Hambone

Twist the facts however you want... If the witness is telling the truth, you are not going to trap them "in a lie"

The first time I heard this story it sounded like crap. IF LA was juicing, and IF his doctor asked him about hit... it defies logic to suggest that he did it in a room full of people AFTER the surgery. (The doctor in question has since said the same thing.)

Now I'm not a physician but I used to watch ER a lot so I know this... doctors don't ask questions like that in a room full of people.

Feltup

It comes down to this. They all dope and if they all dope than Lance doped; however, he still kicked their ass because he beat them when they were on dope.

cooker

I am a physician. When you're in a hospital being treated for metastatic cancer there can be several teams of doctors involved in your case, plus their residents and interns, even medical students. Unfortunately, not every one of those personnel is going to ask questions discreetly, and not every one is going to have the chance to catch the patient without an entourage of friends and family around, so it doesn't seem impossible to me that it happened as described.

For me, the weakest part of the case is that Lance was only three days post surgery for brain tumours when this was supposed to have taken place. If so, who knows if he was answering accurately.

adamastor

"The doctor in question" is not one of the 2 doctors who were present in the room. Actually nobody knows who they were. Betsy Andreu doesn't remember their names (why should she, after 9 years??), but as far as I understood they were never identified.

Question: LA admits he was in that room with his friends (he only denies the conversation !). But has he told who the doctors were?

Uni

Thats true and the main doctor was asked about this, his response was that if Lance had answered yes then it would had been so important it would be added to his medical records.
There was nothing in the medical records to show that he answered yes to taking EPO, etc.
Remember though Betsy couldnt remember if the doctor was male or female, but strangely remembers the questions very well

Still for me one thing that seperates Lance from a lot of other cyclists in doping accusations is his work with Texas Univervisity that studied his physiology from the age of 21 to 28.
The tests were done out of season and while training in preparation for the TDFs.

For me it would be strange to dope when a high level of physiological tests were being done that frequently, they may not identify PEDs but surely they would identify characteristics of doping.
So would he had assisted Human Performance Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the university if he was doping?

Some will still say yes, and others no....
Me, until real proof is found I am in the no camp with regards to him doping.

Uni

Thats true and the main doctor was asked about this, his response was that if Lance had answered yes then it would had been so important it would be added to his medical records.
There was nothing in the medical records to show that he answered yes to taking EPO, etc.
Remember though Betsy couldnt remember if the doctor was male or female, but strangely remembers the questions very well

Still for me one thing that seperates Lance from a lot of other cyclists in doping accusations is his work with Texas Univervisity that studied his physiology from the age of 21 to 28.
The tests were done out of season and while training in preparation for the TDFs.

For me it would be strange to dope when a high level of physiological tests were being done that frequently, they may not identify PEDs but surely they would identify characteristics of doping.
So would he had assisted Human Performance Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the university if he was doping?

Some will still say yes, and others no....
Me, until real proof is found I am in the no camp with regards to him doping.

alanbikehouston

The testimony makes clear that Ms. Andreu is willing to say anything to damage Lance, but is also attempting to protect her own husband...she wants to claim that Lance was doping, while her own husband rode totally clean. The "madman" of cycling, Greg Lemond, is also willing to say anything he can to damage Lance, but in so doing, he has put a cloud over Andreu. So, to defend her husband, Ms. Andreu must contradict Lemond.

I do not know who is more pathetic. Sad little losers such as Andreu and Lemond, embittered by their has-been status...saying anything to get just fifteen more minutes of fame. Or those members of this Forum who lick up these tired lies as if they were a kitten licking up spilled milk.

When these lies have been presented in Courts and neutral forums, the results are always the same: big checks are written to Armstrong. I wish the liars on this Forum were held equally responsible for their daily foul spewing of rehashed slander and libel.

DogBoy

Maybe the doctor was Pat and [Betsy] couldn't tell!

Edited for clarity...

Hambone

Does it seem logical that LA got all the way through the early medical history stuff, then through the pre operative stuff and this question was never raised? Then some intern asks three days after surgery, he suddenly says yes and nobody charts it? (I have a hard time believing grand rounds would go through LA's room with non-immediate family there and that kind of question was raised and answered anyway, but just playing devil's advocate.)

Hambone

...

robow

Being a physician, I can't help but think that a careful case history would have been done several times and documented well BEFORE any surgery and treatment and not AFTER he had just undergone surgery. I can see revisiting these questions later in privacy but it would take a real bonehead and a bonehead probably still groggy after surgery to answer a question like that "yes" with so many people in the room. I don't know for sure whether Lance juiced or not but this story sure seems less than believable.

Hambone you type faster than I.

Hambone

yeah, but I have no idea what a spleen is for...

cooker

In this thread, it's for venting.

cooker

Crowds of "doctors" come through. Do you know the names of all the members of "House"s team? Multiply that by 5 or 10.

adamastor

Of course she remembers the questions very well. The particular question about PEDs shocked her so much she had a huge argument afterwards with her then fiance Frankie Andreu (according to him !).

I know exactly what I was doing on September 11, but I can't remember what I was wearing that day. I keep on researching on the Armstrong case. Actually what I did was I imagined LA has always been totally clean, never touched EPO. And a lot of things simply don't add up, they don't. I can hear him giving interviews in Europe, they were so bloody different from those he gave in the States, it's unbelievable. And I simply want to understand. But I'm ready to listen to your opinion, UNI, I am...

Oh, and by the way, you never told us that what you produced has been written by LA's lawyers...(then taken over by Knapp Communications, aka Cycling News !)

Have a nice day
Adamastor

Uni

I got it from a different source than Cycling News.

Moving away from the accusations that to be honest cant be proved......
Out of interest whats your views about Lance Armstrong being studied at the Human Performance Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, The University of Texas from the age of 21 to 28.
This was pretty intensive analysis of Lance.
Dont you think Lance would have to be a very brave man to dope and co-operate with such a study?
For those who didnt see the link here it is again:
https://jap.physiology.org/cgi/conten.../98/6/2191#top

sabretech2001

Adamastor,
You've clearly decided that LA was doping. Why, I don't know. He's passed all the tests, and won lotsa money via legal challenges. I'm thinking it's some sort of emotional attachment to the issue. I can understand that, as I am a big Tyler Hamilton fan, and was prepared to swallow almost anything to believe him, but every challenge he's put up has been shot down. Even though I don't want to believe it, the facts say he doped and therefore cheated. I therefore have no choice but to agree that he broke the rules, and deserves the lifetime ban he's facing.
The point I'd like you to consider is that all Tyler's woes started after he left the Posties. Considering LA's fixation with the Tour, and his dominance of that team (as its' Captain) it says to me that LA was in a clean team, and was clean himself.
Also, now that I think of it, that applies to Roberto Heras as well.

It reminds me of something I heard when I was racing, I don't quite remember the quote, but the gist was that it's a comforting thought to think that someone is bending/breaking the rules rather than accepting the fact that some other guy is kicking your @ss drinking the same water as you are. Or doing it with just water and talent; I just don't remember.

Lance Armstrong is the Eddy Merckx (sp?) of our generation. Using that as a rough guideline, in another thirty or so years, some other guy is going to come along and amaze us all. Not unlike Michael Jordan in basketball. Some guys are just better than the rest of us ordinary mortals. It's not fair, it just is.

adamastor

Every time you post something, you tell other posters who don't share your opinions of liars. Stop that please, and let's have a constructive debate here.

Other than that, I wish you a nice day
Adamastor

adamastor

You are right. I need to take time to read these reports. What is extremely important, from when to when did they take place. And as well what kind of results do they show. let's say, when you talk EPO, that is only detectable days after usage, so were those tests weekly, monthly or annual tests? Or over one particular period of time?

If they those tests took place AFTER Armstrong's treatment for cancer, they would really be interesting to analyse. Well, do they show regular, weekly or monthly hematocrite levels? etc

"Dont you think Lance would have to be a very brave man to dope and co-operate with such a study?"

Yes definitely, if the content of the study were subject to reveal doping usage.

Thanks for post, UNI. Will definitely come back to it, but don't forget, i'm not asn expert in medical report reading,

Uni

Ah I also didnt mention that the Journal also has other studies of Lance and Indurain in the references section, if you click on some of those they open another report in a summary form. To see the complete study click on an option for the full study.
A good example is Reference 28 - Scientific approach to the 1-h cycling world record: a case study.
This has really interesting information about Indurain and is used to compare Lance to Indurain in terms of physiology.

While a lot of the studies may not be specifically looking for PEDs, if lance did take such drugs they would show anomolies in his training due to the extensive analysis of him out and in training.

cooker

I just reviewed the Coyle 2005 study. I haven't looked at the others yet.

I’m not an expert in exercise physiology, so take that into account. Coyle had Lance come into his lab on 5 separate occasions over 7 years, for a day of testing each time. This involved a 25 minute bicycle endurance task at a steady cadence of 85 with progressively increasing resistance, to exhaustion, and measurements of heart rate, power output, oxygen intake, and post exercise lactate. Tests were done in the winter months when Lance was in training but not at his race weight of 72 kg...instead he was 76-80 kg.

Lance’s maximum oxygen usage (VO2-max) remained constant at about 6.l L/min over the 7 years, except for dropping right after his cancer treatment when he wasn’t training as hard. Despite that consistent oxygen usage, his performance on the endurance test increased by 8% over that time, showing that his muscles became more efficient, probably reflecting a change in muscle fibre composition over time.

Lance’s high VO2max is away above what it is believed most people could achieve even with intense training, so it’s partly genetic, but it isn’t as high as reported for Miguel Indurain (6.4 L/min). However if it was the same when Lance was at race weight, then Lance’s weight-adjusted O2 usage would be slightly higher than Indurain’s.

The most striking finding is that Lance can clear lactic acid out of his blood more quickly after exercise than anyone else Coyle has tested, including former team-mates who were training with Lance at the time. So maybe Lance doesn't get the same "burn" on sprints and climbs the rest of us do. (Of course, Coyle has not tested Indurain or Ullrich, etc.)

So these findings help explain Lance’s remarkable performance. However they shed no light on whether performance enhancing drugs played a role in his success. The testing didn’t involve (or at least Coyle doesn’t comment on) measures of hematocrit and since it happened in the off-season it sheds no light on whether Lance might have used EPO or some other PED closer to race dates. Also we don’t know if the improved muscle efficiency over time could be partly caused by PEDs, since Coyle says the mechanism for this phenomenon, which has been seen in other endurance athletes over years of training, is not known.

The article is free according to the journal website so I’ll try to post the full text of it later

Sco++

And to think the sporting world used to get excited about race horses using performance enhancing drugs...

Sco++

The frogs of Calavaras County better watch out. I've always suspected some of those frogs of doping...

TallRider

Very interesting thread, once you sort through the chaff (and there's lots of it).

It's worth pointing out to whoever critiqued Ms. Andreu for not remembering anything about the doctors, but only about the alleged EPO conversation: people are more likely to remember data that they consider relevant. I shouldn't need to state this - everyone should say "duh" when they read the italicized line. But I've apparently got to state it.
This isn't saying that I believe Ms. Andreu's [leaked] testimony, nor does it mean that various other criticisms of her testimony are necessarily stupid. But at least a stupid criticism of her testimony should be disputed.

cooker

Oops, UNI already posted a link to the article: https://jap.physiology.org/cgi/conten.../98/6/2191#top