Tour de France - poll (Lance Armstrong)

[Robb]

Just curious what y'all think of Lance's comeback, the craziness today in stage 3, who's Astana's lead rider, and what not. Was Lance doping? Is he now? Why do you think so?

Get your Tour09 opinions in here plz.

[kevster]

I voted no but you really need a 'probably no' column. The tour is riddled with drug cheats and it's not beyond the wit of man to think that he could have been doping at least at some point.

BTW, there's a long way to go this year - not in the mountains yet - and not convinced he'll win at all.

[wufwugy]

Absolutely yes. The best of the best athletes all dope. 100%. It is not logistically possible for them to not dope. The reason for this has to do with the limits of the human genome, and the effects that testosterone has on strength, speed, endurance, and recovery.

Look at it this way: think of the best athlete you can, and imagine he doesn't juice. Now imagine how unfathomably god-like he would be if he did juice. Exogenous testosterone will increase a natural's overall ability by like 25% (could possibly go as high as 40% or some shit). Give any best of the best athletes a 25% boost and they'll be running circles around the competition.

However, the more dominant an activity is in coordination, the less juice will aid performance. Cycling is not one of these sports, though. Cycling is one of the most basic physiological sports, and it's notorious for dopers. A sport like MMA will find more participants at or near the top not doped I think due to the high degree of experience and coordination involved. However, even with MMA I doubt there are few if any natties at the top.

Essentially, any sport with such elite competition that the athletes must train like 8 hours a day and expend physiological capacity to the max is a sport where you will find nothing but doping. If this wasn't true then we would be seeing gods among men whenever somebody chose to juice. We don't see this, though. We see some men slightly better than other men, and that's all

[XTR1000]

Tough question, since the edge between a clear case of doping and suspicous medicamentation is thin. I don´t care either way, as like wuf said everyones doping in one way or another anyway (most cyclists wouldn´t make it to paris without aid).

[UG]

I really hope not, but there's almost no way he did *not* juice.

Absolutely yes. The best of the best athletes all dope. 100%. It is not logistically possible for them to not dope. The reason for this has to do with the limits of the human genome, and the effects that testosterone has on strength, speed, endurance, and recovery.

Look at it this way: think of the best athlete you can, and imagine he doesn't juice. Now imagine how unfathomably god-like he would be if he did juice. Exogenous testosterone will increase a natural's overall ability by like 25% (could possibly go as high as 40% or some shit). Give any best of the best athletes a 25% boost and they'll be running circles around the competition.

However, the more dominant an activity is in coordination, the less juice will aid performance. Cycling is not one of these sports, though. Cycling is one of the most basic physiological sports, and it's notorious for dopers. A sport like MMA will find more participants at or near the top not doped I think due to the high degree of experience and coordination involved. However, even with MMA I doubt there are few if any natties at the top.

Essentially, any sport with such elite competition that the athletes must train like 8 hours a day and expend physiological capacity to the max is a sport where you will find nothing but doping. If this wasn't true then we would be seeing gods among men whenever somebody chose to juice. We don't see this, though. We see some men slightly better than other men, and that's all

Albert Pujols.

I agree with everything you said, btw, I'm just holding out hope for Pujols. The stories I've heard from teammates of mine that have played against/with him in high school and college are ridiculous. The guy is an absolute freak of nature and always has been. He's gone out on the line and said that he'd give back every dollar he's made from baseball if he's done steroids past or present. Not too many guys are saying stuff like that.

That said, I agree with all of what you said, and here's why. I played college baseball. I never juiced, but I knew a few guys that did and it helped them out tremendously. Ridiculous stuff, good for them. Anyway, at the first college I played at a 12+ year MLB veteran would always come back to work out during the off-season. I remember looking at him and thinking, and this is like 1999 or 2000, "holy shit I will never make it to the majors. this guy is a specimen, a genetic freak. I'm pretty athletic and all, but I am absolutely *nothing* compared to this guy." The guy had two separate muscles in his calves for fucksakes, something I had never seen before.

A few years ago his name was in the Mitchell Report. Now I know why he was a "genetic freak".



P.S. FYI, Pujols is 2-4 years older than what they say he is (allegedly). Some former teammates of mine used to ride him in college all the time about being way older than he supposedly was. Their recollection of his response, and I quote, "Das what my birf certificate say" with a shrug of the shoulders in a "what can I do about it" sort of way.

[BankItDrew]

These sort of claims demand solid evidence.

Innocent until proven guilty.

[wufwugy]

These sort of claims demand solid evidence.

Yes, they do. And we can never actually know. But when all the professionals and enthusiasts I've come across who have been heavily involved with highly competitive sports and aren't shilling for some company say the same thing, I can only wonder....

[Robb]

These sort of claims demand solid evidence.

Yes, they do. And we can never actually know. But when all the professionals and enthusiasts I've come across who have been heavily involved with highly competitive sports and aren't shilling for some company say the same thing, I can only wonder....

Drew, I totally agree - there's no smoking gun, but it seems there's lots of circumstantial evidence: works with a physiologist for 2.5 years who was convicted of helping more than 200 athletes dope, former teammates who say he did, some eyewitness (but uncorroborated) testimony, and overall dominance of a sport that has been proven to replete with dopers.

I hope he's clean and always has been and is just a freak.

FWIW, this year's tour seems wide open like it'll be a good one to follow, and (I know we're NOT allowed to post sports book bets on ftr - so I'm kidding here) I'm offering 2 to 1 odds that there's a slap fight between at least 2 of the top 4 Astana riders before they reach Paris.

[spoonitnow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfFI60NnZv0

I think people need to shut the fuck up and do something with their own goddamn life before they start talking shit.

[kevster]

These sort of claims demand solid evidence.

Yes, they do. And we can never actually know.

Yet you right a huge rant where you say everyone definitely is? Seems odd to me.

Steve Redgrave wons five golds at five different olympics and I'd be bloody amazed if he ever took steroids. He was simply a winner. That plus an unbelievable training programme of 2-3 sessions a day every day. Literally every single day for four years, then a race, then repeat.

[kevster]

These sort of claims demand solid evidence.

Yes, they do. And we can never actually know.

Yet you right a huge rant where you say everyone definitely is? Seems odd to me.

Steve Redgrave wons five golds at five different olympics and I'd be bloody amazed if he ever took steroids. He was simply a winner. That plus an unbelievable training programme of 2-3 sessions a day every day. Literally every single day for four years, then a race, then repeat.

[bigred]

@UG

Pujols found to be cheating...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF4dq2I76QY

[flomo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfFI60NnZv0

I think people need to shut the fuck up and do something with their own goddamn life before they start talking shit.

yep

[bigspenda73]

haven't read any responses but it's pretty clear everyone is doping in every sport at the moment. The problem w/ trying to be clean is that you're giving up a huge advantage to those doping, so it's just a vicious cycle that results in the whole world doing illegal performance enhancing drugs. Only people that get robbed are those from the past (although they too could have been doping) that are having their records broken every year.

[Jack Sawyer]

nicotine patches in a poker tournament = doping.

discuss.

[givememyleg]

i vote who the fuck cares if he is doping or not... he is still an amazing inspiration for us all

[BankItDrew]

Excellent evidence guys, it'll all hold up in court.

[swiggidy]

i vote who the fuck cares if he is doping or not... he is still a douchebag

[wufwugy]

These sort of claims demand solid evidence.

Yes, they do. And we can never actually know.

Yet you right a huge rant where you say everyone definitely is? Seems odd to me.

Steve Redgrave wons five golds at five different olympics and I'd be bloody amazed if he ever took steroids. He was simply a winner. That plus an unbelievable training programme of 2-3 sessions a day every day. Literally every single day for four years, then a race, then repeat.

I didn't word that well. Almost everybody is doping, pretty much everybody, this is due to data gathered and physiological understanding, but we can never actually know for sure if an individual is doping unless we catch them. It is possible that that person was born with a genetic mutation that allows them to be so much better than everybody else, but the likelyhood of this is ridiculously low.

This is also not something I'm going to argue about since my experience has shown me that those who think that drugs are not at almost all, if not all, corners of highly competitive sports have no understanding of exercise physiology.

The majority of those who do understand exercise physiology see notions that the greats not doping as being kind of ridiculous since doping makes a HUGE difference, and all that athlete would have to do is start doping and he would make the competition look like children.

That is, however, possible. It is possible that Lance was born with different genes than the rest of the human race, we see this type of thing happen in other arenas (super high IQ, super strong bones, super resistance to certain diseases, super resistance to cold, this is all real stuff that some people alive today were born with), but it doesn't negate the fact that when related to normal people, the level that the elites are at is a doped level, and due to the almost infinitesimal amounts of super humans that actually exist we can conclude that the vast majority of elite athletes are dopers

It's a numbers game

And yeah it won't hold up in court, but so what? Our courts have convicted many innocent people, and set free many guilty people. I don't think any differently of any athlete who dopes. In fact, I encourage doping. If we took drugs out of the NFL it would be boring because everybody would be small and slow. Like it was back in the beginning.

Also, keep in mind that some drugs are 100% undetectable. Like growth hormone. It is a wonderful drug which so many athletes use, but nobody can actually know unless the athlete says so. Also, keep in mind that dopers almost always lie about doping. This is super standard. You can bet your entire bankroll that I would dope if a professional athlete, and that I would lie about it, it's just he name of the game. Even most casual people who dope for personal reasons lie about it. Spend some time on powerlifting forums. There you'll find that they all make no secret that 100% of elite powerlifters dope, yet very few of them actually admit to doing it personally. This is because it's illegal and taboo. Same thing in the big sports, but with tons of money behind.

[BankItDrew]

But, did you see the Lance Armstrong commercial?

[bjsaust]

I say no. The most tested man in sporting history, including multiple retests as detection technology improved (i.e., even if he was smart enough to beat the tests at the time, tech moved past that). Plus his arguments about why he'd never do that to his body just make too much sense.

[Lukie]

a strong correlation can be made with many other subjects on this basis: what you've always been told (and perhaps some sensational advertising) versus what makes logical sense.

[Monty3038]

Since this is the commune...

Lance Armstrong was a great athlete... till I found out he cheated on his wife. Now he's just a dick.