Armstrong used epo in Le Tour de France 1999

[wicklow200]

Why is it so hard to believe that a man can beat cancer, win 7 TDF and not be clean? The guy has never tested positive. Ever!

David Millar never tested positive. EVER! But he admitted to using EPO to the french police after they found vials in his home.

So please can people stop using this argument? ForEVER! Its a smokescreen. It doesn't prove anything except they have passed a possible imperfect test

The players with the best doctors in this regard should be ahead of the game. WADA incessently proclaims this - that the drug manufacturers are always a step ahead of testers. Which sort of makes sense doesn't it? Who's the best in this regard? Allegedly Dr Ferrari. And whose personal advisor was he? Yes, the self same Lance.

Yes it is hard to believe he beat cancer, and won 7 TdFs in the manner he did - as someone posted earlier...sprinting up the mountains. Thats doesn't prove his guilt, just looks mighty suspicious. So thats why its hard to believe.

 

[mitosis]

Why all the hot air? The storie's only been out a day. If there's truth in it it will get bigger. If its a beat up it will all blow flat. Get some sleep.

 

[bobke]

Why all the hot air? The storie's only been out a day. If there's truth in it it will get bigger. If its a beat up it will all blow flat. Get some sleep.

I thinkthe scientist quoted in Velo news opens up a big question mark. Regarding Freezing, storage, and the ethics of a purely scientific study having the participants names revealed. WHy have the other's names not yet been revealed. Isnt it a criminal act to have access to this info and then publish it? Where is the protection for the athletes?

I mean who can actually say those urines havent been tampered with?
If L'Equipe journalists can break into the UCI-or ASO or whatever-literally or figuratively-and get access to the doping control sheets, who says they cant with the samples themselves? People above posted keep saying that L'Equipe's access to doping control sheets with the numbers and names of the cyclists tested is normal public access info--I don't know whether it is or not and I doubt whether you do. SO why assert that so blandly. I feel strongly after Tyler's case when his samples were known to be his and they were tested with that knowledge, along with this case provides the clearest reasons what kinds of protection riders deserve.

In regular medicine, which I do every day, sometimes we are surprised by a lab result we get on a patient. One rule of thumb when one gets a shocking or unusual result back is to re-do the test. This is a fundamental rule of thumb in medicine and one we often do to make sure the result is correct and before subjecting the patient to further problems. This is also the hard and fast rule of WADA and UCI. If that is the hard and fast rule, why is it being broken now? If the director of the anti-doping lab in Canada sees so many problems, why are the French lab out to rush to judgment?

On the other hand, guilty or not, Armstropng's silence is letting him take a beating at the hands of his enemies...he needs to do something about the PR aspect and stop burying his head.

If they take one Tour away he'll still have the record... he he

 

[JohnO]

Actually, it's not the French lab that's rushing to judgment. It's the French newspaper, with complicity by the Tour organizers as well.

It's L'Equipe that claims they have a sheet of paper that associates the number on the six samples with Lance. The lab only said that twelve old samples seem to be positive for EPO, but also that the test did not conform to WADA rules. Note also that the same test was done on the 1998 samples, when doping was known to be rampant, and no associations have been made. Wonder how Virenque's samples would test?

The fact that L'Equipe has a financial interest in associating Lance with doping, and a fairly large financial interest at that, doesn't help the situation any. Surely that had nothing with their decision to rush to print with very dubious evidence. Not to mention their association with the Tour organizers - they both work for the same parent corporation. LeBlanc has leaped to wholeheartedly endorse L'Equipe's accusations, so he appears to be complicit in this. As has been said elsewhere, the Tour organizers were happy to milk Lance for all he was worth. Now that he's retired, this 'revelation' seems very convenient, as convenient as the profit that L'Equipe is making from the mess they created.

If there is a real loser in this mess, it is the Tour itself. If the Tour is governed by people of such arbitrary judgment, winning it no longer means being the best cyclist in the world. It only means that the Tour organizers and L'Equipe can't profit from screwing the winner. Watch out, France. You're destroying a crown jewel of your culture. What a pity you can't field a winning team. You have the talent, but not the discipline. Or the character, so it would apppear...

 

[Spectatorsport]

From a quite an extensive web search and on Pubmed I found that the half life of EPO is very short from 10 hrs to 24 hrs. Half life is the time it takes for a substance to break down until their is just 50% of the original. If I remember my high school chemistry right. So I would expect EPO would degrade so much it wouldn't be in the system even when frozen. So I'm confused on how the EPO could still be in 'Lance's urine' after almost 5 years and the other samples from other riders. Also in your urine, can you possibly do a DNA test? Since I'm sure there would be some cells (if they haven't been busted from the freezing) there to determine if that sample really is Lance's?

http://www.syntnx.com/anemia.php
http://www.med.howard.edu/pharmacol...oetin_Hemo1.htm
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/SAFETY/2005/Aranesp_PI.pdf#search='erythropoietin%20half%20life'

I also saw another article from http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/8746.0.html , which interviewed the director ( Doctor Christiane Ayotte ) of the top anti-doping lab in Canada, who were very surprised that one could even detect a sample after so much time even when frozen. I wonder if anyone on the boards is more qualified to speak on the subject what the half life of EPO in storage.

I cut and paste my poste from the other forum.

 

[homeycheese]

Actually, it's not the French lab that's rushing to judgment. It's the French newspaper, with complicity by the Tour organizers as well.

It's L'Equipe that claims they have a sheet of paper that associates the number on the six samples with Lance. The lab only said that twelve old samples seem to be positive for EPO, but also that the test did not conform to WADA rules. Note also that the same test was done on the 1998 samples, when doping was known to be rampant, and no associations have been made. Wonder how Virenque's samples would test?

The fact that L'Equipe has a financial interest in associating Lance with doping, and a fairly large financial interest at that, doesn't help the situation any. Surely that had nothing with their decision to rush to print with very dubious evidence. Not to mention their association with the Tour organizers - they both work for the same parent corporation. LeBlanc has leaped to wholeheartedly endorse L'Equipe's accusations, so he appears to be complicit in this. As has been said elsewhere, the Tour organizers were happy to milk Lance for all he was worth. Now that he's retired, this 'revelation' seems very convenient, as convenient as the profit that L'Equipe is making from the mess they created.

If there is a real loser in this mess, it is the Tour itself. If the Tour is governed by people of such arbitrary judgment, winning it no longer means being the best cyclist in the world. It only means that the Tour organizers and L'Equipe can't profit from screwing the winner. Watch out, France. You're destroying a crown jewel of your culture. What a pity you can't field a winning team. You have the talent, but not the discipline. Or the character, so it would apppear...

Thank you for the well constucted and cogent analysis.

As I have said in this forum on similar matters, it's now all about the money and the unfortunate way this sport (and other forms of entertainment) has been prostituted.

Character matters.

 

[JohnO]

Well, let's be fair about this. Half life of EPO after injection may be dependent upon active metabolism - it might decay as the result of being metabolized by the body, and not in stored urine. Mind you, I said may be... this is an issue that needs absolute resolution. I have also heard secondhand that recombinant EPO that has not been injected has a definite shelf life, something like 6 months - can anyone confirm this?

What a pity L'Equipe didn't ask these questions before publishing. Then again, publishing a story that testing 5 year old urine is unreliable wouldn't sell nearly as many papers as a story that the Texas redneck that's been stomping all over French cycling for 7 years was actually dirty.

 

[txags92]

I suspect that the EPO half life you are finding is it's half-life in the bloodstream. It doesn't make much sense to think that it degrades so quickly in storage, as you would then have to get it directly from the manufacturer and use it within 2-3 days for it to be effective. However, the question is what does it do in urine over a 6 year period? I use environmental laboratories all the time to test for very tiny trace concentrations of various chemicals in soil and groundwater. Every analysis method has a "hold time" after which the samples are considered to be useless, because reactions in the sample can cause chemicals to appear or disappear as they degrade or react with the preservatives used to store them. In most cases, the hold time for everything except metals is less than one month. After a month is up, you samples are worthless. I can't imagine that a urine sample kept in a freezer for 6 years hasn't exceeded the hold time on the test and can still be considered valid. In addition, the clear lack of security at the lab makes the possibility of tampering impossible to ignore.

Think of it this way...for somebody to have gotten the confidential lab paperwork connecting Lance to the anonymous number on the samples, one of two things had to happen. Somebody at the lab who, for whatever reason, doesn't like Lance had to provide the paperwork to the newspaper for use against him...OR...somebody had to break into the lab and steal the paperwork with the purpose of using it against Lance. In either case, it is a very short leap to go from giving (or stealing) paperwork to tampering with the samples. Over a six year time frame, I would think that there has been ample opportunity for it to happen.

 

[homeycheese]

I suspect that the EPO half life you are finding is it's half-life in the bloodstream. It doesn't make much sense to think that it degrades so quickly in storage, as you would then have to get it directly from the manufacturer and use it within 2-3 days for it to be effective. However, the question is what does it do in urine over a 6 year period? I use environmental laboratories all the time to test for very tiny trace concentrations of various chemicals in soil and groundwater. Every analysis method has a "hold time" after which the samples are considered to be useless, because reactions in the sample can cause chemicals to appear or disappear as they degrade or react with the preservatives used to store them. In most cases, the hold time for everything except metals is less than one month. After a month is up, you samples are worthless. I can't imagine that a urine sample kept in a freezer for 6 years hasn't exceeded the hold time on the test and can still be considered valid. In addition, the clear lack of security at the lab makes the possibility of tampering impossible to ignore.

Think of it this way...for somebody to have gotten the confidential lab paperwork connecting Lance to the anonymous number on the samples, one of two things had to happen. Somebody at the lab who, for whatever reason, doesn't like Lance had to provide the paperwork to the newspaper for use against him...OR...somebody had to break into the lab and steal the paperwork with the purpose of using it against Lance. In either case, it is a very short leap to go from giving (or stealing) paperwork to tampering with the samples. Over a six year time frame, I would think that there has been ample opportunity for it to happen.

I'm curious as you are about the validity of the tests, but more importantly, the ability to link the test results to a specific rider. This is usually not done by the lab and the "control sheets" are kept seperate from the samples. The story implies that some "evidence" was presented by LA in another French judicial case which allowed the stories authors to link the sample to LA. Who has the "control sheets" for the 1999 samples?

 

[Roadrash Dunc]

I'm curious as you are about the validity of the tests, but more importantly, the ability to link the test results to a specific rider. This is usually not done by the lab and the "control sheets" are kept seperate from the samples. The story implies that some "evidence" was presented by LA in another French judicial case which allowed the stories authors to link the sample to LA. Who has the "control sheets" for the 1999 samples?

It seems the French Sports Ministry had them.I think thats where the leak came from.
Someone in the French Govt effectively leaked enough information to Equipe to nail Lance.

Whether he took EPO or not (personally i think at some point in his career he has to have) he is right in branding this a witch hunt.
Its not about improving EPO tests , otherwise all names would have been mentioned or no names atall.
In fact , given that the tests cannot be validated and no sanctions taken , names shouldnt have been mentioned period.

If Lance can prove to a court of law that L'Equipe knew the tests couldnt be verified (which L'Equipe had already stated) and therefore no sanctions taken (again already made clear) then he can probably prove this is a case of malicious libel.The sole reason to smear his name.
L'Equipe were not interested in breaking this story for the integrity of the sport , because if anything , they have ruined what integrity there was.
Its an interesting case , because even if the sample has traces of EPO , there are still many question marks.Id be surprised if he doesnt flex some financial muscle at this , but it all depends how confident he is with a French Judge.I know i wouldnt be rushing into it if i was him.

 

[txags92]

What does he have to gain by continuing to fight it at this point? if he goes back and gets a french judge to declare it is malicious libel and wins some money from the paper, the lab, or the agency who leaked the data, will it make the people who believe he took ped's believe he is clean? No. Will it make the French accept him as the greatest tour champion in history...no. Will it clear his name once and for all in the eyes of the "cynics"? No. So why bother? He is better off letting it drop and walking away.


The sport of cycling could have a great ambassador with an engaging personal story to use in marketing it to a new audience. Or it can cannabalize the most popular non-european rider in the sport's history and then spend the next decade wondering why nobody wants to watch anymore. I wonder which path the French will take the sport down? I will give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.

 

[gntlmn]

I wonder what kind of laws were broken if it turns out the B samples had been tampered with in order to produce a positive EPO result. Given that EPO does not stay in urine samples more than about 3 months, how then can it show up loud and clear 5 years later (from 1999 to 2004) unless it had been added after the fact? Also, whoever mentioned the transfer of confidential information (anonymous sample numbers) and the small leap from that unethical breach to evidence tampering seems to be on the right track.

"We are extremely surprised that urine samples could have been tested in 2004 and have revealed the presence of EPO," Ayotte said in an interview with VeloNews on Tuesday. "EPO - in its natural state or the synthesized version - is not stable in urine, even if stored at minus 20 degrees."

Above quote is from http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/8746.0.html

 

[House]

Txags- You really think it would be in his best interest to let it go? The cynics are going to believe what they want to believe but by letting it go a lot of his fans are going to believe it. Just look at what happened to Mark McGwire when he went before Congress. What he said was actually 100% dead on if Congress was doing this to rid baseball of 'roids now, not hunt down people from the past but by not saying yes or no he got ripped everywhere and is now almost unversaly believed to have used 'roids.

 

[m.indurain]

the biggest cheater in the history of sport is ... lance armstrong

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SPORT/08/24/cycling.leblanc/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Tour de France director Jean-Marie Leblanc claims Lance Armstrong has "fooled" the sports world, over new allegations he used a performance-boosting drug.

"For the first time -- and these are no longer rumors these are proven scientific facts -- someone has shown me that in 1999 Armstrong had EPO in his body," said Leblanc.


i hope armstrong will "pay" for it ...

 

[limerickman]

It seems the French Sports Ministry had them.I think thats where the leak came from.
Someone in the French Govt effectively leaked enough information to Equipe to nail Lance.

Whether he took EPO or not (personally i think at some point in his career he has to have) he is right in branding this a witch hunt.
Its not about improving EPO tests , otherwise all names would have been mentioned or no names atall.
In fact , given that the tests cannot be validated and no sanctions taken , names shouldnt have been mentioned period.

If Lance can prove to a court of law that L'Equipe knew the tests couldnt be verified (which L'Equipe had already stated) and therefore no sanctions taken (again already made clear) then he can probably prove this is a case of malicious libel.The sole reason to smear his name.
L'Equipe were not interested in breaking this story for the integrity of the sport , because if anything , they have ruined what integrity there was.
Its an interesting case , because even if the sample has traces of EPO , there are still many question marks.Id be surprised if he doesnt flex some financial muscle at this , but it all depends how confident he is with a French Judge.I know i wouldnt be rushing into it if i was him.

Mr Armstrong wrote a book where he attempted to put forward the premise that he was a clean cyclist.
Mr Armstrong brought the issue of doping on to the agenda when he attempted to portray himself as a clean rider.

By trying to create that perception - he made himself and doping the issue.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of evidence that suggests that Mr Armstrong was not, in fact, a clean rider.

 

[bobke]

the biggest cheater in the history of sport is ... lance armstrong

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SPORT/08/24/cycling.leblanc/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Tour de France director Jean-Marie Leblanc claims Lance Armstrong has "fooled" the sports world, over new allegations he used a performance-boosting drug.

"For the first time -- and these are no longer rumors these are proven scientific facts -- someone has shown me that in 1999 Armstrong had EPO in his body," said Leblanc.




i hope armstrong will "pay" for it ...

Has anyone stopped to ask a basic question.
Why would Armstrong turn positive SIX times during the 99 Tour?

Lance was one person who had been on the drug therapeutically when he had cancer. He even mentions this in his book.
He knew how many units he had been given and what boost to his hematocrit it would produce. And also how dangerous it is to use if your hematocrit is over 35.

EPO stays around urine for a very short time, days. Yet his urines allegedly were positive numerous times over three weeks.
Yet the effect on increased RBC production from EPO goes on for a while, so you dont need to give it over and over every few days. When given therpeutically, it is given weekly at most. And then the hematocrit keeps rising for up to and sometimes over a week. And then the new RBCs produced stay around for 120 days. SO the level is jacked up for a while. Its not like you habe to give it over and over.

He knew there was no test in 1999, but no one goes into the Tour and jacks their blood count up over and over when it could go too high. meaning over 50.

If you are planning on doping, you give yourself the max EPO before the Tour, you let your blood count go up to but not over the max, you check to make sure it is below 50, then you enter the Tour.

You dont show up like some dumasses have with their hematocrits still rising, which happens if you have had EPO in the last week or so, then get busted. The teams say "we checked his hematocrit yesterday and it was fine" then the doping control checks it and it is higher, guess why? duh, when you tke EPO your couts keep going up!!

You wouldnt be giving little boosts all during the Tour, which is how his urine would turn up positive six times over several weeks. Including right before the Tour to be positive at the prologue and after.
He would have to be doing it several times during the Tour,
It doesnt make sense, even from a doping point of view.

Lance is too smart for that, give him some credit. And since he is obsessive about his treatment he would have read that there are EPO markers on some tumors and there is a question about whether EPO treatment might increase tumor growth. Trust me, just a couple of years out from remission, very unliekly he would be on the juice.

 

[txags92]

Yes, I am saying it is better to let it go. What has happened in baseball? Yes we have testing now. When guys get busted, we know...when guys don't get busted, we assume they are clean. However, by going back after guys from the past the way congress did, they called into question nearly every "hero" slugger from the past 20 years. And now, every time a slugger has an off-year...or has an injury that keeps him out for a while, people aren't saying "I hope he gets back to form soon"...they are saying "must have been on juice", regardless of whether that has any truth to it or not. From here on out, every slugger who hits more than 50 home runs will no longer be the hero that every kid on the playground wants to be when he is batting. Instead, his name will be the one that starts all the playground fights between kids who think he juices and kids who think he doesn't. If it wasn't illegal or you weren't testing for it, then you shouldn't go back later and try to find out who was doing it. It was bad for the game of baseball, and it will be bad for the sport of cycling.

I am under no illusion that either sport was ever clean and pure, and I am certainly not of the opinion that the whole issue of ped's should be ignored. If we want to get serious about them, then we need to test for what we can RELIABLY test for in the here and now, and allow athletes to use everything that we can't test for. Anything that involves going back and conducting witch hunts (and yes, this is a witch hunt) on former athletes is harmful to the sport because of the obvious conflicts of interest and lack of scientific integrity to the testing. The fact is that these tests will never prove anything and will only create a further cloud over the sport, since there is no way to verify the test through repetition of the testing, and there is no way to disprove the tests either. If Virenque had won 7 tours in a row do you think the french would be testing his urine samples 5 years later? No. because they would clearly understand that it would be bad for the sport and for them. Now, by releasing this info, they are taking what could have been a renaissance for the sport with the enthusiasm over LA's 7th win (flawed or not) and torpedoed it by taking the tour back to 1998. And for what? A final poke in the eye to an American who dominated the sport for 7 years? What does a bunch of flawed test results really prove? They HAD to know that questions about tampering, timing, scientific validity, etc would cloud the story...so what are they accomplishing other than selling a few magazines. Only one thing...damaging the sport.

 

[gntlmn]

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of evidence that suggests that Mr Armstrong was not, in fact, a clean rider.

You mean there are a lot of people who want to discredit Armstrong, using any means, even evidence tampering and trumped up charges. I would most certainly include you in the group of those who want to discredit him.

 

[holli]

As I see this all, it's not that much about Armstrong, it's more about cycling... If Armstrong turns out to be a cheater it's going to be a huge blow to cycling as armstrong has been the biggest star who has made cycling more popular during past couple of years. If Armstrong has won seven tours using doping it will severely harm cycling. I can't understand why people wish that these rumours are true because it would be very bad for cyclings public image.

I don't like Armstrongs way to race (one race a year) but that has nothing to do with this.

 

[SilentShifter]

As with all other French reports and Lance, they are not able to prove anything. My question is (1) what are they still doing with samples from '99? Why not use more recent samples? (2) Can they prove the samples match the documents and results (which they haven't yet).

They are still out to get him, no matter what - sadly this probably will never end. My fear, like Lance's is that they will somehow set him up.

Just because they can't even win their own tour.