Do you think lance is doping? yes or no - Page 52

I just bumped this thread to show how intense the debate use to get at one time. As someone that is much closer to pro cycling than me said.
"The best still wins".

__________________
Dope,when training and talent just aren't enough.

Nobody and I mean nobody can ride five hours a day every day naturally and not get chronically overtrained. This is very basic physiology - biological reality. The only guy I believe did do it naturally was Chris Boardman but Chris never did so well in the Tour de France and his training was highly controlled. No way could Chris do 5 or 6 hours a day riding as Lance does. Apart from anything else, he'd lose power and body mass without medical assistance.
Anyone who's still not convinced, consider Floyd Landis's testosterone reading in the penultimate Tour de France - so high it was commented the only wonder was Floyd hadn't ravaged every virgin within 5 miles while pedaling!! And Lance obviously knew nothing about all of that when Floyd was his right hand man in Discovery? Pull the other one.
The only way they can get drugs out of cycling is to make the tour more doable. But people want to see cylists do the impossible. That's what makes the spectacle.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

That's great, Floyd "might" have done some doping...but they also tested Lance and his testosterone levels were normal. So what did your spew prove about Lance??

How much training do you thing Michael Phelps does a day? He swims 50 miles a week or over 8 miles a day! PLUS other training regimens; do you think he can do all of that in less then 5 hours? Oh no, I'm just one of those who wants to see swimmers to do the impossible. By the way here is one of his training regimens dated Feb 2002, it increased after 2002 I just don't have those schedules:

Feb 2002:
after a 4,500scy moderate am practice:

Warm-up:
800 mixer on 10:30
4x150 kick on 2:30 (50 stroke-50free-50stroke)
400 pull with buoy on 5:00 (breathe 3-5-7-9 by 100)
200 stroke on 3:00
10x50 on :45 (2-25kick/25drill 2-25free/25stroke 1-stroke)

Main Set:
4x50 on 1:30
1x50 1:20
1x50 1:10
1x50 1:00
1x50: :50
1x50 :40
1x50 :30

Long Swim Down
100-200-300 pull (lungbusters by quarters)
400 choice kick
300-200-100 IM Drills

24 x 400's Done 6 of each stroke, decend 1-6 (this alone is 9,600 yards!)

None of the above includes the other excercise routines he did everyday like 500 setups just to mention one.

I don't give a rats ashe about cyclists or swimmers or whatever you can come up with do the the impossible, what I do give a rats ashe about is someone who can't do what they do make it appear to be impossible to do. Only those who think what someone else can do is "impossible" will never be able to do the "impossible". By the way, when I use to race bicycles myself and others that I knew routinely trained for more then 5 hours a day and we weren't even professional-thats why I got burned out from racing, but that's another story.

__________________
84 Trek 660 Suntour Superbe

I'm not getting at Lance specifically. It's just that from what I've read and judging by the facts, dope, EPO, blood transfusions and doctors tend to dominate pro-cycling at Tour de France level. The idea Lance is clean while the likes of Pantani, Virenque, Landis, Millar and Basso alone are cheats just doesn't wash. You can't beat chemically enhanced athletes while being clean at the level of the Tour de France. The advantage is just too great.
So, who do we assume are clean? Miguel Indurain has never been caught out. Lance has escaped with a clean record. Merkcx has never been caught out although there is pretty good reason to deduce seventies cyclists in the Tour de France used steroids as a matter of course.
It's really hard for me to deduce what medical help Lance got from his team but, at the very least, his testosterone would, more likely than not, have been "normalised" if he's riding, as he states, 6 hours day in day out. As for EPO, that's anybody's guess. Maybe he didn't use EPO - maybe he did. HGH is also pretty commonplace - Stallone was on a whole batch of it recently and it's hard to detect.
Again, I simply can't swallow the fact some of Lance's closest team mates have been caught out over drugs yet Lance as team leader is supposed to be totally innocent of the whole affair, seemingly horrified Floyd and Tyler should take such a course of action. They never talked about this?
I'd recommend you have a read of the book Tour De Force if you haven't already got a copy. It's far less controversial or biased than L.A. Confidential but there is a suggestion Lance has his skeletons in the cupboard. Like the way he went very cold with his mechanic when the latter discovered drugs in his apartment in Spain.
I know this is blunt talk but I'm afraid life has made me skeptical. The number of athletes who openly swear they're clean when they later get caught out has to make you dig deep.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

I brought this thread back to life in a timely manner. Now the debate can continue.

__________________
Dope,when training and talent just aren't enough.

And the debate shall continue!

Again you said while the likes of some had levels of doping, but AGAIN Lance had NONE. You can't compare Stallone to an a professional athlete! Stallone never got tested in the same manner that the professionals do. And in the 70's steriods were used and some of those guys died of cancer from using the stuff, including a friend of mine trying to be a professional body builder...instead had a professionally built box made for him.

You can't swallow Lance doing his feats but you can swallow Phelps doing his? What Phelps had to do was a lot tougher then what Lance had to do. 5 or 6 hours on a bike is probably equal to about 45 minutes in the pool. Ever wonder why they don't have to swim 100 miles plus in a pool race? or even 26 miles like a marathon?

And LA Confidential the author himself acknowledged, the book offered no conclusive proof to back up its charges. And Lance brought a libel suit against the author. This means that the author's lawyer would be given the right to track down and find any shred of evidence to enter into court and he failed to find anything.

Now please hear me out-again. I can only report to you what I was told by Chris Carmichael, I believe he told me the truth. However this would not prevent Lance from going on his own to find the stuff since Lance had more then enough money to do this on his own, but Carmichael was testing and never found anything.

Then you have to go back and wonder why didn't Lance win other important races like Merkcx did? In fact in comparison Lance was just an average rider in other races that Merkcx had won. By the way Merkcx admitted to doping personally.

And the debate rages on...

__________________
84 Trek 660 Suntour Superbe

Sad as it is, I've become a major skeptic. I hear of tennis players and even golfers using substances these days and many go undetected. Everybody is getting jacked up.
There is also personal experience. I tried riding a lot of hours like Lance does at one point and found my testosterone levels dropped like a stone. There were some strange, unatural side effects to spending hour after hour pedaling up hills day after day. It was then I understood why pro cyclists use steroids. They do it to prevent the body weakening through the effects of very prolonged training. It becomes a big advantage. Plus, done correctly, you can normalise testosterone levels in the body which is what many athletes do - to prevent the kind of thing that happened to me!!
My experience was if I ride even half of what Lance does, I lose power, testosterone falls and there are negative effects. There were natural limits. Only Chris Boardman offered a routine I could follow without overtaxing my body.
So, seeing as Lance was a married man, I honestly wonder about his marital circumstances if he was riding 5 - 6 hours a day, every day, and doing it all without hormone equalisation.
The funny thing too is Floyd was known for doing insane rides yet when they tested his testosterone, someone cracked the joke it was a wonder Floyd hadn't ravaged every virgin within five miles of the Tour de France and that it was even a wonder he could get on his bike at all!! Floyd was, like Tyler Hamilton, Lance's right hand man and we're led to believe Lance knew nothing of Floyd's doping shannanigans. That's what makes me very skeptical.
For me, Lance is a genetically gifted athlete and had to work damned hard to get where he is but where I part company is over the assumption most of Lance's team mates and competitors have doped yet Lance has done it all naturally without team medics to help. As for Phelps, who says he's not getting medical assistance too? Who knows whom is taking what?
The sad thing about the whole doping debacle is everyone gets discredited. I can't prove Lance isn't totally natural as he claims but so many athletes have taken exactly the same course, swearing they're natural but sometimes they get caught out. When they do get caught out like Virenque (who swore he was innocent at the time), we are offered a period of repentance and confession.
However, I don't blame the cyclists at all for this. Doping is a tough issue to solve and we're stuck with it.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

If it gets people posting, then it has to be a good thing.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

I think Lance should get an extra, extra bonus, not only from winning the tour but also for being able to go undetected for 7 years, beating all the tests in and out of competition, NOW thats an amazing feat that nobody else has done while being that scrutenized, and notice how the french kept going back to that "1" sample in 1999, what about 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, no word on him using something for those victories. Im sure he wasnt on some cutting edge super drug that nobody knew about, it would have eventually leaked out this many years later.

I think he dominated because:

Training 9 million hrs didnt seem hard after being on his death bed fighting for his life trying to beat cancer, everything else in life is pretty easy

All the Pro's train super hard but he was "OBSESSED" with training thats all he was living for, any other pro's you know got to the extreme of weighing their food.

All his focus was on the tour, he didnt race a bunch of races before or after like other riders so his energy was focussed on one main event

Losing weight which helped in the mtn's

He also had this internal grudge/anger to prove others wrong (Cofidis for one)
We all get that anger sometimes that makes us ride that much harder but its amazing lance kept this year after year.

Thats my 2cents worth

It did leak out later. Six samples positive for EPO, which was not detectable when Armstrong was using it.

Ullrich never tested positive. Neither did Basso. And Sevilla. And Botero. And Virenque. And ...

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

Unfortunately your right, a lot of people are getting jacked up, either by drugs or physically altering surgeries. Speaking of surgery, men can now get muscles installed along with a much larger penis and a better butt (women do this butt thing too). Isn't that wonderful? It was bad enough when women all started getting breast implants! Did you know that the number 1 high school graduation gift for girls is breast enlargement? Weird weird society we've made for ourselves just because of vanity. Gay men were the first to get penis implants on a wholesale level, but now straight men are catching the fever...maybe this someday will be a graduation present as well!

As far as your testosterone levels dropping, for some reason that didn't happen to me, not sure why. My wife had problems getting pregnant and when the doctor found out I was racing bicycles he ordered a full test on me to see if the problem was me. All was fine with my boys. I never discussed with the doctor about the testosterone issue since I didn't have a problem so I'm not versed well enough on that to comment.

So I understand your skepticism, and if I hadn't spoken to Carmichael about this subject I would be too...and sometimes there is that small bit of doubt, but I chase the thought away until I find out otherwise for sure.

__________________
84 Trek 660 Suntour Superbe

If this were tha case with Lance why wasnt he stripped of the yellow jersey victory any of those years, and given to the second place rider such as the case with Landis, plus if 6 samples tested positive, we wouldnt be having this question on this forum and there would not be so much doubt.

This **** is hilarious. You have to be taking the piss. There is no other explanation. Is that you helmut?

He is either a troll or he is stupid. I usually bet on stupid, but the sentence "If this were tha case with Lance why wasnt he stripped of the yellow jersey victory..." indicates that he is intentionally ignoring Armstrong's positives for EPO. Instead of dealing with the issue, he uses sophistry to pretend it must not have happened. He must be a troll.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

He may not be on EPO. He could have been using HGH and also equalisation shots for testosterone. The HGH, so far as I'm aware, is virtually impossible to detect.
When you consider the amount of junk caught by the authorities during the Festina affair, it's hard to offer a rational explanation as to how Lance could have been competing naturally when his rivals (including Virenque, Hamilton and Ullrich) were getting medical supervision. HGH was certainly being used even back them.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."