Mr. 60%, should he have his tour win revoked?

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If LA's improvement post cancer is so miraculous, exactly what magic dope is he taking and how come every other cheater out there isn't taking it? I mean, EPO can provide a modest improvement and blood doping took Hamilton's mediocre talent up a notch. But If LA's improvement is so stupifying, surely you guys don't think it's jsut EPO or extra blood, right?

Just look at George Hincapie - Classic specialist - power up those hills at a tempo that climbers like Mayo and Simoni and Heras can't hold. To what do we attribute this? Superior training methods? Which any other team has access to and employs (read Kloeden's recent interview). Or something else? Because if Hincapie's 2004 Tour performance isn't that of a carthorse transformed into a thoroughbred, I don't know what is.

Right, Lance has the superjuice that no one else (rider, doctor, or official) knows about and nobody knows how to test for. It doesn't affect his hematocrit or any other tested blood parameters but it turns him from a moderately successful one-day racer into the record holder for TDF wins with the possible side effect of causing testicular cancer metastasizing throughout his whole body in the interim.

If Lance had dope that good he wouldn't need to be a TDF specialist, he could win everything. If Lance's dope is the same as everybody else's but he has some way of masking it better then he wouldn't have any performance advantage.

Gene therapy? That's a stretch, but maybe… what would it do? Without specifics you're just spouting conspiracy theories in hopes that one will stick.

If he's doing something he'll eventually get caught, or someone will rat him out (someone with more hard evidence than what's-her-name), or he'll confess, or he'll die.

And Kloeden rode just as aggressively as Armstrong did in the last 5km of that stage - except he didn't have a team willing to bury themselves for him and he was just a smidge more tired at the sprint. My ProCycling mags take a couple weeks longer to get here than they do to Ireland I guess so I haven't seen the interview yet but I'm looking forward to it.

Right, Lance has the superjuice that no one else (rider, doctor, or official) knows about and nobody knows how to test for. It doesn't affect his hematocrit or any other tested blood parameters but it turns him from a moderately successful one-day racer into the record holder for TDF wins with the possible side effect of causing testicular cancer metastasizing throughout his whole body in the interim.

If Lance had dope that good he wouldn't need to be a TDF specialist, he could win everything. If Lance's dope is the same as everybody else's but he has some way of masking it better then he wouldn't have any performance advantage.

Gene therapy? That's a stretch, but maybe… what would it do? Without specifics you're just spouting conspiracy theories in hopes that one will stick.


These are excellent points. I'll add that for the superjuice theory to be true, it's necessary that LA has been on it since at least 1998 ... seven years ago (afterall, he got 4th in the Vuelta that year). So the superjuice was developed over seven years ago and during that time it has been kept completely secret. It has not been shared with any other atheletes during this time. It was originally given to LA presumably for free or very little b/c, afterall, LA was just a classics rider up to that point and didn't have much cash. If such a miraculous product exists, one would think the medical properties could be worth millions, yet the superjuice juicer gives it only to LA.

To me, only one solution makes sense: LA invented the superjuice himself! See, during his cancer treatment, he spent all his free time in the lab, concocting this magic formula. He uses it only for himself, although he occasionally puts a few teaspoons into Hincapie's coffee or Landis's oatmeal on big mountain days.

Well, it will certainly be interesting to see how Landis does at Phonak, won't it?

Well, it will certainly be interesting to see how Landis does at Phonak, won't it?

I don't think Landis is going to have a chance to do anything. Phonak won't even be showing at most of the PT races, and the other races won't have many PT teams.

I don't think Landis is going to have a chance to do anything. Phonak won't even be showing at most of the PT races, and the other races won't have many PT teams.

I have a lot of sympathy for Landis - he joined in good faith (presumably) and here he has a team that is disintegrating before the season starts.

So the superjuice was developed over seven years ago and during that time it has been kept completely secret.
Why do you think it is just one single superjuice that has stayed constant over the period of Lance's comeback till now?

Most cyclists take a coacktail of legal +/- illegal substances to help them get through the grand tours. I heard a pro talking about getting an infusion of intralipid, vitamins, fluid and insulin at the end of each stage. In that group, only the insulin is illegal. But, doping at the top level is not just a question of "is someone using Epo?". It is a whole combination of things.For example, Epo, blood doping, growth hormone, testosterone, anabolic +/- cortico-steroids, creatine, & whatever else that we may not have even heard about yet. Get the drug combination and the timings they are given right, and you might just see an advantage over other cyclists. Also, new drugs are being studied all the time so it is likely the "right" combination varies over the years.

Perhaps USPS had better knowledge about optimum doses, ideal doping timing and useful drug combinations than other teams??? Such information would not be worth anywhere near as much as a new whiz-bang performance enhancing drug that could be sold on a wide scale but would certainly make the team doctor or whoever very valuable to his/her team.

Doping is an "Arms Race". The racer with the largest budget---or better yet, a free pass into the big-pharma and clinical drug trials world would logically enjoy an advantage, don't ya think?

Between Thom Weisel & Bristol Meyers, Lance has 51 Billion Dollars of help--not counting his own funds.

In addition, the entire peloton is a rolling drug trials laboratory anyway.

In the end, the athlete with the best doping protocols, drugs, methods, and own unique reaction to this synthetic process may emerge as a dominant rider.

Is this not what happened?

So you're proposing, now, that Bristol Meyers funded a major dope invention program with the plan to feed it to Armstrong? Keep in mind that this must have happened before Armstrong had any substantial funds. What exactly would Bristol Meyers do this for? Certainly there R&D would be directed towards something they could legally profit from, not a mysterious superjuice that they gave only to Lance Armstrong. Not to mention the legal and public relations implications of getting caught would be catastrophic for the company. Bristol has 5,400 research staff. All this would be kept a secret for more than seven years?

The number of steps one must climb to make the "LA uses the superjuice argument" are staggering.

> In addition, the entire peloton is a rolling drug trials laboratory anyway.

So that's why Omega Pharma wanted to sponsor a team. To save on research costs!

> In the end, the athlete with the best doping protocols, drugs, methods, and own unique reaction to this synthetic process may emerge as a dominant rider.

This is the damned if you do, damned if you don't logic that bugs me: If you're the dominant rider, you must dope. If you don't dope, you're not the dominant rider. By this logic, LA became a doper because he won the Tour.

The only thing I don't get about this logic is that no one is yet calling for Cunego's head...

Our sport is comprised of active dopers and liars. get used to it. Check out horse or dog racing sometime. It's the same thing w/o humans. The team directors are former racers, thus ensuring more doping.

eg: Did you know that Chris Hormer, USA #1 road cyclist will be joining Sanier Duval this year. His boss will be Mauro Gianetti. The same Gianetti who on May 8, 1998 nearly died from an overdose of the HBOC drug PFC, perafloracarbon. He spent two weeks in ICU after collapsing during his Tour of Romandie. He missed that summer's TDF and may have been spared further doping embarrassment.

Do you think Chris Horner may have some doping pressure this year?

Even Johnan Museeuw Vet. neighbor practiced EPO on homing pigeons and dogs before moving to cyclists.

And while doing research on athletes in not "secret per se" it is 100% secret if a drug firm or its many proxies, funds it. Nobody talks without heavy lawsuit and patent interference attacks.

In 1983 when Amgen was researching how to make chickens grow faster (sound helpful for athletes?) it discovered EPO. That drug has won more endurance bike races than caffeine, morphine, cocaine and heroin combined.

After Amgen licenced Johnson & Johnson to sell EPO, sales grew from ZERO to over 20 Billion per year.

Think that can fund some research time?

Cunego is not the one creating national advertising themes attempting to sell the consuming public that 1) hard work = world class success in sports 2) buy these drugs or cars or cable services cause they sponsor me.

When and if Cunego sells out, then he may be questioned.

Meanwhile, just know that Italian doping methods have ruled our sport--and soccer too for many years now. It is very ironic that with respect to the TDF, the Italian doctors, can only get Indurain, Riis, Ulrich, and Armstrong on the winners step. Pantani was an a result of 50% of the riders being DQed or quiting for fear of dope searches.

Otherwise the theme is: Italian drug doctor, non Italian athlete = TDF success, 1991 to 2004, minus 1998. That is 13 TDF wins with Italian drug doctors.

The doctors were, Conconi, Cecchini, and Ferrari and these cats know dope, the very best dope for special clients.

Because Ferrari assisted Concini you have to give him the nod. 5 + 6 = 11 of 13. Pretty impressive.

I've never doubted that cycling has a pernicious drug problem. I took it very personally when two of my favorite cyclists turned out to be cheats this year, Hamilton and Millar. EPO is an obvious problem, and the extent of blood doping might barely be known. And it's clear that the EPO problem extends much farther than just the influence of Italian doctors. A woman's ironman champ and a cyclocross rider both tested positive this year. As did plenty of lights far less bright than Hamilton and Millar.

As I've said repeatedly, I don't know if Lance dopes. No one can know. We don't live next to him or sleep next to him. We don't ride for his team and we don't test his blood.

But I do think it is very silly to think that Lance took some sort of superjuice that transformed him from a "mediocre" classic rider to a Tour champion. I just don't believe such a drug or cocktail of drugs can be reasonably expected to exist. 100s have cyclists have probably taken EPO, and the attendant hemocrit levels have fluctuated, performances have gone up and down, and irregularities have been noted. With LA, we're talking about seven years of consistent grand tour performance with no positives, no weird hemocrit levels, and no direct evidence of doping. If LA takes a superjuice that makes him a Tour winner when he should be a poor man's Stuart O'Grady, and has been for seven years, and no one has copied it or found out, well then he and Johan are far too smart to just be cycling champions. Some one should make them the head of an international spy ring. I don't buy it.

If the Italian doctors are so good, how come one of them hasn't turned Paola Bettini into Eddy Merckx?

I think the thread was lost.

The point with regards to Riis is that he dominated the Tour in 96, riding up Hautacam in the friggin big chain ring! Dude, I've ridden up that thing and it is steep!!!

Here is the big point, the Tour instituted the 50% Hematocrit rule for the 97 Tour, and then Riis showed up and did nothing. Ullrich on the other hand rode up mountains, marking Virenque, not even struggling. Of course, Virenque and Pascal Herve and all the other Festina dopers were yet to be caught, but were doped to the gills with hematocrits probably at 49.9%. Same with Pantani.

SO in retrospect, no, Riis did not fail a test in terms of a positive, but they had no tests for EPO then , just a 50% rule. And his nickname was Mr 60%, but I dont know where the origin of that is.

Ullrich was incredible in 1997, which was why Lance said he would stick to one day races as he was coming back, because it was clear that Ullrich and Lance said so, would dominate. This was before Lance got on the bike 15 lbs lighter, with Bruyneel and the rest is history.

So, by comparison, Lance has always had results, in contrast to Riis who came from nowhere, not even a good one day racer. So all the arguments you detractors of Armstrong use should be applied to Riis like multiplied by a hundred fold. Compare palmares!!!

Riis from Cycling Hall of Fame.com:
Riis BjarneDEN 1995 Tour de France 3rd place
1996 Tour de France 1st place
1997 Amstel Gold 1st place

The guy won almost nothing. Virtually unheard of for a Tour winner, oh yeah, besides a brief run of dopers like Pantani and Zulle-guys who won nothing except Grand Tours. Weird huh?

Ullrich won the worlds and the Olympics, Lemond won the worlds and a bunch of other stuff, Indurain won San Sebastian and podiumed the worlds a number of times. Not Riis!!!

I've never doubted that cycling has a pernicious drug problem. I took it very personally when two of my favorite cyclists turned out to be cheats this year, Hamilton and Millar. EPO is an obvious problem, and the extent of blood doping might barely be known. And it's clear that the EPO problem extends much farther than just the influence of Italian doctors. A woman's ironman champ and a cyclocross rider both tested positive this year. As did plenty of lights far less bright than Hamilton and Millar.

As I've said repeatedly, I don't know if Lance dopes. No one can know. We don't live next to him or sleep next to him. We don't ride for his team and we don't test his blood.

But I do think it is very silly to think that Lance took some sort of superjuice that transformed him from a "mediocre" classic rider to a Tour champion. I just don't believe such a drug or cocktail of drugs can be reasonably expected to exist. 100s have cyclists have probably taken EPO, and the attendant hemocrit levels have fluctuated, performances have gone up and down, and irregularities have been noted. With LA, we're talking about seven years of consistent grand tour performance with no positives, no weird hemocrit levels, and no direct evidence of doping. If LA takes a superjuice that makes him a Tour winner when he should be a poor man's Stuart O'Grady, and has been for seven years, and no one has copied it or found out, well then he and Johan are far too smart to just be cycling champions. Some one should make them the head of an international spy ring. I don't buy it.

If the Italian doctors are so good, how come one of them hasn't turned Paola Bettini into Eddy Merckx?

You have made some very good points.
Like conspiracy theories, the loch ness monster, bigfoot we all seem to want to believe something mysterious is out there.
I have always fiound it quite interesting that people claim Armstrong was mediocre and made great by drugs.
So why haven't others benefited from this?
Medical and biological research does not occur in a vacuum as one see's in movies and in novels. There are no isolated labs comming up with earth shattering breakthroughs. The breakthroughs touted in the press are actually small advancements that that progress from other works done by scores of researchers from multiple institutions.
If such a cocktail existed it would taken an army of researchers, clinical trials to have developed it. Try keeping that under wraps. This along with the proliferation of news media desperate for a news breakthrough, it is amazing that all that can be found that implicates Armstrong as doping his way to wins is a few people saying what amounts to being-" I gave him a mysterious package of pills etc. etc."
Is he are has he ever used performance enhancing drugs? I don't know.

As a bit of an aside, some guys were riding in Adelaide recently wearing tops that had "Aranesp" written on as a sponsor. This was a bit of a joke by the guys wearing the tops. In case you don't know, aranesp is the trade name for darbopoietin, a new version of Epo.

Several pros from some MAJOR European teams rode past them, on a slow ride the day before the start of Tour Down Under. One pro noticed the aranesp, them called all the other pros to have a look so that they could all have a laugh at this.

Clearly this proves nothing but if you ask doctors what aranesp is, I would guess between 25 & 50% would know. (The vast majority would know darbopoietin but not many would recognise the trade name aranesp). It seems a little concerning to me that every single one of these pros knew exactly what it is...

Flyer, you know your sh????t. I love reading about this doping crap, I have a morbid curiosity. IMO it's better than any reality show. Now, forgetting about LA for a second, what do you think about Merckx Sr, the Grandaddy of A$$whippings? They had steroids, blood transfusions, and amphetamines back then, but can that explain his total dominance? He was kicked out of the Giro IIRC.

He had a crit of almost 60% bro....DURING THE TOUR!
Really...? 60% you say? and what credible source do you have?
I don't know where you get this BS info from.... maybe you would like us to believe that you were one of the Telekom doctors at the '96 tour, but i doubt it. FYI, whatever you hear about rider's hematocrits during the season, none of it is ever made public knowledge, much less published for uneducated morons like you who could then start all kinds of stories.

If you knew anything, you'd know that the UCI didn't begin to do routine hematocrit tests until 1997. So if he really was 60%, then the only people that would have known for sure would have been Mr Riis, and his team doctors. So whatever you are talking about, I've also heard. So have lots of people. But that's only rumors. I've heard lots of things....about lots of people... but that means nothing. You can't discredit someone for something, based on rumor alone.

Riis was a late bloomer. He spent most of his career in the service of other riders, riding for such teams as Ariostea and Gewiss. His performances never indicated his status as a contender for the Grand Tours, until he came out of the woodwork in 1995. To say he came out of nowhere is unfair and unjust. Shame on you.

Really...? 60% you say? and what credible source do you have?
I don't know where you get this BS info from.... maybe you would like us to believe that you were one of the Telekom doctors at the '96 tour, but i doubt it. FYI, whatever you hear about rider's hematocrits during the season, none of it is ever made public knowledge, much less published for uneducated morons like you who could then start all kinds of stories.

If you knew anything, you'd know that the UCI didn't begin to do routine hematocrit tests until 1997. So if he really was 60%, then the only people that would have known for sure would have been Mr Riis, and his team doctors. So whatever you are talking about, I've also heard. So have lots of people. But that's only rumors. I've heard lots of things....about lots of people... but that means nothing. You can't discredit someone for something, based on rumor alone.

Riis was a late bloomer. He spent most of his career in the service of other riders, riding for such teams as Ariostea and Gewiss. His performances never indicated his status as a contender for the Grand Tours, until he came out of the woodwork in 1995. To say he came out of nowhere is unfair and unjust. Shame on you.

Telekom systematically doped through the 90s - I have an email from a T-Mobile mechanic that states names, products etc etc. And, no, I would have no intention of publishing it in a public forum. But all this stuff that is runour? It's fact