51am, 25 Aug 2012 4,625 posts	0 Bazoaxe The Times have what appears a load of good articles, but you need to pay for access online.....might buy the paper.
Chrisull Aug 2012 9:39am, 25 Aug 2012 4,963 posts	0 Chrisull Apparently the top 10s from all the Armstrong years are all suspect. Giving Armstrong's tours to Ullrich or Basso (both known dopers pretty much) would be a joke. Some of the articles on doping, such as the Vaughters one, point out that athletics is not subject to anywhere near the same stringency in testing, with nothing like a blood passport. There have been whisperings about the Jamaican sprinters for years and the former head of WADA, Dick Pound, says they are very difficult athletes to test because you can never find them. Both Yohann Blake and Shelly Ann Fraser have failed tests and served suspensions within the last couple of years for "minor" infractions. The 6th fastest 100m runner of all time Steve Mullings was banned just before Daegu. I'd say we're living with our heads in the sand if we think we don't have a similar controversy brewing here. East Germans 70s- early 80s, US in the 80s to 90s, and the China in the 90s. Not one of them clean. Head of Balco, Victor Conteh, him of the doping programme has alleged that 60% of athletes in the current Olympics will have been on drugs. As for Armstrong, sounds like USADA have assembled their case using the blood passport stats from the last 2 years Armstrong competed in. He of course never failed a test, so if he never failed more stringent tests than athletes are taking, how rigorous are the tests for athletes?
SPR Aug 2012 9:50am, 25 Aug 2012 17,445 posts	0 SPR If you're a mafia boss, most of the people that give evidence against you are going to be ex mafia members. This witch hunt thing is like Armstrong is a victim. He isn't, he just makes the most noise. Re defending himself, those are rules, Armstrong knows this. He hasn't even tried to prove he is innocent, all his fighting before was about juristiction. He also knows that if he doesn't have a hearing, the evidence may not come out, or will not be presented in co-ordinated way. He also won't have a written verdict by say CAS or an independent tribunal that he is guilty which would be damming. If Bruyneel defends himself it will probably come out then but not before. Once all cases are heard then it may be released, but by then most people may have forgotten about it. I already posted his reaction to someone that wanted to clean the sport up (C Bassons) and the guy that gave evidence against his doctor (F Simeoni). How about his 1999 EPO positives: nyvelocity.com
Bru-Bru Aug 2012 10:01am, 25 Aug 2012 1,733 posts	0 Bru-Bru All the comments about how many other riders of that era were also using drugs raises another question. Why did the sports administrators of the time not prevent this? Was it incompetence, wilful blindness or complicity? Whatever the reason, those most involved should not be involved in enforcing the rules now, but I bet some of them are.
JohnnyO Aug 2012 10:08am, 25 Aug 2012 13,739 posts	0 JohnnyO This is exactly why the UCI are probably going to contest the ban. They are imPlicated in the cover up.
SPR Aug 2012 10:23am, 25 Aug 2012 17,446 posts	0 SPR From the NYVelocity article: MA: Yeah, it was quite disturbing for me to be told that right up until perhaps 2004, the UCI weren't actually chaperoning riders between the finish line and doping control. So not only was there an opportunity for them to dilute their blood before a blood test in the morning, there was also a very real opportunity for them to manipulate or mask their urine before they provided their doping control sample. That wasn't important pre 2000 because there was no urine test for EPO, but after 2000 there was still, to me, unacceptably large loopholes for an athlete, even if they've been using EPO, to still escape detection. Particularly by masking their urine, in between the time they crossed the finish line and dope control. If you read Dwain Chambers autobiography, he explains how people beat the old out of competition testing system.
Chrisull Aug 2012 11:01am, 25 Aug 2012 4,964 posts	0 Chrisull Fascinating article. For all those who lose complete faith in cycling though, the NYVelocity article shows a ray of light: << "AS: The other thing that struck me about these results, which I was surprised never came up before, was that if you take away those 6 positives, you have 7 remaining positives out of 81 samples. That's 8.6%. Does that say to you that at that time the peloton was relatively clean? MA: Yeah, it's an interesting observation, 'cause you cast back to the '98 Tour, obviously it was a debacle. And, I've heard anecdotal or off the cuff remarks, that '99 was a new beginning. It had gotten as bad as it could possibly get, or so we would've thought, and '99 was, "Ok, let's start again, we've really got to make an effort to be clean this year." Well, obviously, based on Lance Armstrong's results, he wasn't racing clean. But for the rest of the samples collected during the Tour, relatively speaking there wasn't a very high prevalence of EPO use in the rest of the peloton, at least in the peloton that was tested, which was your top 3 place getters, for example. The prologue was interesting. First race of the event, every one of those samples had EPO in them. So it seems a little odd, the first day of the next year's race, and all of your place getters have got EPO in their urine. On the one hand, yes, it seemed less prevalent than you would've otherwise thought, but on the other there's still evidence there was doping in the peloton. Not just by Lance Armstrong" >> Which kind of says why it is important that Armstrong is punished. After the Festina debacle, there's an attempt to get clean, yet some riders are still flouting it and getting away with it and as a result, winning. This isn't a witch-hunt, to me, this is, nobody gets away with it, no matter who they are, and they will be hunted down way after the fact, as this is the only way to help clean the sport up.
Chrisull Aug 2012 11:02am, 25 Aug 2012 4,965 posts	0 Chrisull Hmm interesting Fetch just cut the bit I posted by the >. It should read: AS: The other thing that struck me about these results, which I was surprised never came up before, was that if you take away those 6 positives, you have 7 remaining positives out of 81 samples. That's 8.6%. Does that say to you that at that time the peloton was relatively clean? MA: Yeah, it's an interesting observation, 'cause you cast back to the '98 Tour, obviously it was a debacle. And, I've heard anecdotal or off the cuff remarks, that '99 was a new beginning. It had gotten as bad as it could possibly get, or so we would've thought, and '99 was, "Ok, let's start again, we've really got to make an effort to be clean this year." Well, obviously, based on Lance Armstrong's results, he wasn't racing clean. But for the rest of the samples collected during the Tour, relatively speaking there wasn't a very high prevalence of EPO use in the rest of the peloton, at least in the peloton that was tested, which was your top 3 place getters, for example. The prologue was interesting. First race of the event, every one of those samples had EPO in them. So it seems a little odd, the first day of the next year's race, and all of your place getters have got EPO in their urine. On the one hand, yes, it seemed less prevalent than you would've otherwise thought, but on the other there's still evidence there was doping in the peloton. Not just by Lance Armstrong.
SPR Aug 2012 11:15am, 25 Aug 2012 17,447 posts	0 SPR Kimmage made the point in his interview that it should have been a fresh start, but unfortunately didn't end up that way.