79pmooney

My gripe with LA is not that he doped but that he was quite willing to go after those who told the truth in court (often successfully), with verbal threats (often by telephone to women; the calls made by others) and other actions. (Anyone remember him chasing down that Italian who had spoken under subpoena and under oath of doping to kill that rider's chance of a stage victory and a pocketful of change.) Calls to Armstrong's wife, LA's masseuse (who he had carry EPO through customs; ie break international law). Discovery/Postal would pass on to UCI that so-and-so was doping (usually a rider who was pushing Lance on the GC at that year's Tour) but conveniently had some insider at UCI call ahead when a drug tester was coming so Lance could get his blood diluted to pass the test. (UCI was also in on this. A couple of times, LA's teammates left that tester outdoors for over a half hour while LA did this work. Automatic doping violation, not test needed unless your name was LA. You had 10 minutes as I recall to open that door and present your rider.)

And above all, LA lied. Not once or twice but for over a decade all the time. To pretend that Trek and other insiders did not know? That what LA told Greg Lemond, his wife and others from his hospital during his cancer never came back to Trek? The Amgen sponsorship and partnership, Amgen being the major producer of EPO and the Postal/Discovery team the most sophisticated used of EPO was coincidence? Was Trek really that naive or blind? (When GL spoke up, I never sensed that Trek said "Huh! Maybe he's on to something. Let's look further." No, it was "Stuff this as fast as possible!"