Bizarre interview with FL - Page 4

They lost and he is innocent. Obviously they must have screwed up. Well, either that or the French bribed the arbs.

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"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

That's easy. You keep suing until you win--or run out of money.

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"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

Just imagine the case in court, a few cycles into the line (suing the lawyers who lost the case against the lawyers who lost the case against . . .). Should be fun in court! But then ever so often, you do hear the most ridiculous lawsuits - e.g. one woman fell down from her bike (due to her own clumsiness), scratched her face from the frame of the glasses she was wearing, and then was thinking of filing a lawsuit against the frame manufacturer blaming her injury on the frame!!! Dunno whether she did anything in the end, because she got dogpiled on all the forums where she posted her story.

The US in particular is a highly litigious country.
No disrespect to our legal friends but when you have a society whose structures were created by lawyers, litigation is bound to prosper.

In terms of litigation for doping offences, it is inequitable in my view where a case of clear guilt can be overturned because some procedural issue hasn't been executed properly.
That just doesn't seem right to me.

For example, we could have a case where a rider has clearly doped but the rider gets off because even though the PED has been ingested and is his - someone in the chain of the process did not tick a box.
It's prepposterous in my view.
Then again, I'm not a lawyer.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it" - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

Look at it this way. The police without a warrant kick in a suspected perp's door and find him with a metric buttload of drugs. There are several possible ways to the handle the situation:

1) Convict the guy even though though his rights were violated. The police (and society) benefit from the violation; but since there is nothing to prevent future violations, the rights against illegal searches effectively disappear.

2) Convict the guy but also charge and convict the police. This would seem a fair solution but it is not practical. It would make the police gunshy in any situation where there was ambiguity in the law, making law enforcement less effective. Prosecutors have a lot of discretion and work in cooperation with the police so there would always be problems with the fairness of the system. Go too light on the police and then you get the result of case 1). Go too heavy and the situation you want prevented (the guilty going free) happens anyway because police would not want to risk their own imprisonment.

3) Throw the evidence out and let the perp walk. Letting the guilty go free is an injustice but an argument might be made that this is desirable over the other two possibilities because it affects one individual where the others affect the entire society. Society can withstand one guilty man going free; it cannot withstand evaporation of everyone's rights or the paralyzation law enforcement.

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"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

Every system are good when it catch enough guilty persons... and condemn very few innocents.
When the system lets go too many culpables, the risk is to have a lot of people who want to do their own justice...

First of all, we're not talking about a criminal case...........although personally I would prefer to see the taking of PED's. criminalised.

Talking about rights..............every right is extended to dopers.
They're given two opportunities with regard to the testing of an A and B sample to establish their innocence.
That's two separate opportunities in order to establish their innocence.

Further.
If one sample result contradicts the other sample result, then they're given the benefit of the doubt and deemed not to have cheated.

But in recent times, even when both samples show that they have doped, athletes employ lawyers who, knowing that their clients have doped, knowing that the results are conclusive, try to build a case based upon "mistakes" made during the pre/post testing routine process in order to try to mitigate the guilt of their client.

Of course in the real world, I support rights and I support the upholding of those rights and due process.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it" - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

I find your arguments and that of Bro Deal very interesting and well presented. I don't believe, and probably few do, that Landis was riding clean in the tour he placed first. There is however always the possibility of corruption in the testing of the athletes. People and favors can be bought.

Well it's worth re-rading some of the comments that were posted immediately after Landis got busted and when both samples tested positives.
We were treated to the usual excuses ranging from "the lab deliberately tampered with the evidence", "it's a French conspiracy" to waffle about rEPO, synthetic testosterone etc.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it" - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

Lim, don't forget: "Cyclists don't use testosterone."

Very good point...but I am not sure how it applies to doping in cycling...because it seems the UCI are the sole "vigilantes'.

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It applies very well, except the UCI were the ones letting too many "culpables" off while groups like ASO/AFLD, French, Italian and Spanish police are the vigilantes.

UCI very late in the game has realized their lax attitude on doping has come back to bite them in the ass so now they have to get tough as well or risk the sport becoming entirely unattractive to sponsors, just when the sport is being hit from all the other angles too.

These are indeed silly. Let me clarify what my feeling is here. I believe that the testing of athletes is 99.% fair and impartial around the world, with the exception of Italy where anything is possible.

Well the labs used to test samples are staffed by eminently qualified people.
All of the labs that do conduct tests have to have reliable methodology...if they don't have reliable methodologies and, as a result, issue results which are clinically incorrect, those labs would lose their funding and the reputation of the staff would be seriously imperilled and makes their chances of gaining future employment very difficult.

No credible lab and/or scientist would deliberately corrupt a sample to achieve a given result - it's more than their reputation is worth.

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it" - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

+1. Well put.

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