Thylacine

Glossed over? How exactly?

Namenda

Damning testimony...if only it came from an impartial source.

<Dr. Ashenden was among of group of scientists who questioned the validity of a physiological study on Lance Armstrong, a dispute that led him to serve as an expert witness in an arbitration case>

This won't go anywhere, sorry.

patentcad

They'll replace me like a worn out deposit bottle.

classic1

I've heard a recording of this interview. You can hear the black helicopters in the background.

gsteinb

I am a black helicopter.

Namenda

Did anybody see the part where the samples were tested as negative, so the guy that developed the test (who could that be?) changed the parameters, and then reinterpreted the results until they became positive "to the trained eye"? Huh, anybody see that part?

This guy is about 180 degrees from impartial. Which is why his "expert testimony" was discounted in court.

gsteinb

ummm no. It was discounted in court because it was determined that whether Lance doped or not wasn't germane to the case. It was then settled out of court.

Namenda

So, if they had a firm case proving that LA cheated, they couldn't have won in court based on the win being tainted? Doubtful. Any solid proof of cheating would have left LA just like Landis, and the money would have gone back.

I'm no Lance apologist, and couldn't care less either way. The point is, he has won. No matter how much they throw at him, nothing sticks. These samples that Ashendon says are positive, have been judged to be negative. And that isn't going to change.

gsteinb

Lance did not fail a drug test in competition and was awarded the tour victory. The contract was for a bonus paid on winning the tour. You can be doubtful as you want, but that's what the case hinged on. Arguing that just means you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Tulex

So the real story is that you have a guy with an obvious agenda and apparently no life, though he seems to have better lungs than Lance, going after a guy that not only has a life, but is trying to save others.

The fact of the matter is that this is past history. The only damage he can do to Lance is to hurt Lance's cause. If this dude thinks that is the right thing to do, I guess that speaks for him.

classic1

What do you think Michael Ashendon does for a living?

Tulex

It's irrelevant to me. I have no use for people that are out to hurt others. I really don't care if Lance doped, is a jerk, eats kittens...... He is a face behind a worthy cause. To smear that face is to hurt the cause.

Ih8lucky13

Careful Classic or everyone who has cancer will never forgive you.

gsteinb

Sub question: If he ate kittens wouldn't he be hurting others?


https://www.peta.org/

Tulex

Technically, yep. I wonder though how many people eat animals with the intent to hurt them...... I eat beef. My dog eats beef. We are both ok with that.

SushiJoe

Hillshire Farm: GO MEAT!!

Kelrod

So....Lance didn't hurt others if he did cheat? What about the honest people he raced against that did not cheat? Do they not count? I understand that what he is doing now is for a good cause, but come on he has it pretty good with the money and fame he has received.

Duke of Kent

MA: You cast yourself back to 2005, and I'm very acutely aware of this, there was a wall that came up against me immediately as I was trying to interpret the background data on Armstrong. There virtually was none. Before the Ed Coyle paper no one really knew for sure anything about Armstrong. Not his VO2Max, not his power output, we didn't even know how much he weighed. All you could rely on was very loose, for example in the article that was published after his first test session in Coyle's lab when the photographs were taken, they report him as being 77, 78 kilos. You contrast that with the data in Coyle's paper, and he shows that the lowest body weight was 75 kilos in '93, but in November after his first Tour victory, it was 79 kilos.

Now, Coyle would have us believe that he was 72 kilos at the Tour de France. Armstrong is on the record saying that he was absolutely fastidious about what he ate, and when he ate and how he ate. It is incomprehensible that someone would get himself into such perfect condition and then essentially eat like a horse so that his body weight ballooned up to 79 kilos, and then somehow intend to go back through that hell to lose 7 kilos again for the next race. That's just not true, it doesn't happen.

This guy is an idiot if he believes that. Really.

I know plenty of people whose weight fluctuates by 10lbs over the course of a year. Go to any high school wrestling practice, and even the "healthy" kids (the ones who aren't starving themselves) will have lost 4kg over the course of 3 months.

Tulex

So anything that people can do to him now will help the people in his past? People that want to see Lance fail, or any other person for that matter, are doing so for their own personal agenda. For those that are actually competing against him, I get that. Anyone else, it's most likely just to justify some level of hate.

Nick29

That seems pretty damning but one thing seemed odd. The fact that one test found no endogenous epo seems weird, but it's not given any further explanation

Enthalpic

I hope an oncologist hooks up with your wife.


Not really, your body uses these feedback systems to maintain homeostasis. If you take exogenous EPO your body down regulates endogenous EPO production.

Namenda

No, the case hinged on them trying to prove cheating, so the win could be found to be unearned, and then possibly stripped from him. Then the bonus money would have to be returned. Everyone knows he won. They had a celebration, champagne, the works. Maybe you missed it. What on Earth would be the point of bringing a court case to decide whether or not he had won? That would never have made it into a courtroom. Which isn't to say that it wouldn't be argued here, ad nauseum.

gsteinb

The ruling was that it was irrelevant to whether he was owed the money. He was owed the money based on winning, and his win could not be overturned based on a new testing procedure. This wasn't the uci or aso taking him to court.

DiabloScott

They assumed a particular method of sabotage (spiking), then showed why it would be very difficult to do that. They ignored other methods of sabotage.

I have no reason to believe that sabotage did happen, I'm just pointing out that they haven't proved it didn't; which I think they must do to really prove their case and which they seem to acknowledge as well. Once the A samples had all been found non-positive the B samples didn't have nearly the same level of custody control and the opportunity was there.

Ratfish

I'm wondering why the UCI, or whichever governing body is relevant, wouldn't pursue this if it were legit. Is there a statute of limitations?