Are you blushing at the compliment, Pops?

You're missing the point, even with talent, luck, training, and extreme dedication you're not going to be successful as a European level cycling professional if others are tacitly allowed to take PED's and you don't. Your competitors will also have all that, talent, luck training, extreme dedication, and also have drugs that actually alter performance.

That is why it matters that we make real attempts to enforce anti drug rules, so people are not compelled to use PEDs.

In the EPO era (i.e. before there was an effective test late 90's to mid 2000's ) it's pretty friggin clear you could not win a Grand tour without using PEDS.

Its not entirely clear you can win at an elite level now without using PED's.

Its certain that you can't win at the elite level without PED's if no effort is made to enforce the rules.

so everyones doping and its ok but its till bad to pay off the UCI and throw your domestiques under the bus and then ruin them when they try to blow the whistle right?

I didn't find Tyler's allegation credible that the UCI was involved in suppressing evidence of an Armstrong positive drug test.
Also, I found Tyler's reference to drugs being sent to him via DHL, while on the US Postal team, potentially contrived but in any case some sort of unnecessary dig.

yeah lances $100,000 "dontation" to the UCI was probably just cuz hes a good guy.

I think the idea that some people are getting at is that there should be some statute of limitations.

The idea that past wrongs are being corrected is ludicrous. The athletes that didn't dope lost many years ago and will not receive restitution nor will whistleblowers who were crushed be made whole. The hot shots that doped and won already received and enjoyed the vast majority of the benefit they'll ever get from cheating.

If someone (or a lot of someones) cheated in the past and got away with it, big friggin' deal. It's not like every sport isn't full of examples of where people wrongly won or were robbed. People watch sports for entertainment, and that's the only reason there's any money in it at all. No amount of media circus trying to whip people into thinking this is important will change that.

yeah i dunno i think it is a big deal. paying off the UCI is a big deal. building an brand and an empire- a brand designed around of virtue and purity- on a lie is a big deal. especially if many of the money people and leadership people and in fact a good chunk of the riders are still players in pro cycling, as DSs and administrators and still racing in some cases, its not "ancient history"

thats such a moral moving goalpost copout for the fanboy set. desperate last stand against reality.

There are statute of limitations involved here, and it is one of the obstacles the Feds would have to overcome to get a conviction. The general statute of limitations for Federal crimes is 5 years. That applies to mail and wire fraud. Major fraud against the US government is 7 years, and fraud against a financial institution is 10 years.

There are exceptions however to these limitations. Most notably, the fact that a fraudulent scheme extends before the limitations period does not preclude prosecution for acts committed in furtherance of the scheme within the limiations period.

Long winded answer to say there's a statue of limitations problem, but it may not be insurmountable.

Anyone who assumes that people who oppose witch hunts are fanboys is the one with a reality problem.

People agree that lying, perjury, etc are bad. I'll bet they would also agree that there are plenty of murderers, *******, financial criminals, etc who are free on the streets now who have lied under oath and that this probably could be proved given adequate resources. Arguably, the public good done by putting away people who are actually dangerous to society rather than a few entertainers.

Here's an idea to clean up cycling if this is so important. Why don't we just round everyone up and question them under oath now? Based on the arguments in this thread, we can presume they won't want to go to prison so we should catch loads of them (even if we need to make a few examples). That would clean up the sport almost overnight. Then, we can go after Lance and others suspected of cheating in the past. Justice is done and badhat can feel that all is right with the world.

Out of curiosity, what do you do for work? It sounds like you live in a protected world.

i feel like people dont even know what witchhunt means

also, i work in healthcare technology & trauma/emergency preparedness and response, why? were you hoping for fodder to make a personal attack over a disagreement about bike racing politics?

Google could have helped you with that. In common parlance, it's a single minded effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty, etc. -- usually with regard to a specific issue.

Many people are honest, but using dishonest and harmful ways to achieve success in school, business, and the like is extremely common. It even happens in sports.

Even if doping were eliminated, racing is still a game. The rules define what is and what is not allowed, and a lot of what is allowed has nothing to do with making sure the best riders win.

well we haven't had a really good pissing match in awhile

Good for you. Did you know that some people cheat in medical school, or just figure out the easy way through and then get jobs that allow them to make life or death decisions over others? Are you aware of consulting deals and other financial incentives that affect care?

lets be clear i dont think its a "big deal" on par with like iran/contra was a big deal. but i dont believe its unreasonable to think that if the mounting evidence that USPS bribed the UCI (using federal funds) is true, among other allegations, i dont understand the voices who are adamantly complacent with that, and saying "eh, it was a long time ago". i have more regard for accountability than that.

i havent suggested, nor seen anyone else suggest, that the anger or desire to see acocountabilty in this case is about the practice of doping itself. i accept that its an unfortunate reality of professional sport, with its stakes. this is about bribery and institutional corruption, its about intimidating whistleblowers, and its about fraud.

calling the dogged, legal prosecution of a foundationally corrupt organziation a "witchhunt" just cuz you think bygones should be bygones is an insult to the lives that were ruined and damage done by the actual witchhunt of american record, the mccarthy era.

but thats probably P&R territory. i would just appreciate if you could avoid digging for hooks to make this personal.

what exactly are you expecting to accomplish with this question?

honestly, what is your desired outcome?

i cant imagine you think i am unaware of institutional corruption outside of sport, but i also cant figure out what youre hoping to prove by pointing it out in this context.

+1

And let's also be clear about one thing - there is a difference between punishing St Lance (which is what all the fanbois seem to be swooning in horror over) and making public the truth about how far institutionalized doping in the sport goes, and the degree to which UCI is involved in this.

Does anyone actually, really think that there is no value in unearthing this information? Really??

I'm completely with Badhat here.

I don't see any benefit to this, the US Postal Team had a great recorded that the Federal Government is going to kill. I really think it is about the personal gain of the current prosecutors and they should be a shamed of themselves. I always thought Lance used drugs given his recorded and the wide spread drug use of cyclist at that time.

That this issue is infinitesimally unimportant compared to what goes on in the real world all the time. Worse, it distracts people from things that matter much more -- even in sports. We need to work on getting the present in better shape before going after stuff like this in the past with such zeal. The reality of most historical figures is typically much less impressive than what is portrayed in the popular media.

If you want my prediction on this, I think Lance is screwed because they can't stop now. Undoubtedly some results will be "corrected." But the damage was already done. The people who were wronged will stay wronged. Lance will still be a zillionaire. The barn door is being slammed long after the horses have run out. The only people who will win are the ones collecting money for working on the investigation and promoting the circus.

He said it was FedEx...or DHL. Wait Tyler, which was it?

for the record i am cognitively capable of being angry about this and infavor of pursuing accountability in some form while still putting it in perspective within my life and the world at large. and i'd wager that most others are as well

its pretty reductionist to suggest that just cuz other things are more important that this thing is not at all important.

Please list the carriers of all the packages you received from 1995-2001.

It's not that it's not at all important. Fixing things is good.

It's that this involves too much energy to fix too little because what people are really fixated on is Lance rather than on whatever is real. This is cycling's answer to the Barry Bonds trial. Yeah, that did a lot of good for baseball and cleaning it up.