God bless you, Lance Armstrong
By: dgun
August 25th, 2012
9:31 pm
If there is one thing all American's should be able to dispassionately agree on, it's that Lance Armstrong is awesome. Unfortunately, although he has never failed a drug test, Lance Armstrong has been harassed and pursued by an overzealous non-governmental agency over allegations of blood doping, the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
Although U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks dismissed a case that would have blocked the USADA from continuing its pissing contest with Armstrong, he stated he had misgivings concerning the agency's conduct. Afterward, following Armstrong's decision not to follow through with arbitration, the USADA claims to have stripped Armstrong of his 7 Tour de France victories.
The USADA has about as much authority to strip Tour de France victories as it has authority to raise an army and invade a foreign country. The whole idea is stupid. You know what else is stupid? This private organization, without government oversight, is partially funded with tax payer money.
I think tax payer money would be better spent NOT attacking and hounding a national hero. Did Armstrong dope? Armstrong passed all the drug tests. This should have been the beginning and end of it.
Oh, by the way, in three of the Tours that the USADA claims to have stripped, Jan Ullrich finished second, meaning he would be the winner. Mr. Ullrich was recently banned from cycling for doping.
Post Reply
28 comments on "God bless you, Lance Armstrong"
August 25, 2012 at 10:01 pm
Well said.
I think the problem here, the reason Armstrong can never reach the end point, is that he must prove a negative. It's not for nothing that our standard of justice requires that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and not the reverse.
Armstrong is not in court, which is sadly ironic, because he is being asked to prove his innocence, which is well-nigh impossible. Hundreds of tests, all of which he passed, cannot prove it; his own word cannot prove it, against the possibility that contrary witnesses might be right, or against the possibility that he was clever enough to evade the testing technology.
For this reason I choose to believe Mr. Armstrong's account, until it is proven otherwise. And abdicating in an arbitration agreement proves nothing.
August 26, 2012 at 4:28 am
Hold on there. Admitted dopers and additional evidence says otherwise:
http://news.discovery.com/adventure/...ng-120614.html
He shoulda quit and not comeback.
Regards from Rosie
August 26, 2012 at 5:11 am
Hold on there. Admitted dopers and additional evidence says otherwise:
http://news.discovery.com/adventure/...ng-120614.html
He shoulda quit and not comeback.
Regards from Rosie
August 26, 2012 at 5:30 am
Your citation goes to my point exactly. It lists the suspicions and allegations.
Red blood cell boosting. growth hormone and self-transfusion are not 'doping' like steroid use is...but are still cheating methods.
You understand the implications now?
It is plenty enuff for the Tour de France organization to strip the seven victories when the suspicious results and the testimony gets the official endorsement of the USADA.
More than enuff. Loads of smoke encircling the fire.
Regards from Rosie
August 26, 2012 at 5:59 am
Which are strong enough to not be worth fighting - even with all of Armstrong's resources.
Red blood cell boosting. growth hormone and self-transfusion are not 'doping' like steroid use is...but are still cheating methods.
You understand the implications now?
And I understand more than ever why "innocent until proven guilty" matters.
August 26, 2012 at 6:33 am
I understand that you and many have settled on their narrative, and that by quitting the field Armstrong has given that position credence. I'll even grant that his guilt is quite possible.
And I understand more than ever why "innocent until proven guilty" matters.
Regards from Rosie
August 26, 2012 at 6:56 am
Innocent until proven guilty means exactly nothing in France.
Regards from Rosie
Nor is the cycling world unanimous in endorsing its authority here, according to this Assoc. Press report this morning.
August 26, 2012 at 7:17 am
True, more or less. And the United States Anti-Doping Agency is not French.
Nor is the cycling world unanimous in endorsing its authority here, according to this Assoc. Press report this morning.
Thinking otherwise is grasping at straws, which Armstrong himself has quit doing.
Regards from Rosie
August 26, 2012 at 7:40 am
Matters not at all if France accepts its authority. Since USADA is official for the Olympics, among other competitions. Tour de France officials have no reason not to accept its conclusions.
Thinking otherwise is grasping at straws, which Armstrong himself has quit doing.
Regards from Rosie
August 26, 2012 at 7:47 am
For a different opinion, in the Los Angeles Times, by Michael Hiltzik.
With the whole world atwitter over Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong's decision to drop his legal fight against anti-doping allegations, it's the right moment to be appalled at the travesty in sports this case represents.
It's not that the case will be seen as a major victory for sports anti-doping authorities. It's that the anti-doping system claiming its highest-profile quarry ever is the most thoroughly one-sided and dishonest legal regime anywhere in the world this side of Beijing.
It's a system deliberately designed to place almost insurmountable hurdles in the way of athletes defending themselves or appealing adverse findings. Evidence has emerged over the years that laboratories certified by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, have been incompetent at analyzing athletes' samples or fabricated results when they didn't get the numbers they were hoping to see.
Athletes' defense attorneys harbored some hope that by picking a fight with Lance Armstrong, the anti-doping system might have sowed the seeds for its own reform. Finally, it was thought, here was an athlete with the money and motivation to expose the legal sophistry, the pseudoscience, the sheer sloppiness that underlies sports anti-doping prosecutions all over the world.
Instead, the outcome shows that the system is so relentlessly rigged that even Lance Armstrong doesn't see a point in fighting it.
"We're talking about three, four, five years of litigation," says Mark Levinstein, a veteran sports lawyer and a member of Armstrong's legal team. "Who in his right mind would or could go through that?"
Before we go further, let's address the question most people think is the nub of the matter. Is Lance Armstrong a doper?
Here's the answer: I don't know. You don't know either. More to the point, Travis Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, doesn't know. That hasn't kept USADA from declaring Armstrong to be guilty of charges it has not proved in public, or to attempt to strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. (It's not yet clear that USADA has the latter authority.)
And there lies what is, in fact, the nub of the matter. It shouldn't matter if you believe Armstrong doped in winning his titles. You should still be appalled, even frightened, by the character of the prosecution.
In part that's because under the rules written by the anti-doping system, athletes' cases are heard not in a court of law but in arbitration. . . .
On the rare occasions when anti-doping prosecutors have to bring their cases before a legitimate court, they almost never win.
The biggest problem with the sports anti-doping system is that it's driven by anti-drug hysteria, not by reasoned judgments about what we expect from our athletes and what technological assistance should be permitted.
In any event, Mr. Hiltzik's column is worth a read.