Waxbytes

As far as I can tell from my limited understanding of US law, if the Feds can "prove" LA doped it doesn't mean much as it wasn't a crime at the time.
The only thing that matters as for the law is did Lance use postal $ to do it and/or did he distribute dope to others? Those would be the crimes.
There was some talk last year that the USPS team sold Trek bikes to finance the drug habit. In which case they didn't use Postal service money
It will be interesting to see what the charges actually are, if they can find any.

Racer Ex 

If we spend $35m to give one person hope, it's better spent than finding a cure or better treatment? Trotting out the "if one life is saved" line is feeble. People should absolutely look at where their charitable giving is going and try to maximize the effect of their dollars.

I tend to look at the actual financial statements rather than the propaganda on the website. It's served me well in picking stocks and mutuals over the years. But you have a point on the grant vs. services. So let's do apples to apples. The Susan G. Komen breast cancer orginazation overlaps nearly exactly the mission of Livestrong, and actually does quite a bit more things of actual measurable value, something Livestrong is somewhat short of.

You know...the pink ribbon folks?

They had 10X the expenses of Livestrong. Yet they only spent 2x the amount on travel.

Some of the other numbers are also out of line by comparison.

Which might be the real tragedy. While I do question the spending in a number of areas, I don't look at Livestrong with a completely jaundiced view. I don't believe everyone will take kindly to Lance looking them in the eye and lying, and there will probably be some blowback to the charity. I told someone close to the organization a year or more ago that everyone would be best served by coming clean, doing the public mea culpa, and going into damage control.

walnutz

I've scanned most of this discussion and just watched the interview, here are my thoughts:

1) Hamilton seemed to be on the brink of tears during the whole interview, some one posited that he has trained to look like this this, practiced for it, etc. But if he is to be believed in that he only recently revealed all this to even his family, to me he comes off as someone who is still working through all this in his own mind and is struggling with it all.

Assuming he is telling 60 Minutes exactly what he told the grand jury, I take his word. He had no reason to lie to them and as the segment pointed out, he faces some consequences if it turns out he is lying. Look I know he has a book deal or whatever, but that by itself doesn't make him a liar. Does it influence his decision to go public? Abso-freaking-lutely. Does it influence his decision to come clean to the grand jury? No. Never.

2) The ONLY reason I really care about this is for Livestrong. I did the Austin ride last year and I don't care what anyone says (especially the poster who was earlier trying to tell someone how to feel about their wife's cancer survival), this organization means a whole lot to a whole lot of people. I'm not saying this gives Lance immunity, I'm just hoping the organization can go on if he is ever brought down. I don't give two craps about Lance, but I care about Livestrong.

3) Does anyone have any idea if cycling is any cleaner these days? Just curious. I kind of assume they are all still doping. But I wonder if it's like baseball, a sport in which these days batters aren't hitting 60 HRs a year and seem to be a little smaller physically than they were in the late 90s, early 2000s. I don't really follow baseball anymore, but it does seem, at least on the surface, that they cleaned it up. Has this/can this happen with cycling?

edit: I forgot to add, it's kinda sh***y to rat out a teammate like this publicly. However, I don't think this discredits him.

icyclist 

Can't you just post the link?

Fleabiscuit

Are you side-stepping my comments or just baked on that BC bud?

I'm not a Lance fanboy but it ticks me off to see all of the Lance haters come out of the woodwork to pretend they are applying logic to this situation. Why would Hamilton lie? It reminds me of when pretty boy Floyd Landis crawled from under his rock with a similar story. No one would even care about what Tyler has to say if he wasn't taking shots at Lance.

You may not like it but witness credibility is an important consideration in a legal battle of this nature (a battle where there is no physical evidence indicating guilt but lots of physical evidence indicating innocence +500 passed tests). Tyler Hamilton (and Floyd for that matter) were both caught using PED's and banned from cycling. Their lives are pretty much ruined, they are completely disgraced, and it appears Tyler is trying to cash in on his story with a book deal. Stories about his own experience as a doper aren't going to sell many books but stories that seek to bring down the most famous American cyclist of all time could help Hamilton make a few bucks and achieve some recognition from the anti-Lance crowd.

If anyone believes this is about anything other than money, they are probably smoking some of that BC Bud with you and your buddies. This BS about doing it to "help the sport" makes me chuckle.

Shimagnolo

If anything Tyler said to the GJ is found to be a lie, he loses immunity and can be prosecuted.
You think a book deal is worth that?

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

patentcad

It does strike me that the most profoundly impacted people in this entire mess are the competitive cyclists, all of whom just wanted to realize their dreams of being pro athletes. Then they get near the top after years of work and dedication only to find that in order to stay there they have to compromise their ethics and make a choice nobody should have to make. I'm sure that tore many of them apart. Hell, Pantani died doing blow in a hotel room. One of the greatest cyclists of his generation.

Good grief, what a pitiable mess. Whatever it takes to get the sport clean is worth it. Let's hope the next generation of pro cyclists don't have to deal with this crap. The sport is hard enough as it is.

Shimagnolo

You know, Rock Racing is looking pretty mainstream at this point.

palesaint

So long as Tyler doesn't recant (again), he will never be prosecuted. It's his word against someone else's.

This has been a relatively civilized conversation so far and I've read it with interest. Hopefully everyone has realized that the chances of us really knowing the full story is quite slim.

Oh, and that we are wasting a lot of tax payer's money.

echappist

Something tells me the effect would be akin to this


https://www.livestrong.org/pdfs/4-0/2...nedauditreport

merlinextraligh

Based on track record, Hamilton is not very credible, Landis even less so.

I don't know enough about Steven Swart, Mike Anderson, or Emma O Reilly to opine on their credibility.

Based on available information I tend to find the statements attributed to Frankie Andreau, Betsy Andreu, and George Hicapie to be credible.

Throw in the context of: a back dated prescription for steroids, positive "B" samples from the TDF , the Tour de Suisse UCI mess, Armstrong chasing down the Italian Domestique, all his major competitors being shown to have doped etc. etc.

Regardless of what you think about Hamilton or LAndis' propensity to lie, what they say is more and more corroborated, and the weight of the evidence is becoming overwhelming.

Do you really believe that Hamilton, Landis, Frankie Andreau, Betsy Andreau, Anderson, Swart, O'reilly, and Hincapie are all just making this s**t up?

azshtr

This thread is:

18hockey

Based on personal experience I wouldn't trust a thing Betsy Andreu says when it comes to Armstrong.

Steve90068

He was never sanctioned for testing positive. That's what his sporting achievements should be based on. Let's all move forward and talk about some of the incredible talent that is the future of cycling. As George said last week, "I continue to be disappointed that all people want to talk about is the past in cycling instead of focusing on the future"

For the record, yes I would bet that 90% of the stuff coming out is true. However, instead of putting millions of dollars toward proving Lance is guilty, I'd rather see millions going toward cycling programs for the youth in this country.

8Lives

very well said.

Steepndeep

Yeah, I thought same thing

ls01

Really? Explain Le monster. Do you think he doped?.

gregf83 

Nope. Not a chance. He never tested positive.

M_FactorX19

i think you nailed it right there.

patentcad

At the peril of overstating the obvious, let me just officially state right here and now: I have never been involved in doping.

Well, not since college. But of course back then there was no sports involved. Whoah.

mollusk

And kids learning that cheating is OK because nothing bad will happen if you are good enough? "F" that.

youngmrzee

So I guess now it'll go:

1999 Alex Zülle, Switzerland, Banesto
2000 Jan Ullrich, Germany, Team Telekom
2001 Jan Ullrich, Germany, Team Telekom
2002 Joseba Beloki, Spain, ONCE-Eroski
2003 Jan Ullrich, Germany, Team Bianchi
2004 Andreas Klöden, Germany, T-Mobile Team
2005 Ivan Basso, Italy, Team CSC

This all looks really good for Germany and especially Jan Ullrich. That guy is an absolute beast.

For the record, after watching the documentary "A Ride With George". I will cry if Hincapie doped.

patentcad

Let me get this straight. The world's best cyclists were essentially all put in the position for the better part of two decades where they felt unable to compete in their sport at all without doping and people here think they were cheating? To me it sounds like an entire generation of talented cyclists were really the ones who got cheated. Young athletes, compelled to take EPO, a substance which can and will KILL you if it's used wrong (dozens of budding and talented young pro and top amateur European cyclists dropped dead from this crap in the late 80' and early 90's before people learned how to monitor hemocrit levels and not overdo it with the stuff). Who in their right mind would ever WANT do do such a thing?

That's what kills me about all the pontificating on this topic. It's ridiculous. I fully agree that you can't have doping in pro sports. If that means bringing down a cycling legend or two (or 20) so be it. That doesn't mean the men and women who resorted to doping were some slime of the earth scum. The vast majority of them never wanted to go there in the first place. All most of them ever wanted to do was be pro bicycle racers.

I'm confident that if Lance were 20 years old today he'd look at the landscape of doping vs. doping controls, decide that his natural talent was enough, and he'd figure the dopers would all get popped sooner or later anyway. In 1993-2001 who was getting popped? Not too many guys. So Lance (and plenty of other young stars at the time) figured that was the only way you were going to win, and that's what they did. I'm highly confident 99% of the people here put in the same circumstances would have opted to dope as well.

It's easy to be moralistic on BF when you have nothing to lose. Far harder when the 'hell no I won't dope' stance will cost you your budding pro cycling career. These guys were thinking 'if I get popped for doping it will end my cycling career, but if I don't dope it will end my cycling career sooner, what's the big difference'. 'Sportsmanship'? Please. It's PRO SPORTS already. Follow the money. Everybody else does.

PeddlingPilgrim

in related news, eki... (Viatcheslav Ekimov) goes on a rant...

"I think it's just money. It seems to me like somebody really wants to kill Lance and put him down."

https://m.apnews.com/ap/db_260770/con...tguid=kpJKYuZc

Jed19

That idiot knows he is out of the clutch of american jurisprudence. Hi is one mofo who is gonna keep lying until kingdom come. If GHincapie says LA doped, then that is enough for me. Ekimov is an idiot and a fraud.