Who gives a shit?
Who gives a shit?
What the What wrote:
Who gives a shit?
A lot of people apparently.
I wonder how many landfills are chocked full of little yellow bracelets?
Randy Oldman wrote:
What the What wrote:Who gives a shit?
A lot of people apparently.
Yes, but that really doesn't answer the question I asked. I did not ask how many people gave a shit. I asked who gave a shit. Any discerning reader would understand that this is a question of quality, not quantity.
And the question remains.
zohan wrote:
Sam F wrote:as it turns out no one on the us postal service team was particularly promising before the use of EPO. Lance actually failed to finish the tour multiple times, his best overall position was 97th and then he droped out at stage 12(92), so there is really slim evidence to suggest that he was "one of the greatest" unless you mean a$$hole, or doper.
This doesn't get brought up enough.
That's probably THE thing I look for when I suspect someone of doping. Do they go from just being a national level athlete then suddenly jump up to world class? The second is if they are putting up crazy performances well past their prime.
Lance was world class as a teenager. Won a world championship before cancer. Get your facts straight!
Broken Record wrote:
I don't think it's a defense of his cheating. I think it's a statement of fact. How would you answer the question that was asked of Armstrong in the Oprah interview: (paraphrased) "Could you have won the TDF without doping?"
It goes without saying that Armstrong was one of the greatest cyclists in the world. The doping only ENHANCED his performance; it didn't CREATE his ability. We know that cycling is (or was) dirty and there seems to be an acceptance that the majority of competitors - at least the best ones - cheated. Again, with those things in mind, could Armstrong have won the TDF if he was the only favorite not doping?
If your answer is no, then you must also acknowledge that his PED use leveled the playing field.
"ENHANCED" but did not "CREATE". Wow, what a hilarious use of words to obscure reality.
What the heck is that even supposed to mean? If PEDs take a miler from 3:58 to 3:46 did they "CREATE" his ability or merely "ENHANCE" it?
Please try returning to the real world rather than hiding in funny word illusions. It's not so bad once you get used to it.
K5 wrote:
When is Nike going to return all the money it made off of Lance to its customers?
Great point! And what about all of the other riders, sponsors, teams, an entire industry and even the UCI itself? ALL profited from "Lance's" lie. Drugs were part of the culture of cycling way before Lance. Jealous Tygart's choice to make Lance a scapegoat while protecting the monied interests is the real fraud.
God damn you are dumb. You HONESTLY think epo or blood dopoing can take a 3:58 miler and make them a 3:46 miler? Not to mention cycling and track are different sports so your comparison would hold no water even if it weren't ignorant.
Dial it up wrote:
Recognizer of Forked Tongue wrote:"ENHANCED" but did not "CREATE". Wow, what a hilarious use of words to obscure reality.
What the heck is that even supposed to mean? If PEDs take a miler from 3:58 to 3:46 did they "CREATE" his ability or merely "ENHANCE" it?
Please try returning to the real world rather than hiding in funny word illusions. It's not so bad once you get used to it.
God damn you are dumb. You HONESTLY think epo or blood dopoing can take a 3:58 miler and make them a 3:46 miler? Not to mention cycling and track are different sports so your comparison would hold no water even if it weren't ignorant.
Recognizing you as the most moronic of all the LetsRun trolls. Well, at least you are the 'most' something.
I think that he has done remarkably good things for people, and that he was a tremendous athlete, but that to his core he is an awful human being, much like his buddy AlSal.
Recognizer of Forked Tongue wrote:
Dial it up wrote:God damn you are dumb. You HONESTLY think epo or blood dopoing can take a 3:58 miler and make them a 3:46 miler? Not to mention cycling and track are different sports so your comparison would hold no water even if it weren't ignorant.
Recognizing you as the most moronic of all the LetsRun trolls. Well, at least you are the 'most' something.
Since the morons here couldn't possibly be you two guys, please show me, with examples, how epo or blood doping have produced an improvement in performance equal to going from 3:58 to 3:46 in the mile. Thanks in advance
That made no sense to me, and it's why he is suffering now.
Ramzi went from 3:39 to 3:30 in 11 months on CERA.
fred wrote:
Ramzi went from 3:39 to 3:30 in 11 months on CERA.
While not close to 3:58-3:46 that's a damned good example.
Prepare to be ripped apart on that technicality.
Sam F wrote:
failed to finish the tour multiple times, his best overall position was 97th and then he droped out at stage 12(92), so there is really slim evidence to suggest that he was "one of the greatest" unless you mean a$$hole, or doper.
This.
When he came down the justice level oft the world rose.
Cycling fans had followed his chicaneries in the doping subforum for quite some while. I still laugh about the sheeple praising his cancer shield "work".
Gary Oldman wrote:
fred wrote:Ramzi went from 3:39 to 3:30 in 11 months on CERA.
While not close to 3:58-3:46 that's a damned good example.
Prepare to be ripped apart on that technicality.
Lance didn't have CERA
9 seconds isn't 12 seconds. The difference between a 3:46 and 3:49 mile is large
All of those 9 seconds was NOT due to CERA. The guy was 21 or 22 years old. Some of that improvement is maturity just like American kids who get faster their junior and senior years.
EPO works and it works dramatically. In a 4 week controlled study, EPO improved time to exhaustion by 54% among amateur but already fit cyclists. Reviews of the study have stated that the effect of EPO on elite athletes would likely be less and noted the difficulty of correlating exhaustion point to race performance effect. However, the review conservatively estimated the performance benefit of EPO in an elite endurance race at somewhere around 5 %.
http://sportsscientists.com/2007/11/the-effect-of-epo-on-performance/
If we used that conservative 5 % number on a clean 3:58 miler he becomes a surprise -3:46 miler. (238 secs x .95= 226.1 secs = 3 mins 46 secs). I agree that it is difficult to correlate performance benefits between cycling and running, particularly in a shorter event like the mile. But we are talking about cycling and Lance so back to Lance.
There is little doubt Lance used hgh/ steroids/ and EPO in the early-mid 90s prior to cancer when he was "only" a mid tier Tour de France rider.
If he had to use some amt. of hgh/ steroids/ epo just to keep his spot on the Tour in the early 90s I have a hard time believing the "I only used a little EPO and it didn't help that much and I would have won if only everybody else had played fair to begin with" narrative he pushed during the Oprah interview.
If we assume he was totally clean out of cycling 2005-2008 (which I'm not entirely sure) , his marathon performances between 2:55 and 2:45 are respectable for a moderate training level but not truly remarkable. (My one and only marathon performance was 2:53 off of three months of 30 mile per week training and I can guarantee you I do not have worldly, national, or neighborhood class talent). Lance was a very , very good youth swimmer but not phenomenal.
If you believe his claim that he was clean in the 2009 and 2010 Tour I would like to sell you some waterfront property in Florida.
In the end, there is no reason to believe that Lance had natural otherworldly physical talent. His killer instinct and willingness to do whatever it took were what made him the dominant athlete in an already corrupt sport. Without the drugs he would have been just another bike geek with an attitude-
You aren't at ALL familiar with the cycling community are you? To say Lance didn't have unreal physical gifts is so asinine that it's almost impressive. Almost as dumb as trying to use a study showing hobby jogger equivalent CYCLISTS to compare an ok college miler to the American record holder in the mile time wise.
Your other point about lance not being great immediately upon entering the tour: refer to the first sentence of my post
fred wrote:
Ramzi went from 3:39 to 3:30 in 11 months on CERA.
In addition Cathal Lombard went from 29-30/30 mins for 10k to 27-30 for 10k on EPO. It does seem that some athletes are strong responders to EPO.
Am I familiar with the cycling community? Yes. Am I a Cat I rider? No. Were Geroge Hincapie and Stephen Swart. Yes. Do they think EPO was necessary for Armstrong to compete on the tour? Yes.
"In one statement, former Armstrong teammate George Hincapie said he and Armstrong started using the blood booster EPO around 1995 or '96 because they felt they otherwise could not compete. Another cyclist, Stephen Swart, said in his statement that he knew his teammates on the 1995 Tour de France team were using EPO, including Armstrong."
Do I think in an "ideal" drug free world Lance Armstrong had the talent to hang with the top 200 Tour de France Riders? Almost certainly.
Do I think his one of a kind killer instinct would have allowed him to be one of the 10-20 GC riders vying for the yellow jersey during his prime? Probably.
Do I think he would have plotted, gutted, and forced his way into one or two tour victories? Maybe.
In this drug free world would he have won seven tours, become an international superstar and multi-milllionaire. Absolutely not.
To your objections regarding epo performance study. I stated the limitations of the study up front. But the study shows epo works not just to increase red blood cell count but also to significantly improve endurance performance.
If you have a better study on elite cycling/ track athletes or otherwise I'd be interested in the results. Unfortunately, so would WADA and the IAAF and that study is not going to happen.
I don't understand why you or anyone else continues to buy into Lance's cult of exceptionalism propaganda. It has been demonstrated by reanalysis of blood samples, teammate statements and his own admissions that EPO and other drugs were absolutely necessary and critical to his success. Accept it and move on-