cycling USADA To Strip Lance Armstrong Of 7 Tour Titles

[HawkMan]

Yes, the same Floyd Landis that has committed fraud...not exactly a reliable source.

In which case it's not in his best interest to further incriminate himself. And what about the other 5named ones. Or the frozen drug tests that showed EPO, or the many other incriminating "evidence"...

Right let's ignore all of that.

And it's nice to see people think its ok for athletes do dope, as long as they stay ahead of the curve and have enough money to buy the new high tech dope that can't be detected. And they are developing new technologies. Thats how they found EPO in his 1999 tests in 2004. But investigators aren't drug test developers. And they are able to do two things at once. The investigators investigate and the tech develop new tests.

Face it, in a high risk high profile case like this, the only reason to stop defending is because you are guilty. And that would have been proven without a doubt come trial in a few months. If he was innocent and they had no tangible proof. He could just have held out for the trial and been acquitted there. Heck he wouldn't have had to do anything but wait. Instead if went for a no contest and avoided the whole trial which would have laid out all the evidence and testimonies... Yeah... Nothing shady. He was just tired of having to do nothing to defend himself...

[br0adband]

By refusing to contest the charges he has been / will be found guilty and stripped of his titles. Is it proven beyond "a shadow of a doubt"? No, but all we have is his word that he's innocent and the lack of one single positive result on a drug test with several hundred of them being administered to Armstrong over the decades he's been a professional cyclist. But again, you're resorting to a legal definition of innocence - people are free to form their own opinions. Anyway, I don't think this discussion is going anywhere. The only thing we can agree on is that it has damaged the reputation of US sport and that regardless of the doping he is still a very talented athlete.

You forgot to add the actually relevant part so I added it (bold Italics are mine, obviously).

Lack of actual verifiable quantifiable positive results on drug tests = he's innocent of the charge of doping, period. There's no way you can rationalize it just by taking the "well there's 10 people (that most likely all DID actually fail the same drug tests) that say he was doping and they saw it happen..." which is complete hearsay and inadmissible in most any court of law except ones run by some dictatorial fascist judge or whatever.

I can find 1,000 people on the street later today that'll say "O.J. did it" and yet it doesn't matter if he did it - that entire trial hinged on one single question: "Is it possible your team (meaning the forensic team) made mistakes when collecting the evidence of the crime?" and the answer was "Yes, it's possible." That allowed for a single minuscule reasonable 'shadow of a doubt' which was enough to set him free.

Right now with Armstrong we have exactly the opposite: we have zero actual proof of wrongdoing yet someone said "I saw him do it" and now he's potentially going to lose the titles. No proof, pure hearsay != enough to cause him this much trouble.

People can only fight so much, and Armstrong reached the point where it wasn't going to matter anymore both from a financial perspective as well as personal and emotional toil. I'd give up myself, just as you and anyone else would. If he did something wrong, there's no actual verifiable incontrivertible evidence of it, and hearsay really isn't enough for a judgment.

I don't really give a crap anymore about all this: he won 7 Tour de France victories, and that's something that no one has ever done before, and he did it as a cancer survivor. Call me when something actually important happens in the world, will ya?

[Shane Nokes]

In which case it's not in his best interest to further incriminate himself. And what about the other 5named ones. Or the frozen drug tests that showed EPO, or the many other incriminating "evidence"...

Right let's ignore all of that.

And it's nice to see people think its ok for athletes do dope, as long as they stay ahead of the curve and have enough money to buy the new high tech dope that can't be detected. And they are developing new technologies. Thats how they found EPO in his 1999 tests in 2004. But investigators aren't drug test developers. And they are able to do two things at once. The investigators investigate and the tech develop new tests.

Face it, in a high risk high profile case like this, the only reason to stop defending is because you are guilty. And that would have been proven without a doubt come trial in a few months. If he was innocent and they had no tangible proof. He could just have held out for the trial and been acquitted there. Heck he wouldn't have had to do anything but wait. Instead if went for a no contest and avoided the whole trial which would have laid out all the evidence and testimonies... Yeah... Nothing shady. He was just tired of having to do nothing to defend himself...

Actually if he's being offered immunity, then actually it would be in his best interests to pursue it...but it seems he's not the brightest bulb.

I also have always had issue with frozen stuff that's later thawed and used for testing...I'm not saying the testing isn't good and all...but with that long in a lab and such things can happen. I'm not going all conspiracy theory, but I just don't trust samples that get locked away for years, unless it's part of a legal investigation, like heavy law enforcement where a chain of evidence is required.

Even then I still always have doubts...

The problem is that every time they went over this and things came out clean they started finding new ways to attack him. It's been going on for years. So who is to say that after yet another long proceeding they wouldn't go after him again, for the umpteenth time...

[Praetor]

Your post doesn't make much sense. You said you'd be cynical and wait for drug tests, and then go on to say they're all cheaters based on this case. You do realize that he passed all the drug tests, therefore your cynicism should be lifted, and all hope restored.

it's not based on this case but years of former tour champions getting positive drug results; in this case none drug test accused a single positive, that's true; but then again how come 10 former colleagues are accusing him? if 10 or more team mates are screwin him then that's a bigger problem: the integrity of those professionals and the US cyclism as a whole.