In memory of paul sherwin

[cyclintom]

How long have we listened to the voices of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin describing the Tour de France move by move?

Paul died in his sleep yesterday at 62 years old.

Those of us who have continually watched the Tour year by year could tell that Phil Ligget had been getting more and more tired with age and we recognized that he hadn't a lot more Tours in him. But few of us expected Paul to go first.

It appears that we will be seeing a lot more commenting by Bob Roll (Bobke) and Christian Van der Velt. The Tour will be different without Paul but it will always remain the Tour de France.

 

[limerickman]

I remember Sherwen as a rookie commentator in 1980's.

He wasn't a bad summariser - but if I'm honest about it, Liggett and Sherwens infatuation with Armstrong wiped out any goodwill I had for them as commentators/summarizers.

Still, the man died at a young age and it must have been a shock for his family and friends.
RIP.

 

[jhuskey]

I remember Sherwen as a rookie commentator in 1980's.

He wasn't a bad summariser - but if I'm honest about it, Liggett and Sherwens infatuation with Armstrong wiped out any goodwill I had for them as commentators/summarizers.

Still, the man died at a young age and it must have been a shock for his family and friends.
RIP.

I don't believe they had any great love for Armstrong, they were just well paid the tout whoever the network said to. Kinda like a prostitute.

 

[Mr. Beanz]

Meh! I didn't get into all that political stuff. I have and watch plenty of TDF vids and he helped make the show entertaining. Sad so young.

 

[cyclintom]

I never got the animus towards Armstrong when he was chickenfeed compared to Eddy Merckx or Jacques Anquetil. Hell, the winner of the first Tour was disqualified in the second Tour for breaking his opposition's bike. When everyone is cheating one way of another you don't single out one guy because there were a lot of books pointing him out.

 

[BrianNystrom]

Yeah, nobody who was a contender was clean and it's had been that way all through the history of the Tour. Every time I see Greg Lemond bloviating about Armstrong I can't help but think "he doth protest too much" and the he's really trying to hide his own guilty feelings without admitting he ever did anything wrong.

Was what Lance did wrong? Absolutely! Did it give him an advantage over his competition? Not a chance. The fact that he never got busted in a drug test indicates how careful they were. A reasonable argument could be made that it's possible that some of his less careful competitors may have gained more of an advantage from doping than he did. Heck, the year he was diagnosed with cancer was the year that Bjarne Riis, know as "Mr. 60%" for his insanely high hematocrit level, won the Tour. WADA would later set the maximum allowable 'crit level for riders at 50%.

I don't think that Phil and Paul sold out to anyone. It was obvious that they genuinely liked Armstrong and the aggressive way he raced. I loved watching him, too. There was a lot of drama and excitement in the Tours he won.

Regardless of the doping, he trained hard and more scientifically than anyone before him. In that way, he changed professional cycling forever. He was an incredibly gifted athlete who unfortunately competed at a time when doping was rampant and necessary to be competitive at the highest level. He simply made the same bad decision that his competitors did and because he was so successful, everyone wanted to take him down. His demise was pretty much inevitable.

 

[cyclintom]

Yeah, nobody who was a contender was clean and it's had been that way all through the history of the Tour. Every time I see Greg Lemond bloviating about Armstrong I can't help but think "he doth protest too much" and the he's really trying to hide his own guilty feelings without admitting he ever did anything wrong.

Was what Lance did wrong? Absolutely! Did it give him an advantage over his competition? Not a chance. The fact that he never got busted in a drug test indicates how careful they were. A reasonable argument could be made that it's possible that some of his less careful competitors may have gained more of an advantage from doping than he did. Heck, the year he was diagnosed with cancer was the year that Bjarne Riis, know as "Mr. 60%" for his insanely high hematocrit level, won the Tour. WADA would later set the maximum allowable 'crit level for riders at 50%.

I don't think that Phil and Paul sold out to anyone. It was obvious that they genuinely liked Armstrong and the aggressive way he raced. I loved watching him, too. There was a lot of drama and excitement in the Tours he won.

Regardless of the doping, he trained hard and more scientifically than anyone before him. In that way, he changed professional cycling forever. He was an incredibly gifted athlete who unfortunately competed at a time when doping was rampant and necessary to be competitive at the highest level. He simply made the same bad decision that his competitors did and because he was so successful, everyone wanted to take him down. His demise was pretty much inevitable.

I was the designer and programmer of the machine that Dr. Kary Mullis used his Polymerase Chain Reaction chemistry on so that we could detect that HIV was the cause of AIDS and get that **** out of the blood banking system. Dr. Mullis won a Nobel Prize for his work. Lemond got his hunting injury during this time and so he could not get any blood transfusions since the entire world blood banking system was closed down.

After that accident he had a very low hematocrit and his performance showed it. He had a hard time finishing last. He told everyone that his doctor told him he had low blood iron and gave him iron shots. Lemond's performance jumped from just ho-hum to winning the Tour de France.

Just about that time is when they developed EPO. I was always suspicious that Lemond used EPO and not iron shots which operate very slowly even in people with iron deficiency.

On the other hand - the medical treatment for his condition would have been prescribed EPO so I'm of a mixed mind about it. I would not have considered it cheating.

And because of the side effects of EPO - they would have caused as much harm to Armstrong as help. As your hematocrit gets above 50% your blood becomes dehydrated and this isn't the sort of thing you can cure by drinking more water. This is why Armstrong eventually went to using transfusions of his own blood.

To my way of thinking Armstrong was no worse than most of the other great champions. They would have destroyed everyone around them in a second to retain their titles. Hell, the winner of the first Tour de France was disqualified the following year for breaking his closest competitors bike if memory serves.

 

[BrianNystrom]

I have no doubt that Lemond doped, as he simply "doth protest too much", probably in a effort to assuage the guilt he feels.

As for Armstrong, the reason for blood transfusions was to keep the balance of old and new blood cells, which is something that's checked in the effort to detect EPO use. If you don't use transfusions of older cells, EPO will create so many new cells that the old/new balance shifts dramatically, which is seen as a clear indication of doping. Transfusing old blood brings this balance back into the allowable range, while also increasing blood volume and the overall number of red cells, both of which are beneficial.

 

[cyclintom]

I have no doubt that Lemond doped, as he simply "doth protest too much", probably in a effort to assuage the guilt he feels.

As for Armstrong, the reason for blood transfusions was to keep the balance of old and new blood cells, which is something that's checked in the effort to detect EPO use. If you don't use transfusions of older cells, EPO will create so many new cells that the old/new balance shifts dramatically, which is seen as a clear indication of doping. Transfusing old blood brings this balance back into the allowable range, while also increasing blood volume and the overall number of red cells, both of which are beneficial.

Uh, until 2018 they could not tell "old" from "new" red blood cells and even the present test is somewhat questionable since the manner in which it is done is not the same as athletes use.

 

[BrianNystrom]

WADA has been using this method for well over a decade.

 

[cyclintom]

WADA has been using this method for well over a decade.

As far as I know the ONLY thing that WADA did was measure absolute hematocrit.

 

[BrianNystrom]

It takes all of a couple of minutes on Google to find out what they do. Testing 'crit levels was the very beginning of going after EPO users and the protocol advanced rapidly.

 

[cyclintom]

It takes all of a couple of minutes on Google to find out what they do. Testing 'crit levels was the very beginning of going after EPO users and the protocol advanced rapidly.

Now those lists are REALLY weird. They have "prohibited in competition" and among others are opiates. Well I suppose that since they are the only effective means of treating severe pain that you'd have to allow it out of competition but HEROIN? Oxycontin can addict you in rather short order, I think that I used it for a week for pain from a car hitting me and could feel the inclination and immediately stopped using it. But Heroin is additive almost from the first use.