gate28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEqQ...cIVzDkj-Vb3RdA

LEGEND!!!!!!

TenSpeedV2

I wonder how good he would have been without the drugs.

mapeiboy

UCI stripped his 2003 tour win and its been 13 years and no winner has come forward to claims the title . All the participants in the years were as drug up as Lance . Please give him back the tour win since the playing field was even .

Steve B.

I mean really.

#2 Ullrich as well admitted doping
#3 Vinokourov also admitted doping

Seems the assorted national sports agencies decided to be a bit more lenient with the rest of the peloton that the US did with Lance. Yet somehow he alone gets his results stripped.

And I don't like the guy. An admitted dick, but then again so was Hinault and he's now a huge mucky muck in the TdF.

But with EVERYBODY doping it's a level playing field and it sure as hell made for good TV watching.

Nermal

So, the real competition becomes a matter of who can get away with the most abuse. Not something I think I want to follow.

drlogik 

The misconception is that all of the top riders of that day were doping with EPO's and blood transfusions. Not so. Many top riders weren't and they didn't achieve the number of big wins but they were top riders. It was a secret "society" of riders, many of whom got their stuff from Dr. Ferrari. There was a policy of Omerta. Nobody talked about it.

It wasn't a "level playing field" back then. The only thing the doping did was to extend the athlete's ability to go "beyond" what the body was screaming to the rider "enough already". Those top riders trained like he11 doping or no doping.

Now, was it ethical? No. Was it right? No. Did it prevent other VERY deserved riders from achieving the level they should have? Absolutely. Did it ruin careers? Darn right it did. And it darn near killed the sport to!

Aside from the doping, that race with Armstrong and Ullrich was epic no matter how you look at it.

Read the book, "The Secret Race" by Tyler Hamilton. It by far is one of the best written and "page-turner" books I've read in many years. Even if a person isn't a cyclist, the book is a fascinating read. I couldn't put it down and read it in two days. What it reveals is the behind the scenes look at how they pulled off the EPO/doping. It was crazy what those guys went through to keep from getting caught. I liked Tyler Hamilton as a racer back then. He was tough, tougher than all the rest. He would never give up not ever. It also reveals a lot about Hamilton and the effect that whole business had on him, his family and relationships. Excellent book. Oh, and he doesn't pull any punches on Lance.

Also reading Jens Voigt's book, "Shut up Legs!" and it's quite good as well. Unique perspective from an East German rider who claims he didn't dope like the other riders of the day.

Lazyass

Notice the downtube shifter for the front derailleur. Closeup @ 6:05

And yeah, everyone doped. Even Merckx was busted for doping. Armstrong was just a prick.

cb400bill

Thread moved from General Cycling to Pro Cycling for the Fans.

Emperor Ryker

Why not? That way it's a level playing field, like has already been mentioned, and performance in general also goes up so that it's more fun to watch.

Homebrew01

Screw him (and the other dopers)
The playing field wasn't level for guys that refused to dope and were either pack fodder, or never even got on a top team.

Homebrew01

What difference does it make as a spectator if guys ride .5 mph faster ?? It's not noticeable from the sidelines.

Emperor Ryker

There's also increased endurance, and even if it was just going 0.5 mph faster, I find it more interesting because then I know they're doing everything they can. It's also more fair that way.

Kevindale

I have mixed feelings on this -- Armstrong was indeed an amazing athlete, and I salute his ability to focus and push himself. But I think there's some mythology about doping that muddies the waters, and makes these discussions come down to confirmation bias.

First, it could not have been a level playing field. The doping programs were all hidden from view, with a shadowy network of doctors and experts providing different services to different teams. Was everyone cheating in the say way, to the same degree? Of course not. If Armstrong's team had the best and most pervasive doping scheme, they had a substantial advantage, and the best we can say is that he was a world-class EPO user, but maybe an ordinary very-good racer in a non-EPO world. If his team didn't have the best doping scheme, then he was an even better athlete than we thought to dominate other great riders who were doping even more extensively, but we'll never know.

Second, all doping isn't alike. Even Armstrong is very clear about that. Testosterone, corticosteroids, HGH, stimulants, pain killers, etc. gave very marginal improvements, especially for young elite athletes. Some of those drugs helped recovery more than performance, some helped actual performance, some helped make up for issues in training. But they didn't turn a good rider into a great rider, especially not over a number of stages and races. EPO doping is something else. As Armstrong said recently, the other doping tricks gave maybe 1% gains. EPO gave 10% gains. Riders could generate staggering power, up hills and mountains, for much longer periods of time. It truly allowed superhuman performances, and that to me is why I can't watch that video in the first post and feel admiration.

We know that most of the legends, like Merckx, used banned substances at least on occasion, but the EPO-era was/is something else. It's ignorant to just say "they've all doped forever, so what's the big deal."

eddiepliers 

Odd, I live in Pittsburgh, the city with the most bridges in the world. I think we can afford to burn a couple.

79pmooney

Even playing field? I never heard that any other riders had ins at UCI such that they got the phone calls that the administrator of the out of competition test was going to show up in the next hour. I don't believe other riders or their representatives called UCI to have other riders who were getting too close for comfort tested. Again, even playing field?

Never mind that LA and his rep's committed acts of liable against several reporters and threats and harassment against Simeloni (sp) and several women for doing no more than speaking the truth. If I tried those things, I would expect jail time.

Ben

79pmooney

LA was a rider with a not-so-high hemotocrit. Therefore he had far more to gain from EPO in the early days where only max hemotocrit was monitored. A rider naturally close to the 50% max would, before EPO, be expected to excel over a three week tour because his recovery would probably be better htan a rider with a lower HCT. But after EPO, he has no ability to use EPO without going over the 50% threshold.

Before EPO, LA never showed any hints of excelling at the GC in grand tours. Winning the occasional one day races, yes. Pulling off a stage in a grand tour. Yes. But thriving in the high mountains, day after day? The guys who could do that before EPO were the guys with natural HCTs like 45%. But after EPO, those guys now finished 5 minutes back. It was a different bunch of riders who stood on the grand tour podiums.

Ben

mapeiboy

If Simeloni was a clean rider as he claimed then UCI should give him one of the Lance tour titles . Seriously , I am still waiting that to happen over the years .

gate28

Great to see him back in the saddle. He came to Auckland NZ last year. It was amazing to see him!

Maelochs

You do not seem to understand.

First of all ... they are Always doing all they can do, dope or no dope. No one is coasting through a professional bike race. It's not like the guys who doped worked harder ... they just had artificially high limits, particularly later in the race, because they could recover more quickly,.

By your "logic," anyone not using a motor is lazy. So ... I assume you'd rather watch motorcycle racing?

Second, "level playing field" would mean everybody had access to the same drugs, and the same level of expertise and medical care.

As it clearly states a few posts above, some teams had "good" drug programs and some were more haphazard.

If you had done any research, you would have learned that some teams (U.S. Postal, for instance) had a really sophisticated doping program run by the team, while on some teams, riders were expected to get their own drugs and administer them as best they could according to whatever knowledge or information, or locker-room rumors they might have heard.

If Lance had been on a small team and Ullrich on U.S. Postal, we might never have heard of LA except through Livestrong, and Ullrich might have had seven meaningless yellow jerseys in frames hung on his wall.

work4bike

I don't think you can contribute all the success to drugs, I just don't think they improve your performance that much, unless you do something really crazy with dosage/type and then you can only expect that to work so long before burning yourself out. I really do think he had a major change in mindset after cancer.

I'm not defending lance and I don't care one way or the other if he gets his titles back, just my view on professional cycling -- the vast majority are doping, at least the leaders. I think they all feel pressured to dope for the same reason they are looking for so many other advantages, many of which would normally be considered inconsequential, but there's a lot of money on the line.

Lance was a natural born athlete. This is proof, not many 15-y/o kids are racing with 20-something pros

Maelochs

To me this is the greatest tragedy of that whole era. We might have seen some real superhuman athletes---people genetically gifted physically, mentally, and emotionally to force themselves to excel---but instead we got to see who had the better pharmacist.

LA might have been the best cyclist ever .... but we will never know, because all we know is he hired Dr. Ferrari, who was the best dope-doctor.

Colnago Mixte

And so did every other Tour winner before and after.

I don't know where people get this idea that someone ought to be able to win the big races on nothing but pasta and mineral water. It was never that way at any time in the past, and likely never will be. But still, the idea persists as some sort of ideal. An impossible one, but an ideal nonetheless. Like flying around with nothing more than your arms, or solving poverty forever, or teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony. These ideals persist outside of the realm of reality.

Armstrong risked his neck on those descents, and drugs were of no help there. He figured out the tactics he needed to win, EPO was of no help there. He rode every pedal stroke of those seven wins, not you, not me, Lance Armstrong. Give the guy at least SOME credit here, please. Love or hate him, the work ethic of that guy was phenomenal, and probably the major key to his successes. But no one ever gives him any credit for that.

I know it's easier to simply not think and just jump on the "Armstrong Sucks" bandwagon, as most of the vocal people here and elsewhere have. Maybe you feel betrayed, I simply don't know your reasons for felling so bitter. But IMO, those who feel betrayed need to re-examine their own naive assumptions about professional cycling, and the world in general, and stop expecting real-life fairy tales.

Maelochs

yeah ... unmmm ... No, sorry, you are totally wrong.

People can do grands tours on bread and water ... just not so fast. Maybe people have always cheated, but that is what that means---they have always cheated.

I'd prefer shorter stages, more rest days, or longer ride times to riders using drugs.

And yeah, LA rode those stages, and worked hard ... that was never the issue and you trying to make it the issue shows you don't like to deal with the Real reality.

No one knows if his tactics were better because tactics are dictated by performance ability. If he had better drugs, could push harder or recover faster, his tactics worked. the best tactics in the world won't beat a stronger rider using the same or similar tactics. And there is no way of knowing what his competition might have done, and they also been on the Dr. Ferrari plan.

Also, LA's team mates were also on the plan, which meant that he could get more out of his team than most other team leaders.

Everyone who finished those tours worked really hard and took a lot of risks and went all-out. The domestiques we don't remember who set a killer pace for the first third or half of a stage maybe worked harder each day for less reward than the team leaders. But we only remember the "heroes" like we remember the quarterbacks and running backs who would have been crushed if not for the linemen how got beat bloody on every play.

LA cheated his butt off ... and as I said above, i wish it had been a level playing field. Thing is, by all signs his team cheated the best, so it is impossible to know how much of the crap for which you are praising him, was only possible because he and his whole teams had the best drugs.

The guy who came in second might have done exactly everything LA did in terms of effort, risk, tactics, ... but hs team and himself had a less perfectly tailored drug-delivery program, so fatigue might have dragged each of them back by five percent compered to LA's team, and there is your difference.

Kissing up to LA's memory won;'t get you anywhere. Do it if you like, but the guy was a great cyclist ... but if he were not the best cheater on the best team of cheaters we might not recall his name any more than we recall who finished third in 2002.

fietsbob

LeMond lost his distribution deal and his bike brand because he got into an attitude, and Trek Corp cut him loose.

roadwarrior

People don't want to watch that.

Lance was riding with Postal before they began the process. They were getting waxed. It was give up or play the game. If they were going to play the game, then by God do it better than everyone else. That's when the leadership changed.

Interesting comments on many of these responses. You all might look at it differently if you'd been there or done a really high level of racing where recreational pharmaceuticals are used. You can try it on bread and water. But you won't be out there very long.

BTW...they didn't have the best drugs. They had a system. Everyone had "the best drugs". And when everyone has "the best drugs" they are all just riding faster and longer.

People want to watch these epic battles between the top riders and then they whine when someone turns out positive.

Having experienced some of this...it's really just a giant "whatever".

LOL...the amphetamines we used are tic tacs today.