Lance Armstrong ESPN 30 for 30

[Proximal]

30 for 30 is a great series on ESPN. There is a two-parter on him, two hours each.

The dude is smooth - says the right things and is so good in front of the camera. I never realized he was sued for 100 million, but settled for 5 million.

And if you watched any of the Chicago Bulls / M.J. documentary, you’ll quickly see that he has the exact same killer mentality and disregard for his peers as M.J. F’n hilarious watching his friends trying to just have him put his seat belt on.

[SampsonandDelilah]

Have it set to record on my DVR. Say what you want about him, the dude was a fierce competitor.
30 for 30 is amazing, they’re produced so well. There’s also an E:60 on ESPN about Alex Smith (NFL QB) and his comeback attempt for a nasty leg break that almost cost him his leg and his life. Good stuff. ESPN has done a pretty damn good job of filling content when there’s no live sports to cover.

30 for 30 is a great series on ESPN. There is a two-parter on him, two hours each.

The dude is smooth - says the right things and is so good in front of the camera. I never realized he was sued for 100 million, but settled for 5 million.

And if you watched any of the Chicago Bulls / M.J. documentary, you’ll quickly see that he has the exact same killer mentality and disregard for his peers as M.J. F’n hilarious watching his friends trying to just have him put his seat belt on.

[Proximal]

Have it set to record on my DVR. Say what you want about him, the dude was a fierce competitor.
30 for 30 is amazing, they’re produced so well. There’s also an E:60 on ESPN about Alex Smith (NFL QB) and his comeback attempt for a nasty leg break that almost cost him his leg and his life. Good stuff. ESPN has done a pretty damn good job of filling content when there’s no live sports to cover.

This 30 for 30 really shows his competitiveness & drive, insane! And nobody was going to tell him to wear his seatbelt, lol.

Seriously, was just thinking of you and hoping that you are doing o.k.

[Proximal]

The persecution of Armstrong was an absolute travesty, IMHO.
We encourage athletes to be better - you get paid more when you win.
PEDs help you win.
All your peers are using PEDs.
You are winning! We love you! Here is some more money!
But wait, PEDs are BAD!!
Did you take PEDs?!?!
We hate you! Give us our money back!

Like wtf is anyone supposed to say in that case. Oh yeah, I totally took all the PEDs and you loved me for it. And now we are turning on these athletes because they did what we wanted all along?

The epitome of hypocrisy right there.

And I’m with you, but he was a d-bag & threw people under the bus. That’s my gripe.

I’m re-reading a book called “the secret race” by his teammate Tyler Hamilton. The book is great in that it gives complete details of their doping.

I think Lance already lied on this documentary when he said he only did HGH one year in 1996.

My God is he smooth on this show.

[Mooseman33]

lance is a fucking piece of dogshit.

Has nothing to do with PEDs, its how he treated others and destroyed other people because deep down he is a bitch.

[Proximal]

lance is a fucking piece of dogshit.

Has nothing to do with PEDs, its how he treated others and destroyed other people because deep down he is a bitch.

In terms of the doping, I was ok.

But he f’d a lot of people and to that you’re 100% on the money.

[Beetlegeuse]

lance is a fucking piece of dogshit.

Has nothing to do with PEDs, its how he treated others and destroyed other people because deep down he is a bitch.

Fucking-A Right!

Yes, this is TOO DAMN LONG but it's a complicated story with many twists and turns.

The doping is SSDD. I found one reference stating a cyclist was busted for doping in a race in the 1860s, 160 years ago. Yes, there were pro races that far back. Through the first half of the 20th Century, the axiom was that road cyclists ran on "cocaine and chloroform." Which did nothing to improve performance but it did make the exhaustion and the pain endurable.

If you didn't know, riding a bicycle hard hurts. As 3x-TdF winner Greg Lemond famously said, "It doesn't get any easier, you just get faster." The first Tour de France (1903) covered 1509 miles in six days. The bikes weighed probably 35 lbs (20 lbs more than today's regulated minimum weight), only had one gear (multiple gears wouldn't be allowed until 1937 because race organizers wanted to prevent the racing become about 'technology').

And the rules didn't permit any outside support. Meaning riders started the day with all the spare tires and tools they anticipated needing either on their body or on the bike. There's a famous story about a racer who broke his front fork during the 1913 TdF so he carried the bike six miles to the next town up the road, borrowed a blacksmith's hearth and re-forged it himself, then returned to the race. But the repair didn't hold.

Under these conditions, riders were asked to cover an average of 250 miles a day for six straight days, on few or no paved roads. Of the 60 riders who started that first Tour de France, only 21 reached the finish. Races eventually covered shorter distances per day but the Tour grew from six days to 20 or 21 and total race distance increased to 2100-2300 miles.

In the second Tour de France (1904), the guy who'd won the first TdF was caught cheating. He short-cut the circuit. On a train.

So cheating any and every way possible is woven into the fabric of professional roadracing.

Riders in the 1924 Tour had a bitch session with the tour organizer. One of the racers present had been the previous year's winner, and he literally showed the tour organizer (Henri Desgrange) his stash of coke and chloroform as proof of what extreme measures riders were forced to resort to because of the arduousness of the racecourse he had laid out.

The Tour de France has had anti-doping rules since the start but incomprehensibly they made no efforts to enforce them until 1966. And then it was only eyewash, as illustrated by the fact that the very next year (1967), Englishman Tom Simpson's heart exploded while the was climbing one of the hardest mountains in the Tour, Mont Ventoux. And he was found to have a handful of amphetamine tablets in his jersey pocket. Since WWII, amphetamines had replaced cocaine and chloroform, and the speed turned off the signals to Simpson's brain that should have told he he was over-exerting.


Pharmstrong was the head of an international crime syndicate. To an extent, there's somebody in that role on every pro cycling team because you can't compete at that level without some manner of a doping program. You have to make provisions for your riders to get the good shit, that they administer it when it's most effective, and that they don't get caught in the process. And this all has to take place in multiple countries so participating in modern pro roadracing of necessity involves international drug smuggling.

The reason doping has become so indispensable is EPO. The old drugs didn't make riders faster, they just adulterated pain. Nobody knows for sure when but probably in 1987 (+/- 1 year) EPO arrived in pro cycling. There had been blood boosting before that, removing a pint of blood to be added back at a critical period in the race, but that initially was flawed for a number of reasons. The blood had a limited lifespan but it needed to be drawn far enough in advance that the rider had had time to recover from the effects of the donation. EPO was like a bag of blood you could take every day with NO side effects.

The last time there was a TdF winner who as yet is under no (credible) suspicion of doping was Greg Lemond. His last win was in 1990, so we've got 30 years of TdF winners who are suspected of or proved to have doped. The organizers of the Tour (ASO) wiped all the results from the seven TdFs that Pharmstrong originally was proclaimed the winner of (1999-2005) because they couldn't figure out how to go down the roster and determine the best-finishing rider who hadn't doped. That's how pervasive it was. And is.

Most of the sports press knew Pharmstrong was doping after his 1999 TdF win because of his "plowhorse to racehorse" transformation, because such a dramatic change is the hallmark of adopting a doping program. Pharmstrong before cancer was a good "classics" (one-day) racer but at best a mediocre (multi-day) stage racer. After cancer, he dominated the stage races.

At first Pharmstrong claimed it was due to the weight loss from the chemo. Or his new coach, Chris Carmichael. Or his re-dedication to the sport so he could be a champion for his anti-cancer charity. But the truth was the man of the hour was Pharmstrong's doping doctor, Michele Ferrari, the foremost expert on blood vector doping on the planet. And Pharmstrong had retained his services exclusively.

Pharmstrong's most vocal opponent from the outset was Irish sports writer David Walsh. In 1999 Walsh knew Pharmstrong HAD TO BE doped and wrote he as much. Which is why he was on the top of Pharmstrong's shit list when he began his scorched earth character assassination attacks against anyone who publicly outed him.

Pharmstrong sued Walsh and his newspaper (the newspaper sheltered Walsh) for $1 million for libel and received a settlement of $300,000 (which he had to give back, plus another $400,000+, after his come-to-Oprah confession).

The reason Pharmstrong's team was so uniformly successful was because of the comprehensive nature of his doping program. After their investigation, USADA issued a report called "Reasoned Decision" in which they labeled it "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen." The first thing was, everybody on the team had to dope. In part because its the task of all the worker bees sacrifice their own goals in their effort to aid the team captain in achieving his. So Pharmstrong performed better because his teammates performed better.

Their nickname was "the big blue train" because when all of them hunkered down to set the tempo of the race, they were so blazing fast it exhausted all of the other teams to keep up. Pharmstrong called it "gettin' out the 'hurt stick.'" And it was a treatment he usually reserved for when someone on one of the other teams had pissed him off. But they could pull it off because blood vector doping makes that much difference to performance, and they were uniformly the best-doped team in the sport.

But he also made everybody dope because that made them jointly culpable. They couldn't rat on Pharmstrong without also incriminating themselves. One of his most stalwart supporters had been Frankie Andreu, who begrudgingly started doping. Then his wife, a sparkplug by name of Betsy, found out her husband was doping. First she saw him performing at a level she thought was unnatural. Then she and husband Frankie were present in the hospital room when Pharmstrong admitted to a cancer doctor that he had been taking a cocktail of drugs including EPO, testosterone and HGH. So she forced Frankie to quit the team.

In 1998, the year before Pharmstrong's return to the Tour, an assistant on the Festina team got caught by border police driving a team car with a trunk full of doping products. After the Festina Affair, Pharmstrong realized that the biggest vulnerability of any doping program was the presence of the doping product itself. So he came up with a plan to keep the PEDs out of the riders' possessions until the minute they were going to administer it.

The linchpin to the plan was some random guy who worked in a bike shop in France who became known as "moto man." While the TdF was in progress, moto man kept their drug stash. He would be notified in advance of when and where to be and what drugs to bring and he would bring the PEDs in insulated saddlebags on his motorbike. Then he'd just hang out near where the teams all would be parking their motor coaches until he was called. The fact that he was on a motorbike allowed him to remain mobile despite the sorts of traffic jams that inevitably follow a stage of the Tour. When the team was ready for them, they would leave their motor coach unattended and then someone (probably team director Johan Bruyneel) would call moto man on a burner phone to tell him to make his delivery. Then moto man would let himself into the team's bus and place a loaded syringe in one of each of the team's shoes and leave. So everyone on the team maintained plausible deniability because none of them ever had direct contact with moto man.

Then the racers would return to the bus and shoot up, put the spent syringe inside of an empty coke can and crush the can. Then one of their assistants would take all the cans out and put them in a public trash receptacle some distance away.

It was an undeniably brilliant operation.

Along the way the Pharmstrong myths evolved. The first (which came up shortly after he resumed racing in 1998) was that his abnormally large heart made him a superior racer. Except 90% of all endurance athlete have an abnormally large heart. It's called Athletic Heart Syndrome, which I happen to have. Big fucking deal.

And he never tested positive. BULLSHIT. He had two positives during the 1999 Tour de France, his first "win.". And both got swept under the rug. Why? Because he brought something with him all tied up with a pretty pink ribbon that the organizers of professional cycling had been lusting after for half a century. Access to a significant fan base in America.

Greg Lemond -- who I would remind you was CLEAN -- didn't give them that, and his story was even more dramatic than Pharmstrong's. He'd won the 1986 TdF despite a rival teammate trying to undermine him. He missed the 1987 TdF because he was still recovering from having been accidentally shot by his brother-in-law while turkey hunting. To this day he has 14 birdshot pellets in the lining of his heart because doctors were afraid removing them would kill him. And they found out during the operations to treat the gunshot wounds that he only ever had one functioning kidney.

When he finally returned to the Tour in 1989, everybody thought Greg was one-and-done so no respectable team would have him. So he pieced together his own bargain basement team from has-beens and never wuzzes. And it remains certifiably the WORST team of any TdF winner in all of history. Only three of his eight teammates were still in the race at the finish.

And he won the '89 tour by eight seconds. Eight. He was in 2nd place by 50 seconds at the start of the final stage of the race, an individual time trial. The entire world had written him off but Lemond picked up 58 seconds. After 21 days and 2041 miles of racing, after 87 hours 38 minutes and 35 seconds in the saddle, it all came down to eight. little. seconds.

But cycling was still too "European," too fringe for American tastes. Pharmstrong, OTOH, was Cancer Jesus. He had a legion of millions of fanbois. And it made no difference to them whether he rode a bicycle in the Tour de France or drove a stock car at Daytona. They just wanted to touch the hem of his garment.

Another of the myths was that he was "the most tested athlete in history." Except that doesn't jive with the historical record. He claimed he'd passed more than 500 drug tests but the actual number of times tested was less than 100. Women's cycling great Jeannie Longo actually has been tested more than 500 times, and probably is the most tested athlete in history.

But back to 1999 and the failed doping controls. Lance was getting a massage from his personal assistant (a 'soigneur' say "swan-yur," in cycling-speak), a mere slip of an Irish lass by name of Emma O'Reilly. And a call comes in for Lance from team director Bruyneel. Pharmstrong is told over the phone that he's tested positive for a corticosteroid. The conversation continues as they hatch a plot to find a doctor who will write Pharmstrong a back-dated prescription for a cortisone ointment as a treatment for saddle sores (folliculitis, a common problem and the bane of every serious cyclists's existence).

The thing is, his soigneur had just massaged his bum. In fact she massaged it every day. She knew it like the back of her own hand. And the one thing she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt. He didn't have any saddle sore.

When Pharmstrong hangs up the phone, he looks at O'Reilly and tells her "Now, Emma, you know enough to bring me down."

They managed to find a doctor to write the fraudulent script, which they turned over to the cycling authorities. And the doping charges went away. Never a word leaked to the press. Omertà.

But here's the thing. The prescription shouldn't have made any difference. A pro cyclist isn't permitted to take anything on the prohibited list unless he's been granted a TUE, a therapeutic use exemption, in advance of administration. Simply having a script doesn't cut it. And Pharmstrong NEVER so much as made application for a TUE for the cortisone. But he was given a pass by the cycling powers-that-be anyway because he was Cancer Jesus, and Cancer Jesus had a ready-made congregation of worshipers.

He failed another control that same race (at least one) but it never saw the light of day either.

When Emma didn't rat out Pharmastrong he drew her closer by having her make PEDs pickups and deliveries for the team. She never knew what the small parcels she was fetching contained but under the circumstances they couldn't have been anything else. As an unspoken condition of her employment, she had tacitly agreed to be a drug smuggler for him.

Then O'Reilly gave an interview to David Walsh, the sports reporter, and she told the story about the conspiratorial telephone call and the backdated script for cortisone. Walsh published L.A. Confidentiel in 2004 with O'Reilly's story and several other first-hand accounts. The reason the name is spelled funny is because no English-speaking publishing company would touch the book for fear of reprisals from Pharmstrong's legion of attorneys, so Walsh had it published in France. And most of America still was in denial about Pharmstrong and doping, an you risked the wrath of his millions of sycophants if you published anything negative about him. Because he was Cancer Jesus, and he was giving them Euro-trash the what-fer.

Armstrong's reaction to Walsh's book? Walsh is nothing but a "fucking little troll" and O'Reilly shouldn't be believed because she's a drunken Irish whore.

So needless to say, after that Miss O'Reilly had a tough time finding work in her chosen profession.

Another revelation in the book was pro cyclist Steve Swart claiming Pharmstrong had paid him $50,000 not to contest the finish in a race in America in 1993 BC (Before Cancer). It was the third of three races in the Thrift Drug "Triple Crown" of cycling and there was a $1 million bonus for any rider who could win all three races. Pharmstrong had won the first two and he was investing in the chance of winning the $1 million bonus. Swart repeated the claim under oath in 2006.

In 2013, pro cyclist Roberto Gaggioli stated that Pharmstrong had paid him $100,000 to throw the same race.

After the TdF wins began, Pharmstrong hired a bike mechanic and all-around handy man named Mike Anderson for his estate in Austin. Mike took the work with the understanding that at some point Pharmstrong would front him the means to start his own bike shop. One of his jobs was grooming the mountain bike trails on Lance's sprawling estate, and he and Lance often went MTBing together.

One day a couple of years on, Lance was out of pocket but he hadn't bothered to tell USADA officials where he was. All pro cyclists have a "whereabouts" agreement and are subject to having to take an out of competition (OOC) PEDs control at any time. And not being available for an unannounced OOC carries the same penalty as failing the control. And the fact that he hadn't given his whereabout to USADA is a pretty good indication that he had a material reason for not letting them know where he was.

So Mike gets a telephone call from Lance. Lance thinks the USADA dope testers are trying to get onto his (gated) estate, so he wants Mike to get in his (Lance's) Chevy Suburban (with celebrity-tinted windows) and drive around on the compound so it appears plausible that Lance himself is out and about on the grounds. All to make it appear plausible that Lance was on the property (and not in violation of the whereabouts agreement) but merely (and innocently) incommunicado. His plan was to wait until the USADA guys had given up and gone home for the day, and when he finally heard from them he was just going fo claim he'd been home all along, he was just out bushhogging on the south forty, and there's poor to little cell phone reception out there.

After which Mike told Pharmstrong that he wasn't comfortable being his accomplice in such hijinks, so Lance fired him without clearly stating a reason. According to Mike he never made any negative statements about Pharmstrong in public after that but Lance was talking shit about him, personally and professionally. When Mike tried to contact Pharmstrong about that bike shop deal they'd discussed, Pharmstrong filed civil suit claiming Mike was trying to extort him. Which left Mike no choice but to protect his position by counter-suing. And according to Pharmstrong, Anderson was nothing more than a "disgruntled former employee."

So Lance had Mike blackballed from the sport. He never followed through on the agreement to put him into a shop of his own and Anderson had to move to New Zealand to find work.

No shit, New Zealand.

It bears mention that Pharmstrong eventually opened a bike shop of his own in the hipster Mecca of Austin, named Mello Johnny's. So maybe he was none too keen on having any part in setting up what would become a competitor to his own shop.

Pharmstrong retired for the first time in 2005, and his record probably would have remained unblemished if he had stayed retired. But in 2009 his pride got the better of him and he got the band back together for the purpose of contesting the Tour de France again.

The fly in that ointment was Floyd Landis. FLandis had ridden for Pharmstrong on the USPS team from 2002-2004 -- with distinction -- but then he committed the unpardonable sin. After 2004 he left Pharmstrong's team and went to Team Phonak, where he could be the team captain. Anybody who leaves Pharmstrong's employ without his expressed permission is shit, and anyone who leaves his service and has the gall to compete against him is lower than shit.

2006 was the first Lance-less TdF since 1999 and FLandis was the dark horse favorite. But he bonked on a critical stage, lost the lead overall in the race and everybody thought he was too far in the hole to make a come-back. But come-back he did, on the following stage, and in spectacualr fashion. He made up the deficit and gave himself a pretty decent lead, enough to cinch the overall victory.

Until he didn't. A couple of days after the conclusion of the tour, they announced that FLandis had tested positive for synthetic testosterone on that miraculous stage. I personally think he was railroaded. I've seen the data from the tests and I think the testing was thoroughly screwed up. All you need to know is that it was done in the French national laboratory, which is a bunch of French civil servants, not credential scientists, and you can figure out the rest. To this day Floyd admits he was on a PEDs cocktail on that day but Test simply wasn't on the menu. FWIW, I believe him, in no small part because the lab procedures were so obviously slipshod. In any case, FLandis made an ass of himself contesting the charges but to no avail and in 2007 he received a 2-year suspension.

So in 2009, FLandis naturally is looking for a team to get back into cycling on. And what to his wondering eye should appear but his old boss, Lance Pharmstrong, teaming up with the old Russian gang, Astana (a team historically known for its doping successes).

So FLandis lets it be known that he'd like to ride for Astana. And the reply from il capo di tutti capi (the boss of all bosses) was "go fuck yourself." Or words to that effect.

And that was the final nail in Pharmstrong's coffin, because hell hath no fury like a Mennonite scored. FLandis went to the Feds and spilled his guts. He told them everything he knew about the state of doping in pro cycling, and particularly about how Lance Pharmstrong's doping program was conducted in great detail.

And that opened the floodgates. In 2010, pro cyclist Tyler Hamilton, who had ridden for Lance for seven years, was called to testify in the Flandis Qui Tam investigation. And he told the truth, told that he had seen Pharmstrong take performance enhancing drugs.

Some time later the two crossed paths at Pharmstrong's favorite restaurant in his second home town of Aspen.



FLandis' Qui Tam case was being run by Jeff Novitzky, the same attorney who had spearheaded the BLACO investigation, so he clearly came to the dance knowing the lay of the land. The crux of the biscuit was the $30 million payment from USPS, because if Pharmstrong had violated the terms of that contract that amounted to embezzlement and the government might be entitled to treble damages. So the government could conceivably get back the 30, plus another $90 million in damages. Which comes pretty close to the sum total of what Pharmstrong earned as a pro cyclist.

There also was the matter of 30 bicycles Trek gave to the team. Pharmstrong autographed them and put them on eBay, claiming each one of them had been his personal ride. The truth is most of them never touched tire to tarmac before they went on eBay. And this could be construed as another case of embezzlement (or at least fraud) because that was not the purpose Trek had intended the bikes to be put to.

But what it was was money laundering. At any given time there were about 12 racers on a cycling team, and the PEDs for each rider ran to about $100,000 per year (including Dr. Ferrari's fees). And that money needed to come from an untraceable source. So that's what Pharmstrong applied the bikes to.

Everybody involved in training any of the other riders how and when to dope was effectively practicing medicine without a license. And whoever was orchestrating the purchasing and distribution of the PEDs was involved in distributing pharmaceuticals without a license.

Plus Pharmstrong lied under oath. He confessed as much to Oprah. And he encouraged others to lie under oath. Remember that conversation in the Aspen restaurant with Tyler Hamilton? It was captured on the restaurant's security cameras. And the Feds subpoenaed those tapes. Why? Pharmstrong as much as stated that he was aware that Hamilton was a witness against him, so those tapes would have contained evidence of witness intimidation.

Altogether I can see where Novitzky might have been pursuing charges of drug smuggling, embezzlement, money laundering, practicing medicine without license, transporting and distributing pharmaceuticals without license, perjury, suborning perjury/witness tampering, and witness intimidation.

A hell of a days work for Cancer Jesus.

Novitzky spent about $20 million on the investigation, almost in the costs of depositions, presumably because the fishing was rich and no matter where they cast there nets. Then in 2013, André Birotte, a US DA from San Francisco and noted Sheikh Obama (piss be upon him) sock puppet announced that the Feds were dropping the Pharnmstrong investigation without offering any explanation.

But USADA's Travis Tygart knew what a treasure trove of information DoJ had collected so he asked to be given all that evidence. And he got his first taste of the Pharmstrong legal team, who protested the transfer claiming USADA didn't have standing in the case and was on a sort of fishing expedition of their own. That took (IIRC) better than a year to resolve. But once USADA got the evidence (plus some depositions they themselves did to round out the information), they wrote their Reasoned Decision. Which called Pharmstrong about every name you could think of apart from a poor white boy.

But Pharmstrong's legal mongol horde persisted in a seemingly endless series of delaying tactics, so apparently he was willing to spend a very substantial portion of his estimated 120-million-ish dollar fortune in order to preserve the rest. When USADA finally settled for the $5 mil in 2018, it still would have been untold years before the case ever would have gone before a jury. And under best of circumstances, jurys are a fickle thing, and putting Jesus on trial would have made it all the dicier. So they settled for $5 million in 2018 rather than speculate on $100 million ... maybe ... in 2032 ... maybe.


Apart from repeatedly shitting on his underlings, Pharmstrong falsely represented himself as a warrior in the fight against cancer. His charity raised about half a billion (with a "B") dollars and most of it was spent on "raising cancer awareness," Which was Lance-speak for buying fuel for his private jet so he could fly to wherever to give a motivational speech. In the early years they did contribute some portion of what they raised to cancer research but by the time his fund raising machine was hitting on all eight cylinders they consumed everything they raised internally. So many of the sheeple still don't want him spoken ill of because all of the fictitious "good" he did for the cause of cancer but the truth is the bulk of that $500 million went out the tailpipe of his Gulfstream.

The first thing that chaps my ass about the way this turned out is that justice was not served. Pharmstrong got nowhere near the punishment he deserved. His name might have been scrubbed from the record books but he's still got the seven yellow jerseys -- and the tens of millions of dollars -- that the Frenchies gave him for winning those seven races. The seven jerseys hang on the wall of his living room, and he still uses them to taunt anyone who suggests he didn't really win those races.

And he's still living the lifestyle of the rich and famous, jet-setting around the world as suits his whim. Like OJ Simpson, he proved the Golden Rule. The more gold you have, the less shit you have to eat. But unlike Pharmstrong, OJ earned his millions honestly. Pharmstrong cheated his way to the top, all the way back to at least 1993 when he paid competitors to tank. But neither one of them deserve to be free men, much less free men living in luxury.

But what really gets my goat is that the sport didn't use the opportunity to clean up its act. They effectively killed their sport's biggest legend and gutted the integrity of the Tour de France but all they got in return was shut of Pharmstrong, Johan Bruyneel and Michele Ferrari. They didn't bother to get serious about eradicating the doping problem. Because if they had, either the riders would have reacted, in which case the speeds should have fallen notably. Or the riders wouldn't have reacted, in which case there should have been a YUGE upswing in the number of cyclists popped for PEDs. That neither of those two came to pass can only mean the worst. Cycling is as dirty as it ever was, and every race is won by the best doper who doesn't get caught.

[Beetlegeuse]

Lance ended up failing a PEDs control 10 or 12 times over his career but none of that became public knowledge until after he'd retired.. He tested positive for EPO in the 2002 Tour de Suisse but those allegations were dropped after Pharmstrong made a personal donation of $125,000 to the UCI (the governing body of international pro cycling) so they could buy more lab gear. Only he didn't make the check out to the UCI, he made it out to its president, "Fat" Pat McQuaid.

Even if the donation was legit, it still looked hinkey for a governing body to take money from a sportsman they govern.

Before 2005 there was no direct test for EPO. They only could test for hematocrit levels, and if your Hct was >50, they considered it a possible indication of doping but they still couldn't prove it. So if you broke 50 they'd give you a mandatory 2-week "health vacation" but no other penalty.

They first came up with a direct test in 2005 but they needed a way to confirm its effectiveness so they asked the ASO (the TdF people) if they could use some of their archived samples for testing. ASO freezes all the blood and urine samples they use for testing and keep them on file forever. So the ASO lent them a bunch of blood samples, which should have been anonymous because the tubes were identified only by a code number. Except someone managed to find out Pharmstrong's code number. And several of his samples, including some from 1999, tested positive for EPO.

France's leading sports periodical put the story on their front page.



But America chose not to believe them because they're ... well ... French. And they're just pissed because no Frenchman has won the Tour de France since 1985.

Some people choose not to believe he doped, even after he confessed it to Oprah.

[XnavyHMCS]

The persecution of Armstrong was an absolute travesty, IMHO.
We encourage athletes to be better - you get paid more when you win.
PEDs help you win.
All your peers are using PEDs.
You are winning! We love you! Here is some more money!
But wait, PEDs are BAD!!
Did you take PEDs?!?!
We hate you! Give us our money back!

Like wtf is anyone supposed to say in that case. Oh yeah, I totally took all the PEDs and you loved me for it. And now we are turning on these athletes because they did what we wanted all along?

The epitome of hypocrisy right there.

Very well stated, bro...!!!

Nice job.

[XnavyHMCS]

And I’m with you, but he was a d-bag & threw people under the bus. That’s my gripe.

I’m re-reading a book called “the secret race” by his teammate Tyler Hamilton. The book is great in that it gives complete details of their doping.

I think Lance already lied on this documentary when he said he only did HGH one year in 1996.

My God is he smooth on this show.

Great, here Prox.

[Proximal]

I think you’ll appreciate Tyler’s book called “The Secret Race”.

First off in overall pain-tolerance and a masochistic approach to a sport, these guys have it hands down. They simply love pain.

He has already made a convincing argument on why you had to dope to compete. And I sure wasn’t the Americans that were leading the way.

He was describing a race that he and his teammates were in their greatest shape going up a steep grade at a standard higher gear. The leader that was well ahead, deliberately dropped behind them, popped it into an insanely low gear and disappeared effortlessly ahead of them. They all agreed, instead of racing that day, he was so superior than them , he turned it into a training exercise.

While we thought EPO was hot shit, they moved onto perflurocarbons in 97.

I completely agree with Lance being a d-bag, but right now, I’m thinking the USA just as in the Olympics was trying to beat the Europeans at their own game.

Watching only the first part of this documentary, I fully can see how that last sentence of Beetle’s post rang true.

[Proximal]

Beetle regarding Lemond being clean and winning makes perfect sense at that time.

As Hamilton described, the team referred to each rider by their hematocrit number. Hamilton was a damn good rider but naturally his hematocrit was 43. As you stated, if y kept it below 50, nothing was done. So when he bumped his hematocrit to 49, he was a different animal. These were who the doctors were looking for for the team.

He mentioned another great rider on the team that naturally was a 48, and who admitted that the EPO didn’t add much of a performance bump. He was “naturally” great, but paled to a strong rider at 43 that became a beast at 49. The 48 was cut from the team.

I’m guessing that even though EPO was around in the mid-80’s, Lemond was naturally in the high 40’s allowing him to beat them due his abilities given to him from training.

Regarding the cortisone, the French gave Lance a pass because the same was done for a notable French cyclist in 97.

Add another drug to the list - Actovegin. I’m past 99 & 2000 a

Regarding Motoman, due to the now stringent rules in France, US riders were told to purchase and find their own suppliers. Only the top riders in 98 were on EPO, thus Motoman was a necessity.

Regarding “bribes” to help Lance win. In 99, Hamilton would relieve a $100,000 bonus if he “helped’ Lance win. Apparently, it was in many people’s interests if the guy won.

Again, an incredible book. Initially an EPO free Lance was getting smoked in Europe and Lance and all his teammates were in utter shock. Lance being Lance apparently would have none of that.

Edits / additions in italics as I read more.

[Proximal]

Holy f’n shit. Ferrari is a sadist. BF percentages kept under 4 %.

Recovery was premium, they f’n avoided walking when they could or even standing for any length of time. Stairs were a no-no. During races, dudes got carried up/down stairs.

[SampsonandDelilah]

Lance ended up failing a PEDs control 10 or 12 times over his career but none of that became public knowledge until after he'd retired.. He tested positive for EPO in the 2002 Tour de Suisse but those allegations were dropped after Pharmstrong made a personal donation of $125,000 to the UCI (the governing body of international pro cycling) so they could buy more lab gear. Only he didn't make the check out to the UCI, he made it out to its president, "Fat" Pat McQuaid.

Even if the donation was legit, it still looked hinkey for a governing body to take money from a sportsman they govern.

Before 2005 there was no direct test for EPO. They only could test for hematocrit levels, and if your Hct was >50, they considered it a possible indication of doping but they still couldn't prove it. So if you broke 50 they'd give you a mandatory 2-week "health vacation" but no other penalty.

They first came up with a direct test in 2005 but they needed a way to confirm its effectiveness so they asked the ASO (the TdF people) if they could use some of their archived samples for testing. ASO freezes all the blood and urine samples they use for testing and keep them on file forever. So the ASO lent them a bunch of blood samples, which should have been anonymous because the tubes were identified only by a code number. Except someone managed to find out Pharmstrong's code number. And several of his samples, including some from 1999, tested positive for EPO.

France's leading sports periodical put the story on their front page.



But America chose not to believe them because they're ... well ... French. And they're just pissed because no Frenchman has won the Tour de France since 1985.

Some people choose not to believe he doped, even after he confessed it to Oprah.

Do ever think about submitting your articles to websites for publication? You’re an amazing writer BG...like mind boggling sometimes.

[Proximal]

Lance ended up failing a PEDs control 10 or 12 times over his career but none of that became public knowledge until after he'd retired.. He tested positive for EPO in the 2002 Tour de Suisse but those allegations were dropped after Pharmstrong made a personal donation of $125,000 to the UCI (the governing body of international pro cycling) so they could buy more lab gear. Only he didn't make the check out to the UCI, he made it out to its president, "Fat" Pat McQuaid.

Even if the donation was legit, it still looked hinkey for a governing body to take money from a sportsman they govern.

Yeah, just past that part in the book. Look, the dude is a d-bag. I’m to the point where he rattled out a couple of racers, that were legitimately challenging him (one was Hamilton) and they had to go in for testing. The reason Hamilton knew was Floyd Landis told him he was ratted on by Lance.

But regarding the doping and the UCI accepting bribes? Dude if they are accepting bribes and you have to use to win, it seems like a no-brainer at this point. It was all $, $, $, $ . . . .

[Beetlegeuse]

If I was too subtle in my admittedly overly-long post, I'll be more succint. The upshot of Pharmstrong taking such a commanding position in the anti-cancer ecosystem was that he effectively skimmed a very substantial amount of money from it. I don't think that that was his goal when he set out to use cycling to make himself the world's most visible anti-cancer spokesman because his foundation at first did redirect some of its contributions to cancer research. But when his fund raising began hitting on all eight cylinders I think the temptation of those vast sums -- and the cushy lifestyle they bought him -- was too great. They stopped redirecting and began "consuming" the entirely of the donations internally.

He was a shit public speaker at the start but eventually became quite smooth. And sincere-sounding. Which probably is the biggest reason that so many of his sycophants still believe he did great things for the cause of cancer. But they also believe that all the money they donated actually did something to materially benefit cancer research and treatment. I happen to believe the exact opposite. That most of that money went to nothing more altruistic than helping him feed his ego, and his ego was and remains insatiable.

Beetle regarding Lemond being clean and winning makes perfect sense at that time.

As Hamilton described, the team referred to each rider by their hematocrit number. Hamilton was a damn good rider but naturally his hematocrit was 43. As you stated, if y kept it below 50, nothing was done. So when he bumped his hematocrit to 49, he was a different animal. These were who the doctors were looking for for the team.

He mentioned another great rider on the team that naturally was a 48, and who admitted that the EPO didn’t add much of a performance bump. He was “naturally” great, but paled to a strong rider at 43 that became a beast at 49. The 48 was cut from the team...

Lemond is famously needle-phobic and he never could have endured any (voluntary) treatment that required frequent injections. Plus, just a couple of years earlier Lemond was blowing Indurain's doors off but then in 1991, it was Big Mig who was putting Lemond on the trailer. Classic plowhorse-to-racehorse transformation.



This is a list of the worst TdF finishes by any rider who later went on to win. In 1987, Indurain came 97th. History shows that any rider with the potential to win GC in the TdF will show his promise in his first couple of appearances. Anything else is an anomaly.

Indurain abandoned his first two TdFs (1985 & 86), came 97th in his third and 47th in his fourth effort. In 1990, the year of Lemond's last win, Indurain came 10th, 12 minutes 47 seconds out of GC. He didn't manage to win GC until his seventh TdF.

In the immortal words of Lance Pharmstrong, that is "Not normal."

In contrast, Lemond came third in his first TdF, finishing second to his team captain, Bernie Hinault. He came second in 1985 but only because he was following team orders to nurse his injured captain (Hinault again) to the finish. And he won GC in 1986. A far different profile from Indu-train's, and much more representative of a rider with true natural GC potential.

It was the ease with which Indurain -- who never before was a "danger man" -- bested Lemond in 2001 (along with Greg's health neuroses) that gave him to think it was some manner of illness that had robbed him of his fourth TdF. At first he blamed mitochondrial myopathy, and after that he blamed the lead that was leaching from the birdshot pellets left in his body. And I think there were further excuses after that but I couldn't be bothered to remember them.

But now we know it almost certainly was Indurain's adoption of EPO (along with his noted abnormally large lungs) that ended Greg's reign.

Notably, three of the riders on the list are on Team Sky, which is the new Big Blue Train, cycling's best-doped team. The fifth rider on the list, Bjarne Riis, now has come clean and publicly admitted he was on EPO when he won the TdF in 1986. So every rider on that list either is a proven doper or has a mass of circumstantial evidence surrounding him that makes his doping a virtual certainty.

It's widely believed that one factor that made Pharmstrong a "super-responder" was his too-low-to-be-pro natural hematocrit. 37-38. If he used EPO to boost his Hct to 49, that was a 29% (by volume) increase in the oxygen carrying capacity of his blood. That's YUGE. And that's also what made him not just competitive but dominant with such a meager VO2max.

Something I find that Lemond and Tyler Hamilton have in common is that they're both 'jittery' types, not at all commanding "Type A" personalities. Hamilton always looks like he's ill-at-ease, even when you meet him in person but especially when he's on-camera. Lemond was similar. Now he rarely does interviews without his wife present and when he's speaking on-camera he's always stealing a glance at her, like a terrier puppy always looking at its master's face looking for cues of approval or disapproval. Hinault always has claimed he knew Lemond didn't have the steel in him to win GC in the Tour and that was why he gave him such a hard time in the 1986 Tour, despite having committed to support Greg in his first win in return for Greg having sacrificed his chance to take his first win (in '85) to team orders, which is how Bernie came to claim his fifth win. All these years later I still believe Hinault did the best to beat Lemond in '86 and just couldn't manage it. And you wouldn't expect anything less from a man called "the Badger."


Hct contributes to but doesn't completely control VO2max, but VO2max is the ultimate yardstick for cycling potential. Greg Lemond had the highest VO2max ever recorded at that time, 92.5. Before cancer, Pharmstrong had been VO2max tested and scored 84. Lemond knew 84 was too low a VO2max to win the TdF, which meant Pharmstrong had to be doing some fashion of blood vector doping to artificially boost his VO2max. So to this day, whenever Greg wants to get Pharmstrong's goat, he just refers to him as "Mister 84."

That line never gets old.

My natural Hct is 41-42 but since I've started pinning a small dose of Test-C in conjunction with my TRT it runs in the low 50s, usually about 52. And I don't get winded any more. Ever. Whenever I make an anaerobic effort, or even one on the anaerobic threshold, it's always muscle endurance and never shortness of breath that tells me it's time to shut down. Bjarne Riis and Marco Pantani both were tested very near or above 60. I can't imagine how invulnerable that mush make you feel.

That goes to the fact that I love the pain. I think I'm probably addicted to it, and cycling is the only sport I've ever done that can put me in that frame of mind. The thing is, there comes a time when you just don't care any more. Even when I was racing I'd always slack off during the winter months. Then as spring approached I'd go back to racehorse mode: fast is never fast enough. But because I'd been slacking, riding hard would hurt again. But then usually some time in March, the pain went away. Only it didn't go away, I just didn't care any more. And it makes me feel superhuman to know I'm enduring that kind of discomfort but not yielding to it, because I know that's not a state most people could ever achieve.


Which reminds me of another symptom of blood vector doping. When you see a cyclist on a particularly hard climb and his breathing isn't labored. Or worse, he's breathing through his nose. Which happens a lot these days.


Dr. Ferrari was death on weight. He endlessly was preaching that it's better to lose weight than to gain power. At team meals he was famous for "Tsk-tsk"-ing any rider who reached for a second helping of anything. And you can't argue with his success. Sumbitch knows what he's talking about. Even when he says EPO is no more dangerous than orange juice.

[i_SLAM_cougars]

I really don’t see what the big deal about lance armstrong or any of these guys using steroids or blood doping is. They’re elite level athletes trying to be the best in the world. That’s like being mad at Ronnie Coleman for using steroids.

I have more respect for these guys BECAUSE of the extremes hey go to. Nothing irks me more than when some 5’8 170 pound 30% bodyfat beer belly having butthole “critiques” professional athletes. You see this happen in masses during football season. Bunch of fucking nobodies, where the most athletic thing they did all day was roll of the couch to get another beer, shitting all over a professional athlete. I’m sure all of you know at least one. Usually the same cheese dick that sees a picture of a bodybuilder and says “Who would want to look like that? That’s why I don’t lift weights”. No it isn’t. You don’t lift weights because you’re fucking lazy. It’s like every clown in a sports bar that try’s to critique the boxing match that’s on TV. Honestly now that I think about it. The worst part of sports might be sports fans

[Proximal]

Wow, what a book! First time I read it, I hadn’t started TRT and wasn’t here. Reading it again, it’s incredible how my perspective has changed.

My God, those guys are BAD-ASS pure & simple.

I can’t wait to see how Lance comes off on part-2 of this show. Plus just ordered Landis’s book.

Regarding the cancer foundation, I understand your bitterness about it, I guess, but that’s something that seems to be a separate issue unless it’s focused on next episode. But seriously, how many entertainers or athletes make it public about their donations for good PR? Can’t fault Lance too much in that respect.

What a wacky sport in which to succeed at the top, you had to dope better than the next guy & then be judged for it.

[Beetlegeuse]

But seriously, how many entertainers or athletes make it public about their donations for good PR?...

How many entertainers or athletes actively engage in the corruption of a sport, embezzle tens of millions of dollars from a government agency, or prevent hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to fight cancer from reaching the people who might have used it to save lives?


[EDIT:]
It's important that discussions like these come to light because entirely too damn many people think Pharmstrong's only offense was taking PEDs to win a bicycle race. And some people need to be beaten over the head with just how morally bankrupt he and his entire charade were, especially the millions of fanbois who wore those silly yellow rubber bands to signal their moral superiority. Because the attorneys for the Philip Morris agency have done far more to end cancer than Juan Pelota did.

[Proximal]

Beetle, please point me to the misdirection of hundreds of millions of $ from cancer please. I’ll start to search it now myself too in respect to your intelligence and adherence to facts.

Look Beetle, I agree with his d-bagery regarding teammates and to a point his lies. And, if you love cycling how I used to love basketball, I begin to see, understand and respect your point of view more.

After 98 do you think Armstrong was the sole reason / person cyclists kept cheating?

I can’t wait for the second part. Just watched part one again, and he is smelling as fresh as roses with this show, right or wrong.

[Proximal]

OK, down with Lance. Dip-shit, d-bag & all.

Essentially gave the FU to all. That’s ballsy.