Lance Armstrong

snicho wrote:what is the potential of this happening in climbing? especially now that the competition side of things has the potential of becoming an olympic sport?

Probably happens already. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

camhead wrote: So... you're saying that genetics make a big difference in performance? That's not really surprising.

Yes, and the twist is that someone who has less natural potential will derive greater benefits from PEDs. So, it's not as though everyone can dope and the bar will raise equally for everyone. There may very well have been athletes competing against LA who had more natural ability and would have beaten him had he not been doping.

Ryan Williams wrote: Award for longest sentence on Mountain Proj?

Award for not being able to spell the word "Project."

Do we hold athletes up to such high standards to compensate somehow for letting crooks rule the rest of our world?

If Lance was a banker, lobbyist or politician, he'd be getting a huge bonus about now.

snicho wrote:what is the potential of this happening in climbing? especially now that the competition side of things has the potential of becoming an olympic sport?

I think certain sports and types of competition lend themselves to PED/doping/etc. while others do not. As far as the implication to climbing, overall I think it's a sport that lends itself to a relatively low incidence rate of doping....though I'd be curious what others thought?

How would doping for climbing improvement be done even? Using the blood doping from cycling to stave of the pump?

Jason N. wrote: I think certain sports and types of competition lend themselves to PED/doping/etc. while others do not. As far as the implication to climbing, overall I think it's a sport that lends itself to a relatively low incidence rate of doping....though I'd be curious what others thought? How would doping for climbing improvement be done even? Using the blood doping from cycling to stave of the pump?

EPO doping runs in the $1k/month range and up, I doubt many climbers would be able to afford it.

Crag Dweller wrote: Yes, and the twist is that someone who has less natural potential will derive greater benefits from PEDs. So, it's not as though everyone can dope and the bar will raise equally for everyone. There may very well have been athletes competing against LA who had more natural ability and would have beaten him had he not been doping.

I'm not super informed on this (and I said up-thread that I didn't care, haha), but correct me if I'm wrong: I thought that Lance was an exceptionally genetically gifted individual. I read somewhere that his blood processed oxygen abnormally efficiently, or something like that.

redlude97 wrote: EPO doping runs in the $1k/month range and up, I doubt many climbers would be able to afford it.

We can just go ahead and say that the Euros would probably do it, what with their socialist state sponsorship, man-capris, and Mammut sponsorships and all.

camhead wrote: I'm not super informed on this (and I said up-thread that I didn't care, haha), but correct me if I'm wrong: I thought that Lance was an exceptionally genetically gifted individual. I read somewhere that his blood processed oxygen abnormally efficiently, or something like that.

He was below average in the peloton before the cancer, and suddenly became elite soon after recovering. If it wasn't obvious he was doping then your head was in the sand.

i hope his ass get arrested and put in jail... ruined people's lives while doping and now that he's been caught he wants to turn whistle blower and ruin more people's lives? wtf is wrong with this guy... what a douche bag loser.

redlude97 wrote: He was below average in the peloton before the cancer, and suddenly became elite soon after recovering. If it wasn't obvious he was doping then your head was in the sand.

You don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you consider winning a Tour de France stage 'below average', which he did in the '95 Tour, but he was well on his way to becoming a great racer before cancer.

He was/is exceptionally gifted in many aspects (being an asshole is high on that list). He was also a doper before and after cancer (reference Frankie and Betsy Andreu's assertion that he told his cancer doctor he had been doping).

Bob Banks wrote: You don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you consider winning a Tour de France stage 'below average', which he did in the '95 Tour, but he was well on his way to becoming a great racer before cancer. He was/is exceptionally gifted in many aspects (being an asshole is high on that list). He was also a doper before and after cancer (reference Frankie and Betsy Andreu's assertion that he told his cancer doctor he had been doping).

He won a relatively short flat stage. He was a decent classics and short tour rider, but couldn't hang in any of the grand tours. Before the cancer he sucked at climbing. I wouldn't say he was well on his way to being great. He was making progress towards being a decent rider but his trajectory before the cancer was not towards winning the tour in the foreseeable future. His future was as a domestique before the doping. Yes the doping started before the cancer also but didn't have the results to show for it.

Just in case you care to spend the time to watch...

Number of Denials for LA

I wonder if we could make the argument that the last "true atheletes" who are performing feats of strength, skill and endurance are rock climbers, both in the profressional realm and the amature arena. Cyclists who win the Tour de France earn millions, rock climbers, who win local and world competitions, are mostly living out of their cars. Athletes who dope their blood and injest steriods to win arn't doing so in order to win...they need to keep those paychecks coming. I doubt Alex Honold and Chris Sharma would be able to afford such doping luxeries, thus, their achievements can be an honest tribute to what humans are truely capable of doing due to a certain level of training and desire. Maybe we need to remove the profit margin from a lot of sports in order to get them back to their competative roots.

I take performance enhancing herbs and aminos. Anyone else?

camhead wrote: I'm not super informed on this (and I said up-thread that I didn't care, haha), but correct me if I'm wrong: I thought that Lance was an exceptionally genetically gifted individual. I read somewhere that his blood processed oxygen abnormally efficiently, or something like that.

Yes, his VO2 max was widely discussed. Pump yourself full of EPO and re-infuse a liter of blood and your VO2 max will be abnormally high too.

I don't think there's any question that he was a naturally gifted athlete. The problem is that he was doping for the entirety of his professional career. So, we'll never know whether he was more gifted than any other professional athlete.

But, consider how his early performances compared to other athletes who, for all we know, were/are clean.

Greg LeMond placed 3rd in his first TdF, 2nd the next year, and he won it the following year.
Cadel Evans placed 8th in his first TdF and won it 6 years later, after the 'Lance-era' had concluded.
Bradley Wiggins has a very different (track) background and his first couple of TdFs weren't so good but he placed 3rd the first time he raced it as a true stage race contender.
Tejay Van Garderen placed 5th in his first TdF and his future potential looks pretty good.

LA placed 36th in the first TdF that he finished. The prior year he DNF. That doesn't exactly indicate athletic potential that is above and beyond that of others in his ranks, especially considering he was already doping at that time based on the testimony of the Andreu's.

Lance won worlds clean, at the age of 21...didn't start doping until after the '94 season when Ferrari was doping the Gewiss-Ballan team...his VO2 was tested clean and it was one of the highest ever recorded, behind only Bjarne Daehlie, i think (nordy skier, also a doper).

he was definitely not "below average" in the peloton, but yes, he wasn't a contender for a grand tour. one can be an exceptionally gifted rider (Tom Boonen) without being a GC contender in a grand tour.

all that aside, he's a bully, a dick, a liar. yeah, most of the rest of the GC contenders were doping, too, but some had the class to keep their cake holes shut and not be such assholes. lance didn't. see: emma o'reilly, david walsh, bassons.

he's a twat, for sure.

coppolillo wrote:Lance won worlds clean, at the age of 21...didn't start doping until after the '94 season when Ferrari was doping the Gewiss-Ballan team...his VO2 was tested clean and it was one of the highest ever recorded, behind only Bjarne Daehlie, i think (nordy skier, also a doper).

While he has an elite VO2 max, he's not even in the top 10. He has a lower VO2 max than Lemond for one.

Professional cycling, like any other professional sport, is meaningless and contrived at its core. No more important than the latest soap opera or reality tV show. I don't feel bad for the people he beat. I'm not sure pedaling a 7 pound hunk of metal as fast as you can in spandex against a field of athletes. some of whom are know to "cheat", a great career choice.