Glad to see the great columnist come out of retirement for this:
Was Armstrong using some more potent drug, or using it more often? I doubt that. My guess is that cycling has been the ultimate level playing ground we all say we want for sports. It was also a lethal business, by the way: young Tour aspirants were falling off their machines, quite dead, because their altered blood was the thickness of tomato bisque.
via Armstrong’s White Flag Says What He Won’t – NYTimes.com.
Bobby Fischer never gave up his world chess championship. In his mind and in perhaps the minds of a handful of people, he was still the champion.
Lance Armstrong isn’t quite as delusional as Bobby Fischer was. But like Fischer at the chessboard, he’s trying a shrewd gambit: Armstrong believes he has a better shot at casting reasonable doubt on the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s case against him outside the arbitration process than within it.
That’s not necessarily true. But it’s not a wild idea.
Armstrong will have more supporters than Fischer had. Alberto Contador had kind words. The International Cycling Union remains skeptical of USADA’s jurisdiction. Overseas at the Telegraph, many writers and readers sympathize with Armstrong.
Even the judge who ruled against Armstrong’s challenge of USADA’s jurisdiction took issue with USADA’s claims — see page 17 of his ruling. (Page 18 had one of the more ominous footnotes I’ve seen in legal documents: “If it should come to pass that Armstrong does not actually receive adequate notice sufficiently in advance of the arbitration hearing, and it is brought to this Court’s attention in the appropriate manner, USADA is unlikely to appreciate the result.” Page 28 refers to “troubling aspects of this case,” and page 29 calls USADA’s conduct thus far “mystifying.”)
That leaves two questions. The first: Did he do it? The second: Does it matter?
Internet commenters always think they know the answer to the first. They say Armstrong passed every test. And he did. But so did Marion Jones, before she admitted — in the face of considerable evidence — to using a designer steroid carefully constructed to pass tests.
It’s not to fair to say Armstrong is just like Jones. Every doping case is different. Swimmer Jessica Hardy had a particularly murky case. LaShawn Merritt had an embarrassing but convincing defense. Floyd Landis had a good, detailed case against his doping accusations, and then he confessed to all sorts of other performance enhancements that weren’t caught.
That brings us back to the cycling world — which, it’s fair to say, has had a drug problem in the past. If Armstrong was doping, even to the extent alleged by USADA, it’s not a case of a bunch of East German swimmers systematically doping their way to victory over athletes with no evidence of wrongdoing. Jan Ullrich and Andreas Kloden, who could theoretically be named Tour champions in hindsight, have had their own issues.
And so this Cycling News reaction roundup leads with this:
(Thankfully, Cycling News translates: “By deleting Lance, the list of winners doesn’t become more credible.”)
From a bookkeeping point of view, naming Tour de France winners in retrospect is impossible. No doping agency is going to go back through each cyclist’s history and make sure he was clean the year he might have finished on the podium.
And Armstrong knows the arbitrators and USADA, ultimately, can only affect the bookkeeping. What they learn from Armstrong’s case is ultimately more important going forward — what can they learn for future doping cases to ensure cycling in the 2010s is cleaner than cycling in the 1990s?
And so Armstrong is gambling that his reputation will survive the bookkeepers’ red pen. Given the good will he has built up through his advocacy for cycling and cancer, plus the uncertainty of any 8-year-old Tour de France records, that’s not a bad bet.
Bobby Fischer’s gambits in real life were rash and doomed to failure. Bobby Fischer’s gambits at the chessboard were meticulously analyzed and usually successful. Armstrong’s gambit is a lot closer to Fischer at the chessboard than Fischer in real life.
Cyclingnews has a solid overview, complete with some exclusive information, of the Lance Armstrong case, along with links to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s charges and Armstrong’s response.
One item Cyclingnews raises through an anonymous source — the charges are not based on testimony from the grand jury investigation that ended with no charges being filed.
Most of the USADA charges are based on testimony from as-yet-unnamed witnesses who were involved with Armstrong’s team. The Armstrong response aggressively asks for the names, last known addresses and contact information of these witnesses — perhaps not the best PR strategy when the USADA complaint already describes “the use of fear, intimidation and coercion to attempt to enforce a code of silence (or omerta)” among Armstrong’s cycling teams.
The Armstrong response is more effective in questioning two specific items in USADA’s charges — a 2001 EPO test in Switzerland (which, by itself, would fall outside a statute of limitations, anyway) and data from 2009 and 2010. Armstrong took a bunch of tests in those years and posted the results. It’ll be curious to see if USADA sees something in those results that Armstrong and company did not.
Pundits are going to be tempted to jump to conclusions before this case plays out. That’s not a good idea. This one’s going to be complicated.
Lance Armstrong gave it a good ride, but he hasn’t sprinted at the finish in a long, long time. Fast-twitch sprinting muscles, as I recall, tend to go before the slow-twitch endurance muscles, so at his age, he wasn’t likely to win it. Still, finishing in an elite group of nine was very, very good.
The top 10 all finished in a group of 50, 6:45 back, though there were two surprises — one in the group, one out:
– IN: It’s the Thor de France! Thor Hushovd, as he has done before, earned points toward the green jersey (sprints/points) on a mountain stage. He took back the green jersey, in fact.
– OUT: Ivan Basso, longtime contender who tumbled hard out of the top 15.
Rest day Wednesday, then showdowns to decide everything that’s left. Day-by-day:
Thursday: Brutal climb at the finish that will decide the suddenly competitive polka-dot (mountain) jersey and go a long way toward deciding the yellow jersey and team title.
– Mountains: Christophe Moreau, who’s older than Lance Armstrong, took 60 points for winning the last two climbs today. That puts him 15 points behind leader Anthony Charteau (143 pts). Like American George Hincapie, Moreau married one of the women who present the jerseys on the podium at the end of a race. Other than that, he’s best-known for finishing around 10th but as high as fourth in the decade since his doping scandal. The finishing climb is the last mountain on the Tour.
– Team: Radio Shack maintained its lead over Caisse d’Epargne, which may be distracted slightly by Moreau’s sudden polka-dot pursuits, by matching its performance today. Armstrong and Chris Horner were in the break along with CDE’s Moreau and Ruben Plaza Molina. Both teams had a third rider and more in the yellow jersey’s group of 50. CDE will need to gain an edge here.
– Overall: Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador rode quietly in that group of 50. That shouldn’t be the case Thursday. Schleck isn’t as strong in the time trial as Contador, and he has looked slightly better in the mountains. The youngster will need to race away from the two-time champion on the final climb.
Friday: It’s flat, which means the race for green between Hushovd (191 pts) and Alessandro Petacchi (187) takes center stage.
Saturday: Time trial day should be the final showdown between Schleck and Contador, though it could be anticlimactic if Schleck fails to take back yellow on Thursday. The team title also should be decided, with Radio Shack likely to have a significant edge over CDE.
Sunday: It’s “ceremonial” in most senses and hasn’t affected the yellow jersey in modern history. Sometimes, people hint at a final dash in Paris, and the bad blood between Schleck and Contador could spark such words here. But with several laps of the Champs-Elysees, any attempt to break away for yellow would likely be overrun by the teams racing either for the green jersey or just a final moment of glory. Hushovd and Petacchi may be set for a final duel here.
So you don’t have all day to listen to the soothing voice of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen on Versus, you don’t get all the jokes at NYVelocity.com, you find browsing through cycling-fanatic blogs like Podium Cafe a bit like sipping water from a fire hose, and you find VeloNews a little over your head as well. Yet you’re not quite content with the AP coverage: “XXXX XXXX took the overall lead in the Tour de France today, though XXXX XXXX won the stage. Lance Armstrong finished XXth, X:XX behind the leader. Am I done yet? Can I work on my fantasy baseball team now?”
Actually, AP usually gets some of the action by the time the “optional” version comes in from Europe, you can get a pretty clear picture. That’s about as close as you can get to a middle ground between the dry read on the overall standings and the crowd debating the circumference of Alberto Contador’s crankset.
So if you like the Tour but haven’t had two weeks to digest the events so far, here’s a quick read:
What the heck is Lance doing?: Lance Armstrong came into this Tour intending to win. That’s not as obvious as it sounds. A cyclist’s goals may change from year to year or even day to day. Team goals can be even more complex.
In Lance’s heyday, his teams (Postal Service, Discovery Channel) had a clear goal: Lance will win the Tour. Period.
Not every team is so clear. Some teams have two or three contenders, by design or accident, and they may or may not agree on who takes the lead. A hierarchy might not be clear until a couple of mountain stages and time trials have passed.
Other teams may go for stage wins, the green jersey (sprints and sprint finishes) or just an occasional bit of time in a breakaway to get the sponsor’s name on TV. Sponsors like that.
When Armstrong ran into everything but a plague of locusts on one stage, crashing multiple times and struggling to catch up, he knew his chances of winning were gone. Teammate Levi Leipheimer was still poised to make a run at the top three, where he finished in 2007, but that’s looking less likely by the day.
Armstrong hasn’t seriously contested the last several stages and is now 31st place, 40 minutes and 31 seconds back. Teammates Leipheimer, Andreas Kloden and Chris Horner are ahead of him in the standings.
So is he saving strength for one last dash at a stage win?
The team title: Another competition that doesn’t get much interest each year, at least for U.S. audiences trained to watch Greg Lemond, Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis chase the yellow jersey and overall title, is the team classification. The times of the top three riders each day are added up. Team Caisse d’Epargne has little else for which it can contend, so this is a logical point of emphasis. But with Radio Shack no longer geared up for an Armstrong win or Leipheimer podium, this competition might be the best use of the team’s depth.
Radio Shack took back the lead today with a couple of minutes to spare, with Leipheimer, Kloden and Armstrong all finishing ahead of Ruben Plaza Molina, the venerable Christophe Moreau and Luis-Leon Sanchez. Radio Shack can always rotate Horner into that top three, while CDE has a long drop back to Vasil Kiryienka.
Thor! Green!: The green jersey/points competition is a strange one. For the most part, it’s given for what happens in the last 30 seconds of each of the flat stages that make up half the Tour. Hang out for 4 hours and change, then go for it. Teamwork is just as important for green as it is for yellow — the sprinters line up behind their “lead-out” men, who have taken it upon themselves to start head-butting each other out of the way this year. It’s a messy competition that usually sees the yellow-jersey contenders sitting about a third of the way back in the pack just to avoid the fray.
The contenders here spend half the Tour just trying to survive, making sure they don’t finish so far behind the pack that they’re tossed out of the Tour. Many a first-week stage winner doesn’t stick around for the third week.
But one person took it upon himself last year to prove he can get up and down the mountains, not content to win on a judge’s ruling after a final-sprint incident. That’s one reason why that rider, Thor Hushovd, commands a bit of respect and some fan loyalty in the race for green.
Besides — he has the coolest name in the race.
The race for yellow, or, don’t race on an angry stomach: The race for yellow was effectively whittled down to two people last week. We can all dream of seeing a daring breakaway from someone else farther down the standings, but the last time that happened, the Floyd Landis Endless Doping Saga began.
Andy Schleck, surely the best-known athlete from Luxembourg, is still eligible for the white jersey of best young rider. He looks like he’s 13 or 14, which explains why NYVelocity’s Tour day Schmalz is riddled with jokes about calling his mom and promising he’ll ride safely.
He had the lead over Alberto Contador and was attacking on the giant climb today. But just as Contador was clawing his way back, the chain slipped on Schleck’s bike.
Under cycling’s unwritten rules, riders often wait for fellow contenders when they run into trouble on the road. Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich, the Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty of the early 2000s, had a couple of cases in which one waited for other, including the famous “Hey, Lance! I love you so much I’m going to snag my snack bag on your handlebars!” incident.
Should Contador have waited? Schleck thinks so. He talked of much anger in his stomach and imminent revenge.
My former workplace neighbor, USA TODAY cycling guru Sal Ruibal, raises counterpoints:
Contador already was far from a beloved figure, and the boos he received upon taking the yellow jersey today underlined that point. Fairly or not, he’s more of a villain now.
But whatever you think of Contador, Schleck is easy to root for. He rode maniacally up the mountain after his chain slipped, sailing past such experienced riders as … well, Lance Armstrong. Without that, the Tour would be over.
He’ll surely be the underdog. Contador should blow him away in the Tour’s only full-fledged time trial on Saturday. And Contador isn’t easy to shake in the mountains.
So that leaves us with one question — how is it, with all the mechanical ingenuity available to bicycle-makers and all the money spent on Tour bikes, we can’t have a more reliable way to shift gears?
The news that former Tour de France champion Floyd Landis has admitted using several performance-enhancing drugs in his cycling career, reported in The Wall Street Journal, is disappointing on several levels.
First, it invalidates one of the great performances in sports, Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France. Landis had lost his overall lead with a weak ride the day before, falling from first to 11th overall. He then stormed out to a solo breakaway that you never see from a contender in one of the great Tours. Riders who have fallen far back in the general classification may pull off a breakaway at times, but if someone of Landis’ caliber breaks free, the pack responds. The pack did indeed respond, but Landis was just that strong.
(Landis tells ESPN’s Bonnie Ford that the testosterone test that flagged him after that race is still inaccurate, but he admits he using human growth hormone.)
Second, it raises more doubt on cycling’s protracted clean-up efforts and, once again, on Lance Armstrong. Landis implicates much of American cycling’s pantheon — Armstrong, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer and David Zabriskie — though he concedes to Ford that he has no documentation.
Third, it makes us wonder if anti-doping efforts are helping at all. Any gloating from anti-doping activists — especially from Dick Pound, whose irresponsible comments about “violating virgins” in the early days of the Landis case showed a nasty tendency to talk first, gather facts later — would be misguided.
If there’s even a grain of truth in the e-mails Landis has sent to cycling and anti-doping authorities, then the tests are missing the mark. He tells Ford he is showing authorities how athletes are still cheating and beating the tests.
And yet, the test that flagged down Landis is still questionable. The site Trust But Verify meticulously cataloged problems with Landis’ case, and nothing Landis says here disputes any of that analysis. Arbitrator Chris Campbell ripped the French lab that handled the results in voting to dismiss Landis’ case, and the two arbitrators who overruled him conceded that mistakes had been made. Even if Landis were indeed using synthetic testosterone at that time, which he still denies, better handling of the case would’ve led to a much cleaner and quicker resolution.
Anti-doping science is difficult and ever-changing. Just ask Zach Lund, who missed the Torino Olympics over an anti-baldness drug that was later removed from the banned list. The tests are complicated, and athletes are finding ways to beat them.
And that’s why the anti-doping movement must always proceed out of humility rather than arrogance. Especially today.
Update: Christine Brennan sums up anti-doping challenges in reference to the case of Canadian doctor Anthony Galea, who paid house calls to Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez, with some telling quotes from someone who understands those challenges better than anyone — Gary Wadler.
Duresport.com 