Reading the USADA documents regarding Lance Armstrong and doping

[dmkinsey]

In Frankie Andreu's affidavit he relates that Frankie and Lance went to Europe with the Motorola team. Their team was slow. They were riding at the back of the group because the Europeans were already using EPO.
Lance was real angry about the situation. In a post-race shouting rant said "These guys are on something, whatever it is we need to get it too or we're never going to be competitive".
There ya go. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.Lance got hooked-up and beat the Europeans at their own game for the next ten years.
Lance and Johann Bruyneel didn't invent doping for cyclists but they got together with Michele Ferrari and fine-tuned the best program in the entire sport.

When rumors of Lance using PEDs began to surface some people expressed a "who cares, let them do whatever they want" attitude.
My response has always been that if there's dope in cycling then cycling is no longer a sport for athletes. It becomes a competition for doctors; to see which doctor can develop the optimum cycling specimen. Michele Ferrari was clearly the greatest cycling doctor in the world.

In Floyd Landis' affidavit he related that in 2004, at a dinner following the Paris-Roubaix race Landis complained that team management was selling bike provided by sponsors (presumably Trek). Landis made the point that Armstrong was flying in a private jet while other team members lacked a proper bike.
Bruyneel later reamed Landis, explaining that they had to sell the bikes to raise cash for the doping program. Well, they couldn't put the doping program on the budget sheet and get it paid for the same as lodging or travel.
I wonder if Trek will come back on them now. Probably too late for that. The team doesn't exist anymore.Maybe they could sue Lance. They'd have to get in line I guess.

So the whole peloton had a code of silence, an omerta. None would speak of the rampant doping in the sport because to do so would ruin everyone's sponsorship, contracts, and lifestyles.
And no one was more determined to maintain the omerta than Armstrong.because no one had as much to lose.
Even though the doping program was well known among all riders the fiction of clean athletes was maintained in all public appearances and interviews. The situation was unsustainable and would have collapsed long ago if not for Lance Armstrong's absolute scorched-earth policy toward anyone who even hinted about riders doping in a public comment.And no one had the power and money to scorch the earth like Lance.

So, yeah, Lance doped but so did all the "elite" riders. The most damaging information to come out of the USADA documents is the universal opinion that Lance Armstrong is a prick, and a miserable person. The doping revelation will cause severe damage to his fortunes but the stories about his dick-headed-ness will put the final nail in his public career.

[Javaman]

1. The dark side of corporate sport sponcorship...

one begets the other.

The riders, traditionally, were poor and struggling to fund their own training. In steps corporations to sponsor them.

In order to keep that sponsorship, they have to keep winning. But in order to keep winning, they dope because everyone is doping to win, keep their sponsors and not live in poverty.

I am old enough to remember when athletes in the non-traditional corporate sponsored sports struggled to train and feed themselves. It wasn't until the AAU allowed "some" sponsorship for the athletes to properly train. This was a earth moving decision and let the flood gates open.

Prior to this decision, I recall many world class athletes who had to quit their primary sport and go into pro-sports to keep themselves and their families clothed and fed.

When the rule change happened, those same athletes tried to complete again in their old sports and alas, time marches on and they just weren't at their peak any longer.

I, as well as many many others, applauded this decision by the AAU.

Sadly, it now has resulted in this situation of athletes doing everything they can to stay "employed", if you will.

Living in Austin, Armstrong has always been hailed the conquering hero. I knew better. I had friends that rode with him and told a different story. He wasn't very pleasant to be around and all marveled at how he came across on TV as a "good guy".

That aside, crappy personality or not, the bottom line is, most if not a very high percentage of athletes in non-traditional sports dope and they do it to keep the money coming in from their corporate sponsors. And while the French screamed loud and hard over Armstrong's doping, I had always, thought, "My, those French athletes are yelling a lot. Me thinks they protest too much". So the statements by the other teams claiming that the French were doping and doping for a long time, honestly comes as zero surprise. As does Armstrong's doping.

But the hilarity of it all comes in the fact that the American public are "sooo surprised" by all of this when it is obviously rampant throughout the world of sports.

We want our athletes to be these paragons of virtue, these olympic gods of purity, when in the end, they couldn't be farthest from that myth. They are people working to make a living and given their field of choice being physically punishing, are we surprised that they dope? I recall one pro-football player saying, "Imagine being in a massive car wreck every week, that's what it's like playing a pro-football game is like".

We bet on football, we bet on basketball, we bet on track and field races, we bet on bicycle races, yet we get all bet out of shape when the athlete doesn't perform up to our expectations. We want perfection, we want accuracy, we want an athlete who never tires, never gets injured and never gets old.

But yet, when they show they are human and fail to meet our outrageous expectations, we, the public get pissed as if those athletes owe us something, when in fact they owe us nothing.

So while we get angry or sarcastic about the doping, I frankly, wouldn't be the least surprised if one day, an Athlete gets up to a microphone to address his adoring fans who are disappointed at he or she being found out to be doping and says, "fuck you all" to a stunned room.

As I started off my response and end it with the same statement, one begets the other.