Lance Armstrong
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What I find amazing is that so many people are willing to believe something that they have no evidence of simply because the feat was so amazingly astonishing.
Wayne Gretzky was amazing and astonishing and if someone now approached him and proceeded to dog him for 17 years, I imagine he would turn the page as well.
Just remember that as you state that their is "no way" he did it without doping so he mus be guilty, you fully expect to be treated fairly in your own daily dealings. I am sure you don't want a ticket for getting to the store in under five minutes and having a cop stand at the entryway and say "I know where you live and there is no way you can make it here that fast". That would be utterly ridiculous, to just assume guilt without tangible evidence, wouldn't it?
Hope that helps,
FDC
Wayne Gretzky was amazing and astonishing and if someone now approached him and proceeded to dog him for 17 years, I imagine he would turn the page as well.
Just remember that as you state that their is "no way" he did it without doping so he mus be guilty, you fully expect to be treated fairly in your own daily dealings. I am sure you don't want a ticket for getting to the store in under five minutes and having a cop stand at the entryway and say "I know where you live and there is no way you can make it here that fast". That would be utterly ridiculous, to just assume guilt without tangible evidence, wouldn't it?
Hope that helps,
FDC
Gretzky was awesome, but nothing he did on the ice was in the superhuman category. He was just highly skilled, not faster, stronger and more indefatigable than his opponents.
Armstrong won what many consider the most grueling athletic competition on the planet seven consecutive times, all the time being surrounded by drug cheats. If he actually did that without doping himself, then he must be from planet Krypton.
http://www.dnaindia.com/sport/repor...-his-best-bro-finally-spilt-the-beans_1732651
If you golks would look at the record of appeals athletes have made through the anti doping agency you would understand why lance is no longer fighting it.
2 of 60 have won their appeal, and one of the two still got a two year ban for appealing. That's right. He was found not guilty on the appeal and still got banned for two years for his daring to appeal.
It's more corrupt than the ncaa.
2 of 60 have won their appeal, and one of the two still got a two year ban for appealing. That's right. He was found not guilty on the appeal and still got banned for two years for his daring to appeal.
It's more corrupt than the ncaa.
Really, so breaking every scoring record at his size and doing things that nobody has ever done is different somehow? Michael Jordan, same way? Lance Armstrong did something that was amazing and physically demanding and because you can't fathom the dedication and effort that he put forth to accomplish those things you assume that he was doping. You obviously assume his records will never be broken either, yet you say nothing about athletes like Cesar Chavez or Rocky Marciano who have accomplished something nobody has come close to. What about Nicklaus? Doper? Why isn't anyone chasing him around falsely accusing him? Face it, you assume he is guilty and you have zero proof. That is pretty sad and I am glad you aren't in the U.S. sitting on a jury. Of course, there are plenty of people just like you here anyway.
You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about, so I won't try to argue with you. You will have egg all over your face before this story comes to an end though. I will guarantee that.
Pointing at someone and saying "I know you doped up" and then spending 15 years in a constant, non-stop, scramble to find some shred of proof, some tiny shred of evidence and screaming "We know he doped up! Just wait till we find the proof" every day of it isn't really the way this country is supposed to be operating.
Leave it to me to make a joke about a guy and then he dies.
This makes 2.
Armstrong and Michael Jackson.
Guess I should make a Mark David Chapman joke next.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...8a13ca-ee22-11e1-afd6-f55f84bc0c41_story.html
A great read
First of all, Lance Armstrong is a good man. There?s nothing that I can learn about him short of murder that would alter my opinion on that. Second, I don?t know if he?s telling the truth when he insists he didn?t use performance-enhancing drugs in the Tour de France ? never have known. I do know that he beat cancer fair and square, that he?s not the mastermind criminal the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency makes him out to be, and that the process of stripping him of his titles reeks.
A federal judge wrote last week, ?USADA?s conduct raises serious questions about whether its real interest in charging Armstrong is to combat doping, or if it is acting according to less noble motives.? You don?t say. Then when is a judge, or better yet Congress, going to do something about it?
Quite independently of Lance, with whom I wrote two books, for a long, long time I?ve had serious doubts about the motives, efficiency and wisdom of these ?doping? investigations. In the Balco affair, all the wrong people were prosecuted. It?s the only so-called drug investigation in which the manufacturers and the distributors were given plea deals in order to throw the book at the users. What that told us was that it was big-game hunting, not justice. It was careerist investigators trying to put athletes? antlers on their walls. Meanwhile, the Fourth Amendment became a muddy, stomped-on, kicked-aside doormat.
So forget Lance. I have so many problems with USADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ? which is supposed to be where athletes can appeal, only they never, ever win ? that it?s hard to know where to begin. American athletes have lost 58 of 60 cases before the CAS. Would you want to go before that court?
Anyone who thinks an athlete has a fair shot in front of CAS should review the Alberto Contador case. Contador was found to have a minuscule, insignificant amount of clenbuterol in his urine during the 2010 Tour de France. After hearing 4,000 pages of testimony and debate, CAS acknowledged that the substance was too small to have been performance-enhancing and that its ingestion was almost certainly unintentional.
Therefore he was guilty. He received a two-year ban.
CAS?s rationale? ?There is no reason to exonerate the athlete so the ban is two years,? one member of the panel said.
Would you want to go before that court?
The decision was so appalling that even the Tour runner-up, Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, couldn?t swallow it and refused to accept the title of winner. ?There is no reason to be happy now,? Schleck said. ?First of all, I felt bad for Alberto. I always believed in his innocence. . . . I battled with Contador in that race and I lost.?
The former prime minister of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, had openly declared his belief that Contador was innocent. When the CAS ruling came down, Zapatero expressed ?bewilderment? and suggested it was so irrational it gave ?sufficient reasons to open a debate about their fairness.?
The response of WADA President John Fahey? A rant in which he suggested that Contador was given a two-year ban instead of one because Zapatero had dared to open his mouth. Let me repeat: The president of WADA actually suggested publicly that an athlete?s penalty was made harsher because his prime minister had the nerve to challenge WADA?s authority.
Again, would you want to go before that court?
When are people going to grow sick enough of these astonishing overreaches and abuses to do something about it? As my friend Tommy Craggs has written for Deadspin, WADA and USADA have become ?a gang of moralizing cranks . . . and it is beyond me why an organization that wants to ban caffeine again hasn?t yet gotten laughed out of polite conversation.?
You can put me down on that side of the argument. You can also put me down on the side of professional basketball player Diana Taurasi, who has called the international drug testing bureaucracy ?one of the most unfair processes you can be put through,? and attorney Howard Jacobs, who makes his living going before CAS. He told USA Today, ?A lot of times athletes are getting run over in the quest for clean sport.?
How does an agency that is supposed to regulate drug testing strip a guy of seven titles without a single positive drug test? Whether Armstrong is innocent or guilty, that question should give all of us pause. How is it that an American agency can decide to invalidate somebody?s results achieved in Europe, in a sport it doesn?t control? Better question, how is it that an American taxpayer-funded organization can participate in an adjudication system in which you get a two-year ban because ?there is no reason to exonerate? you? At what point is such an organization shut down and defunded?
In his decision last week, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks declined to intervene in USADA?s case against Armstrong because to do so would ?turn federal judges into referees for a game in which they have no place, and about which they know little.? But in the next breath Sparks expressed an opinion on certain matters he does know about. ?The deficiency of USADA?s charging document is of serious constitutional concern,? he wrote. ?Indeed, but for two facts, the court might be inclined to find USADA?s charging letter was a violation of due process and to enjoin USADA from proceeding thereunder.? Among other things, he was disturbed by USADA?s ?apparent single-minded determination? to go after Armstrong and force him before CAS.
All of which I find far more worrisome than the question of whether he may have transfused his own blood in trying to climb a mountain on a bike. It wasn?t a judge?s job to intervene with USADA. But it most certainly would seem to be the job of Congress. The WADA-USADA system is simply incompatible with the U.S. legal system.
A great read
First of all, Lance Armstrong is a good man. There?s nothing that I can learn about him short of murder that would alter my opinion on that. Second, I don?t know if he?s telling the truth when he insists he didn?t use performance-enhancing drugs in the Tour de France ? never have known. I do know that he beat cancer fair and square, that he?s not the mastermind criminal the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency makes him out to be, and that the process of stripping him of his titles reeks.
A federal judge wrote last week, ?USADA?s conduct raises serious questions about whether its real interest in charging Armstrong is to combat doping, or if it is acting according to less noble motives.? You don?t say. Then when is a judge, or better yet Congress, going to do something about it?
Quite independently of Lance, with whom I wrote two books, for a long, long time I?ve had serious doubts about the motives, efficiency and wisdom of these ?doping? investigations. In the Balco affair, all the wrong people were prosecuted. It?s the only so-called drug investigation in which the manufacturers and the distributors were given plea deals in order to throw the book at the users. What that told us was that it was big-game hunting, not justice. It was careerist investigators trying to put athletes? antlers on their walls. Meanwhile, the Fourth Amendment became a muddy, stomped-on, kicked-aside doormat.
So forget Lance. I have so many problems with USADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ? which is supposed to be where athletes can appeal, only they never, ever win ? that it?s hard to know where to begin. American athletes have lost 58 of 60 cases before the CAS. Would you want to go before that court?
Anyone who thinks an athlete has a fair shot in front of CAS should review the Alberto Contador case. Contador was found to have a minuscule, insignificant amount of clenbuterol in his urine during the 2010 Tour de France. After hearing 4,000 pages of testimony and debate, CAS acknowledged that the substance was too small to have been performance-enhancing and that its ingestion was almost certainly unintentional.
Therefore he was guilty. He received a two-year ban.
CAS?s rationale? ?There is no reason to exonerate the athlete so the ban is two years,? one member of the panel said.
Would you want to go before that court?
The decision was so appalling that even the Tour runner-up, Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, couldn?t swallow it and refused to accept the title of winner. ?There is no reason to be happy now,? Schleck said. ?First of all, I felt bad for Alberto. I always believed in his innocence. . . . I battled with Contador in that race and I lost.?
The former prime minister of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, had openly declared his belief that Contador was innocent. When the CAS ruling came down, Zapatero expressed ?bewilderment? and suggested it was so irrational it gave ?sufficient reasons to open a debate about their fairness.?
The response of WADA President John Fahey? A rant in which he suggested that Contador was given a two-year ban instead of one because Zapatero had dared to open his mouth. Let me repeat: The president of WADA actually suggested publicly that an athlete?s penalty was made harsher because his prime minister had the nerve to challenge WADA?s authority.
Again, would you want to go before that court?
When are people going to grow sick enough of these astonishing overreaches and abuses to do something about it? As my friend Tommy Craggs has written for Deadspin, WADA and USADA have become ?a gang of moralizing cranks . . . and it is beyond me why an organization that wants to ban caffeine again hasn?t yet gotten laughed out of polite conversation.?
You can put me down on that side of the argument. You can also put me down on the side of professional basketball player Diana Taurasi, who has called the international drug testing bureaucracy ?one of the most unfair processes you can be put through,? and attorney Howard Jacobs, who makes his living going before CAS. He told USA Today, ?A lot of times athletes are getting run over in the quest for clean sport.?
How does an agency that is supposed to regulate drug testing strip a guy of seven titles without a single positive drug test? Whether Armstrong is innocent or guilty, that question should give all of us pause. How is it that an American agency can decide to invalidate somebody?s results achieved in Europe, in a sport it doesn?t control? Better question, how is it that an American taxpayer-funded organization can participate in an adjudication system in which you get a two-year ban because ?there is no reason to exonerate? you? At what point is such an organization shut down and defunded?
In his decision last week, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks declined to intervene in USADA?s case against Armstrong because to do so would ?turn federal judges into referees for a game in which they have no place, and about which they know little.? But in the next breath Sparks expressed an opinion on certain matters he does know about. ?The deficiency of USADA?s charging document is of serious constitutional concern,? he wrote. ?Indeed, but for two facts, the court might be inclined to find USADA?s charging letter was a violation of due process and to enjoin USADA from proceeding thereunder.? Among other things, he was disturbed by USADA?s ?apparent single-minded determination? to go after Armstrong and force him before CAS.
All of which I find far more worrisome than the question of whether he may have transfused his own blood in trying to climb a mountain on a bike. It wasn?t a judge?s job to intervene with USADA. But it most certainly would seem to be the job of Congress. The WADA-USADA system is simply incompatible with the U.S. legal system.
What the fuck do you have to argue? What point can you make that is tangible at all? There is absolutely zero evidence and he has passed all tests. What point are you going to argue? I am dead serious, I want to hear this? What exactly are you going to say that gives your side of this debate any shred of legitimacy? You can't seriously think that your proof is that "everyone else was doing it so he must have"? Really?
People are fucking awesome Jedi and sometimes those people are presented on a world wide stage and they excel. They do incredible things that we can't imagine ourselves doing. Some of us marvel at the spectacle of greatness, others simply doubt it and dilute it because of their own reasons. I have no doubt that Lance Armstrong is the greatest cyclist that ever lived and you have no proof otherwise, so form your argument, I would love to hear it.
Hope that helps,
FDC
it's sunday morning, there's a chance that a few of us have a little egg on our face... :0corn
That essay is laughable. Comparing drug testing of athletes in professional sports to students in schools? Give me a break.
No, what is laughable is that you submit herd mentality as proof of guilt. I think when one condemns another person as guilty simply because they excelled against doped athletes, that person kind of loses the ability to call anything laughable.
Hope that helps,
FDC
Thanks, we have appreciated the blind faith over the years of fans like you.
Signed,
Roger Clemens
Barry Bonds
Jose Canseco
Alex Rodriguez
Mark McGwire
Rafael Palmeiro
Sammy Sosa
Bud Selig
Marion Jones
Bill Romanowski
Lyle Alzado
Tony Mandarich
Shawn Merriman
et al.
PS. We loved this portrait we saw of you the other day!
