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Armstrong to Admit Doping on Oprah

Deac83 said:
So its it the 'semantics' Oprah failed to push on? In order to perform at the level needed you needed to dope, so even if Lance doesn't say 'you need to dope', by saying you need a level of performance that can't be reached with out doping is essentially the same thing. Of course he has others claiming that he did tell them they needed to dope.
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I think the others claiming Lance told them they had to dope is a way of protecting themselves.

To race bicycles at the highest level, you had to dope. Period. There simply weren't "clean" people in those peletons.
 
Ugh, and now Greg Lemond is popping his head back up - even throwing his wife out for sympathy / gloating interviews.

The same Greg Lemond who with a pair of clip on aero-bars on a standard frame rode the 3rd fastest time trial in the history of the Tour in 1989. Faster than any of the doped up recent riders on millions of dollars of wind tunnel tested carbon fiber ever went. Faster than Fabian Cancellara has ever gone. Just plain ridiculously fast.

The same Greg Lemond whose La Vie Claire team crushed the peleton in a comical way behind him and Hinault, making a mockery of the field. A field we now know was hopped up on amphetamines and doping via blood transfusions.

The same Greg Lemond who has become a brave voice against doping once he retired and fell out of the public eye (largely because he's kind of an ass and hard to be around).



In short, cyclists use drugs. Always have. Always will. And the one who tell they were the physical freak who managed to win by huge margins "naturally" while everyone else was doping ... those are the liars.
 
Yet, Armstrong claims he was clean in 2009/10 and that the bio passport makes doping near impossible.
 
Francesco Moser blood doped for his world hour record (before it was banned). Team USA blood doped for the '84 Olympics (before it was banned). Otherwise, there are not a lot of accounts of blood doping in cycling prior to the EPO test in 2003 (aside from Lance, who was a few years ahead). I don't think the peloton was blood doping in the 80s. It was mostly amphetamines and some hormone therapy (i.e., testosterone). Not the kind of game-changing stuff that would prevent a clean rider from competing. LeMond has said he didn't dope and has put himself way out on a limb to do so (sacrificing his multi-million dollar bike business because he wouldn't roll over for Lance). His reputation as a clean athlete is near-universal in the sport. I believe him. If he was a closeted ex-doper there's no way he'd be as outspoken about doping issues as he is, well before public opinion finally turned in his favor, essentially making himself a pariah.

There were quite a few really good to great riders who got blown out of the peloton in the early 90s. LeMond, Andy Hampsten, Charly Mottet, Edwig Van Hooydonck, among others. Guys that refused to use EPO and went from champs to not even able to keep up with the water-carriers. Saying "every top-level pro cyclist is/was a doper" might be easier to get your head around, but it's just not true.
 
I don't remember exactly what is was, but LeMond supposedly had some incredible lung capacity, which was quite useful in cycling.
 
Evidence that Greg LeMond's outspoken antidoping attitude was not a product of jealousy or lack of fame: this article was from 2 days after he won his second Tour in 1989 (the closest in history) with the time trial effort mentioned above. In it LeMond's lawyer explains that Greg broke his contract with PDM, then the best team in the world, in part because they put pressure on him to dope in 1988.

Also, note that the fastest time trial in the Tour's history was done by Chris Boardman in 1994, a rider with a sterling "clean" reputation whose career corresponded with the worst of the EPO era.
 
Interesting article.

"This is not the first time PDM has been linked to testosterone. Dutch newspapers reported last year that the team experimented with the substance earlier in 1988 to determine whether it would have a strength-enhancing effect.

Jansen said the experiment was sanctioned by the international professional cycling federation and involved 14 cyclists from several teams, including two from PDM. He said it was determined that testosterone did not enhance a cyclists' performances.

In July, 1988, however, PDM's Gert-Jan Theunisse of the Netherlands was penalized 10 minutes, effectively eliminating him from contention, and fined $750 when he tested positive for testosterone after winning a stage of the Tour de France."

10 minute penalty, just imagine.
 
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