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Classless witchhunt of Lance Armstrong

RJKarl said:
Thje "upside" is that if he tells the prosecutors what they want to hear he stays out of jail not does he get sued for the money he was paid.
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Actually, the opposite it true. The only way he can land is jail is if he lies after accepting immunity.
 
RJKarl said:
I think there is a real argument to be meade that the US Postal cycling team created postivie revenues for the USPS which helped to keep rates down because of all the publicity that was created by this team.
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I don't know about this. While I appreciated USPS sponsoring a US team, it never really made 'marketing' sense to me. A UPS or Fedex which are international would benefit from a cycling sponsorship to build our their brands in Europe.

If it was a profit maker,b USPS wouldn't have cut off Lance and his team after #6, IIRC.
 
For those that understand the sport of cycling, it would be a huge advantage for him to have his teammates doping so they could stay in front of him longer.

Lance making his overall team stronger would help dominate the TDF.

In the doping context it's also interesting that Lance generally avoided the other grand tours. This eliminates a significant amount of 'in race' testing each year.

Whether the gov't should be spending all this money on this type of investigation is a different issue.
 
Deac83 said:
I don't know about this. While I appreciated USPS sponsoring a US team, it never really made 'marketing' sense to me. A UPS or Fedex which are international would benefit from a cycling sponsorship to build our their brands in Europe.

If it was a profit maker,b USPS wouldn't have cut off Lance and his team after #6, IIRC.
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Well, a sponsorship like this has diminishing returns. Eventually, you kind of saturate the market of people that pay attention to bike racing, and move your sponsorship dollars elsewhere. High-level cycling sponsorships rarely last more than 3-5 years, and Postal was a title sponsor from '97-'04, eight years. They were "due" to end that sponsorship, and it's not necessarily because they saw it as a (prior) bad investment.

So, I don't necessarily disagree with RJ here, but I'm not sure that the point is really relevant.

Furthermore, you can easily say that the negative press associated with Lance's downfall does quite a bit of damage to USPS in the long run, and long-term goodwill (i.e., after the formal termination of the sponsorship) is part of what you're paying for when you sponsor a team. Think of how many times you've seen Lance on TV with a Postal logo since 2004. Plenty, I'd say, especially if you watched 60 Minutes last night!
 
Dkin said:
And keeping to the spirit of this thread...Chris Horner wins the T of C? Really? Chris Horner?
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This is what happens when you hold your race at the same time as the Giro.
 
Dkin said:
The 60 Mins piece is mainly about Tyler Hamilton and what he claims to know and claims to have seen. Which is Armstrong taking PED's and encouraging others on the USPS team to do so. This is the same Hamilton that cheated for years, denied it for years and was caught. And...what didn't seem to make the telecast last night...he's looking for a publisher for his upcoming book. So this guy's less than stable, Landis was less than stable and last night's Hincapie angle was really, really weak IMO.

I suspect LA took PEDs and participated in blood doping. But if the best the prosecution can do is come up with Hamilton/Landis type witnesses, the Armstrong empire should be fine.
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I thought Hamilton came across as very credible. They did mention he was writing a book, but didn't mention he had not found a publisher.

He was very quick to say things like...I asked for the PEDs, everyone near the top used PEDs, etc. that smear the sport more than Armstrong IMO.

Thought the most damning part of the interview was his stating that Lance failed a drug test in a 2001 pre-TDF event, and the detail he went into there. He could have easily avoided answering that since it didn't affect him; I could see that part as being vindictive or just wanting to get everything off his chest.

I agree with your conclusion that LA took PEDs, but the Armstrong empire will be fine other than Armstrong making less from commercials. Hopefully cycling can improve their testing procedures, and let the sport deal with it instead of the government.
 
But the charges they are going after him for are absurd and in the past. He wasn't a dealer. He wasn't BALCO and creating the substances.

This would be like going after a mail truck driver fo drunk driving on the job 5-10 years ago using only testimony from the guys he drank with at lunch.

This case is Big Brother with PMS. It's like the USSR having your neighbors rattring you out for wanting freedom.
 
RJKarl said:
But the charges they are going after him for are legit and span several years. He wasn't a clean participant in the sport. He wasn't BALCO and creating the substances. He just took them and encouraged others to do the same. He may have even bribed foreign officials to cover up the fact

This would be like going after a mail truck driver for drunk driving on the job repeatedly throughout his stellar mail truck driver career while lying about it and possibly bribing the testing agency and police officers to cover up his positive tests..

This case really aggravates my PMS. In my drug addled mind I equate druggie cyclists informing on another more famous druggie cyclist to the USSR having your neighbors rattring you out for wanting freedom even though the two are nothing alike.
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FIFY
 
Yeah I don't understand the end game for the investigation here. Is it jail time for LA? Does seem like a waste of time, money and other resources.
 
RJKarl said:
But the charges they are going after him for are absurd and in the past. He wasn't a dealer. He wasn't BALCO and creating the substances.

This would be like going after a mail truck driver fo drunk driving on the job 5-10 years ago using only testimony from the guys he drank with at lunch.

This case is Big Brother with PMS. It's like the USSR having your neighbors rattring you out for wanting freedom.
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Hamilton claims that at some point, he had a need for EPO, called Lance, and Lance hooked him up. That is dealing.

Furthermore, both Landis and Hamilton have said that the team distributed doping products to them. As part of team management, that would also make Lance a dealer.
 
qcdeac said:
Yeah I don't understand the end game for the investigation here. Is it jail time for LA? Does seem like a waste of time, money and other resources.
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I would imagine jail time is the goal, yes, for Lance and anyone else they can get jurisdiction over (Thom Wiesel, Bill Stapleton, among other Americans involved in team management). Cycling fans noticed that Johan Bruyneel (Postal's former DS and current Team Radioshack's current DS) did not attend the Tour of California last week for the first time ever.

Lance is obviously the most public figure involved, but this investigation is by no means aimed at him in particular. It is also not about whether somebody cheated to win some bike race. It's about violating federal law and defrauding the government. According to press reports.
 
qcdeac said:
Yeah I don't understand the end game for the investigation here. Is it jail time for LA? Does seem like a waste of time, money and other resources.
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i think it is akin to Mike Vick. The dude was essentially persecuted for a crime that is committed daily with arrests made daily. He wasn't investigated because his crime was more egregious than others, but because he was a public figure they could make a statement by prosecuting. LA is the same thing

and rj, I will state this again. you don't have to make or sell drugs to traffic them. he isn't being charged with production or sale, but trafficking. if he carried illicit drugs over any borders, then he trafficked. you may not agree with him being investigated, but don't try to change the actual law around to prove your point. you can have the opinion that the investigation is a waste of money but you cannot have the opinion that drug trafficking requires production and/or sale of drugs because it simply does not...it only requires trafficking which ironically enough is why it is called trafficking. the law can be so confusing sometimes
 
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johnny miles said:
Hamilton claims that at some point, he had a need for EPO, called Lance, and Lance hooked him up. That is dealing.

Furthermore, both Landis and Hamilton have said that the team distributed doping products to them. As part of team management, that would also make Lance a dealer.
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I've never heard about a "dealer" who doesn't sell a product.

Using this logic, if you take a hit off a friend's joint, he's a dealer. That's nonsense.
 
RJKarl said:
I've never heard about a "dealer" who doesn't sell a product.

Using this logic, if you take a hit off a friend's joint, he's a dealer. That's nonsense.
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It's because he sent it across borders.

And I guess I meant "trafficking," as pointed out by BigTree. Good catch.
 
If you aren't selling it and are simply sharing it with friends or co-workers, it's outrageous and obscene to compare to selling cocaine across boarders or to develkoping, testing and selling steroids.

Sorry this is totally BS.

Armstrong may be as big a prick as Bonds, but that doesn't give the government the right to act like we are North Korea.
 
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