Latest Armstrong stuff ... Hey, look! A dead horse!!!

Since I don't think this board has talked about drugs enough ... after reading Armstrong's latest cry to the AP about how he never did anything ... I almost believed him for the first time in a long time.

I know I've read some guys on the board say they were sure he used, but the thing that kind of sold me this time around his how willing he is to go to court and how often he wins there. It's one thing to fight the battle in the newspapers, but it's another to consistently win in court, I think. You couldn't ever really buy what the guys who denied Canseco's stuff were selling because they didn't really ever fight it — they just denied and went on with their lives. Same goes with Bonds and Game of Shadows. Armstrong doesn't play around though. Either he is far and away the best cheat ever and he was VERY VERY VERY careful even when this stuff wasn't nearly as big as it is today, or ... he didn't actually do it.

 

Paging Mizzou...Mizzou to this thread please

 

Ty: Do you take drugs, Danny?

Danny: Every day.

 

Pilot,

From reading most professors/medical professionals on this through the years, it seems an athlete just doesn't have to be all that careful to beat these tests.

Reasonably careful, yes, but not meticulous.

If the new cliche is true, that the "good science" (testing) lags years behind the "bad science" (doping), then it's either a fluke or a case of idiocy when an athlete does manage to test positive.

Any corrections/clarifications/illuminations welcome.

 

The reason the public believes that Armstrong is clean is because the public wants to believe Armstrong is clean... Nobody wants to look at the faggy yellow bracelets that everybody is wearing to help cancer research and think that the inspiration for all of that is a druggy and a cheater...

A good friend of mine has covered cycling for years and worships Armstrong in a way that is completely unhealthy for any journalist. That said, when I asked him point blank if Armstrong was juicing, there was no pause before he said, "Oh, of course..."

 

First of all, you can do better than "faggy yellow bracelets." Honest, you can.
Are you going to argue that, if Armstrong was using, all the work he's done raising money for cancer awareness, to say nothing of the courage it took for his own recovery, are somehow cheapened because he may have taken something to help win a bike race?
And people say the doping "scandals" are blown out of proportion.

 

Do I think Armstrong would have had the success he's had raising money for cancer research if people knew he was a cheater? That's a no-brainer... Would it take away from what he's done? Of course it would...

If Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmeiro started raising money for even the purest of charities, I'm guessing they would get little to no support...

Armstrong was the guy who trotted out his wife and kids after winning the Tour when everybody covering the event knew he had left her months before and was already seeing Sheryl Crow...

The guy is a fraud. He's done incredible work for cancer research and he should be commended for being able to battle back from cancer to ride again, but he's still a fraud.

 

Well put, Mizzou.

I read a week or two ago -- can't find the SI.com column now -- that someone claims to have heard Armstrong tell doctors he used steroids before he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The list included one steroid that can lead to testicular cancer, which means all that awareness and money raised to come back from testicular cancer were caused by steroids in the first place.

I wish I could find that column, though.

 

Gee.
I, for one, am shocked.

 

i forget where i read this, maybe NYT, but someone wrote testicular cancer is a side effect of prolonged steroid use, so armstrong may have contributed to his own cancer.

this is all third-hand.

 

Why hasn't he ever been caught? I don't ask exactly because I think he didn't do it, but because I'm amazed that after all these years it hasn't really come out that he did. As far as I know (and I don't actually know too much about it, so tell me, please) the best evidence against him is logic and the fact that he is sneaky about other stuff.

Of course there's a tremendous amount of money at stake for him, but it would seem money would lure someone else to really out him in a way that can't be refuted, be it a bullet proof book, a libel case, that deal with the bonus money ... why hasn't any of that happened?

As someone only a little educated on the issue, but interested nevertheless, at some point I have to wonder ... maybe he didn't do it.