Dunno if he's guilty or innocent, but it's real easy to see this as "let's not disrupt our white all-American classy icon."

"It's All About The Nike...errr.I mean Bike".

No failed drug tests, despite being an athlete in arguably the most tested sport. Two years of investigations that apparently led to no conclusive evidence. I suspect the case got dropped on its own (lack of) merits. If he cheated, he was far smarter than very experienced investigators. The "evidence" against him was that he dominated a sport, and his rivals said he must be doping, along with a few claims that apparently didn't stand up under investigation. Not much evidence.

The "evidence" against him was that he dominated a sport, and his rivals said he must be doping

well, that, and the fact that the main rivals whom he dominated (ulrich, vinokourov, basso, contador) were all doping themselves. and they still lost.

it's real easy to see this as "let's not disrupt our white all-American classy icon."

Except for the part where they spent the past two years disrupting the hell out of him. If this was about some kind of favoritism, they wouldn't have started the investigation in the first place.

well, that, and the fact that the main rivals whom he dominated (ulrich, vinokourov, basso, contador) were all doping themselves. and they still lost.

So anyone who ever beat a cheater must have been cheating too?

My explanation is that the defendant was more sympathetic, the evidence was more ambivalent and the political climate was less favorable towards a prosecution. I do not think that you can discount the power of Armstrong's iconic status, which encompasses his race, his ubiquity as a pitchman for against cancer, the support of Nike, his good looks (no huge head or other deformed feature).

There is a ton of smoke the Armstrong cheated, it entirely possible, and likely Armstrong was able to keep most of the evidence out of the hands of the feds.

Floyd Landis is probably drinking again.

My explanation is that the defendant was more sympathetic, the evidence was more ambivalent and the political climate was less favorable towards a prosecution. I do not think that you can discount the power of Armstrong's iconic status, which encompasses his race, his ubiquity as a pitchman for against cancer, the support of Nike, his good looks (no huge head or other deformed feature).

I agree. That's the same thing keeping Starlin Castro out of jail.

But seriously folks, I agree with #7

The "evidence" against him was that he dominated a sport, and his rivals said he must be doping

Well, that and the public statements of former teammates (no idea what they may or may not have testified to). He worked with a doctor who was convicted (later overturned) of providing PEDs to other cyclists. Some samples, when re-tested, may have turned up evidence of EPO although there are duelling opinions on the matter -- the folks who did the testing say it's good, a report by the UCI says the tests are garbage, WADA says the UCI report "borders on the farcical." Frankie Andreu's wife testified in a civil suit deposition that Armstrong admitted usage, LeMond sorta corroborates but all the other people in the room say it never happened.

So there was more evidence than just that he dominated a sport. That said, Armstrong has walked away clean and then some from every allegation. The civil suit mentioned above was about $5 M a promotion company owed to Armstrong and they ended up "settling" for $7.5 M -- the $5M plus interest and legal fees -- so I'm guessing the case was going quite well for Armstrong.

#3 First of all, never failed a drug test isn't the most compelling thing. I know of at least two other cyclists who never failed a test but ended up suspended after police raids on their homes turned up PEDs. (David Miller, Richard Virenque)

In fact though, Armstrong has failed at least two failed drug tests. And according to Tyler Hamilton a third. According to Hamilton, Armstrong had a positive test in the 2001 Tour that the authorities made go away.

That's at minimum controversial, and while Hamilton did testify to this under oath, he can't actually prove his allegations and Hamilton's record is such that if this was the only thing against Armstrong you'd be hard pressed to believe it. Hamilton's also testified to seeing EPO in Armstrong's refrigerator, and to seeing him inject himself. (Armstrong's explained this as Hamilton trying get a book deal) George Hincape also gave the same testimony, and Hincape's a lot tougher to smear. (Hincape's been saying this for quite some time and he's a widely respected guy)

Armstrong has also failed a retrospective test (from the 1999 tour). The applied new tests to several old samples of his. 6 came back positive for EPO. Armstrong explained this one as the lab being out to get him. (While there was no possibility of penalty -- among other things, the sanctioning body didn't approve the tests -- retro-testing is going to be happening now as I understand it)

He also tested positive for corticoids during the 1999 Tour de France. His explanation that this was due to a topic skin cream that he used for saddle sores. The explanation was accepted.

He was also once busted for a procedural violation -- in a 2009 out of competition test he broke the rule requiring the athlete to remain “under direct and permanent observation” from the time the test is announced until it is administered. While his team was verifying the tester's credentials he left to shower and change. (Of course the reason you have to stay under observation is that it's possible to get a previously prepared sample -- load you whizzinator. And yes they really do exist)

Wasn't allowed to ride the tour (not that he had any intention of doing -- or so he claimed)

Members of his team were observed disposing of EPO containers during another tour. Of course that doesn't mean he was the guy using them, but it does undercut the "never tested positive" defense. Nobody else on the team tested positive either.

#11 Armstrong's sued an awful lot of people over the years. Mostly in places where it's a lot easier to win a libel case. He's won more than a few, and frequently won big time.

A good book to read on the subject is From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France. As I understand it, essentially the entire peloton was doping for decades. In the '80s, it was corticosteroids; in the '90s, it was EPO; after the big EPO busts they shifted to blood packing (donate blood in the offseason, concentrate red blood cells with a centrifuge and reinject during comopetition). As #12 points out, the people claiming that doping was going on are extremely credible and give detailed, extensive stories.

To give you an example, Frankie Andreu (who was a domestique on US Postal) describes his own feelings about doping -- the pressure he received, the pride at leading the peloton on a major climb -- and the outraged call he got from his wife immediately afterwards. She knew he wasn't a climbing specialist, so if he was leading out on that climb, it meant he was doping -- which he was.

He also tested positive for corticoids during the 1999 Tour de France.
...
In the '80s, it was corticosteroids

Wait, what? Corticosteroids are banned in cycling? What else, ibuprofen?

It sounds to me like the case against Lance is EXACTLY as strong as the case against Bonds, minus "Look at his head!" Which is to say, pretty aggressively suggestive but ultimately (barely) inconclusive. It SEEMS like there's more evidence against Bonds, but hold the phone a second and see if you're just thinking that because "Look at his head!"

EDIT: Now that I think about it Bonds might've been proven to have taken roids at some point. I can't even really remember what that trial was supposed to be about. The whole thing was did he KNOWINGLY take steroids, and I missed/forgot the point where we were sure that he took steroids period.

Sorry, don't want to turn this into a Bonds thread.

There is a huge difference between perjury before a grand jury when you are giving immunized testimony (what Bonds was alleged to have done) and making a false statement to the USPS as a sponsor of an athletic team. If you believe the worst about both Bonds and Armstrong (both knowingly lied about using PEDs), there is still a good reason to find Bonds more worthy of prosecution than Armstrong. As I noted above, there are also bad reasons to prosecute Bonds but not Armstrong. To my mind, the best logic would have led to the decision to prosecute neither Bonds nor Armstrong.

Except for the part where they spent the past two years disrupting the hell out of him. If this was about some kind of favoritism, they wouldn't have started the investigation in the first place.

We don't really know that, though. If you investigate a person, and decide not to condemn the person, that person usually gets off scot-free in the media perception. And you are seen as "having done something important about the problem".

So anyone who ever beat a cheater must have been cheating too?

I wish this were true, because then the Spygate BS would stop.

I agree. That's the same thing keeping Starlin Castro out of jail.

Isn't he only accused?

Wait, what? Corticosteroids are banned in cycling? What else, ibuprofen?

I know some athletes have been sanctioned for too much caffiene.

#16: At the grand jury, Bonds testified to using cream and clear substances supplied to him by Anderson. Presumably these were the same cream and clear substances containing PEDs that Balco had supplied to other athletes but, strictly speaking, this has never been proven. In the perjury trial there was a statement (by Bonds' lawyer?) which implied that Bonds was now aware that the substances he used most likely contained PEDs (unknown to him of course) but I don't recall the phrasing.

The preponderance of the evidence certainly points to Bonds having used PEDs (I'll leave "reasonable doubt" to you) but not knowingly.* "Knowingly" was important in terms of perjury and should be important in terms of whether or not he "cheated".

*Before anybody argues, provide actual evidence of his knowing. I'm not aware of any (and the government has spent millions trying to find conclusive evidence of it) but may have missed some. "C'mon, he must have known" is not evidence especially since there are lots of reasons he wouldn't have known (including, of course, not wanting to know and so never asking).

#12: Hincapie? It's my understanding he's a late arrival to this party and has denied 60 Minutes' claims about his testimony. (Of course now I can't find the link!)

Anyway I like Hincapie because in his first year with BMC, he sometimes rode the same frame I have -- not the "top" BMC frame although he may have had better components. :-)

Wait, what? Corticosteroids are banned in cycling? What else, ibuprofen?

I know some athletes have been sanctioned for too much caffiene.

Propecia is banned. Can't have athletes with artificially enhanced hair. (Of course some stuff that isn't performance enhancing is banned because of the potential for screwing up other tests. And stuff will be banned because of a belief that it can be a masking agent as opposed to there being actual evidence that it is a masking agent.)

Some athletes have been banned for stuff that rates to make your performance worse. Strong cold medicines often have stuff that's banned in them. Again, it's the potential as a masking agent. Nobody doubts that Silken Laumen only took something for a bad cold. She was still banned for failing a drug test. Same situation Armstrong faced in 1999.

Caffeine is tricky for WADA and their friends. It's been off and on the list of banned substances (it's currently OK last time I checked, but its status was under review). There's absolutely no question that it's performance enhancing. However Coke is one of the big sponsors of the IOC (which basically controls WADA), and the amount of caffeine required to get a short-term performance boost is such that you'd be effectively banning caffeinated beverages.

Propecia is banned. Can't have athletes with artificially enhanced hair.

It actually makes some amount of sense to ban Propecia, given that it acts by inhibiting the breakdown of testosterone.

Anyway I just checked the WADA code and glucocorticosteroids require a TUE. They are not tested for out of competition. As for caffeine:

Caffeine was removed from the Prohibited List in 2004. Its use in sport is not prohibited.

Many experts believe that caffeine is ubiquitous in beverages and food and that reducing the threshold might therefore create the risk of sanctioning athletes for social or diet consumption of caffeine. In addition, caffeine is metabolized at very different rates in individuals.

Caffeine is part of WADA's Monitoring Program. This program includes substances which are not prohibited in sport, but which WADA monitors in order to detect patterns of misuse in sport.

The 2010 and 2011 Monitoring Programs did not reveal global specific patterns of misuse of caffeine in sport, though a significant increase in consumption in the athletic population is observed.

#20 I was pretty sure that Hincape had been making specific accusations against Armstrong for a while. But I seem to have confused him and Frankie Andreu (supported by Andreu's wife). There's an LA Times story that has a nice summary of the evidence (link's dead now) and the story concludes: "They are filled with conflicting testimony, hearsay and circumstantial evidence admissible in arbitration hearings but questionable in more formal legal proceedings." (Basically they claim that they heard Armstrong admit to using PEDs during a deposition for another lawsuit. Armstrong claims they were confused -- that he was talking about the stuff he had to take while dealing with cancer. That's why he uses cautious language in talking about whether he has ever taken drugs that are banned. He has. One of the reasons he retired in the first place was to deal with his bones -- the cancer treatments left his natural testosterone levels low and he wanted to get treatment for this)

At one point Greg LeMond got involved in the controversy and claims to taped one of the witnesses who'd rebutted the Andreu's testimony as perjuring herself. Tape's never surfaced to my knowledge, and under oath she denied saying anything of the sort to LeMond.

Other accusers on the public record are his former masseuse (claims Armstrong asked her to hide needle marks and to dispose of syringes), Steve Swart (a teammate with Motorola who claimed to use PEDs with Armstrong)

When excerpts from the book making the claims (L. A. Confidentiel – Les secrets de Lance Armstrong) were published in a British paper, Armstrong sued the paper, got an apology and an out of court settlement. (He also successfully sued one of the book's authors in a separate action)

EDIT: Somebody's mentioned Bonds and his head. There's a heck of a lot more out there against Armstrong, but it's mostly smoke -- and an aggressive fire fighter if you know what I mean. Armstrong does the talk show circuit in the US and sues where libel laws are more favorable to him. He's good at the PR side and hires very good lawyers. Nobody's come close to making anything stick other than the violation of testing procedures --and that's passed off as a technicality.

#22 The 2010 and 2011 Monitoring Programs are being intentionally obtuse. It's a matter of record that the Australian Institute for Sport has recommended the use for a wide variety of sports (including but not limited to) boxing, cricket and rugby. The press got ahold of one of their "best practices" documents a few years back.

It sounds to me like the case against Lance is EXACTLY as strong as the case against Bonds, minus "Look at his head!" Which is to say, pretty aggressively suggestive but ultimately (barely) inconclusive. It SEEMS like there's more evidence against Bonds, but hold the phone a second and see if you're just thinking that because "Look at his head!"

Speaking of which, I've never heard a reason why a guy's head would get bigger after taking PEDs for a while. What's up with that? Anyone know?

It seems dangerous. If all the parts of your head aren't growing in proportion with each other, x starts pressing on y... It can't be good.

#25 There's no documented link between increased head size and steroids. There is a link between bone growth on the head and HGH, but it's not really a bigger head so much as random lumps.

We're flat hopeless at judging the size of most things. National Geographic had a segment on their how your brain works special. Nothing new in it, but it was nicely presented.

I know my head looks bigger when I've shaved it. Bonds also added the no neck look and that probably screws up our judgment head size.

No matter whether Bonds head actually grew, it is incontrovertible that his appearance changed drastically over the latter half of his career. Lance Armstrong appearance, on the other hand, has remained constant during his time in the public eye. This does not mean that Bonds used PEDs, or that Armstrong did not, but it does provide a visual reference for those who follow the story.

But his cap size went up!!! :-)

I've mentioned before that, even in the podunk amateur cycling world where nobody's competing against anybody but their personal best, caffeine is widely marketed for its "energy boosting" properties. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find gels/chews that don't have a substantial bit of caffeine in them -- especially given they recommend you do a gel every 30 minutes or so, we're talking the equivalent of 4-5 cups of coffee over a long ride plus whatever might be in your drink. Granted, I don't think I know anybody who actually uses them at that frequency.

I know my head looks bigger when I've shaved it.

that's not the only thing that looks bigger when you shave it.

No matter whether Bonds head actually grew, it is incontrovertible that his appearance changed drastically over the latter half of his career. Lance Armstrong appearance, on the other hand, has remained constant during his time in the public eye. This does not mean that Bonds used PEDs, or that Armstrong did not, but it does provide a visual reference for those who follow the story.

But the primary PED in cycling is EPO and other methods of blood doping intended to help with endurance more than peak. Get bulky in cycling and you ain't making it up Ventoux very fast. And of course there's very little need for upper body strength. Still, Armstrong had almost no body fat, was working out in some way pretty much every day, could probably generate 1300-1400 watts when he wanted to and could probably leg press, what, 2-3 times his body weight (I actually have no idea what an impressive leg press would be ... assume his would be impressive). Other than hand-eye coordination he was almost certainly a more impressive physical specimen than Bonds, at least in an "all-around" sense.

that's not the only thing that looks bigger when you shave it.

No point startling them more than they already are.

#27:

No matter whether Bonds head actually grew, it is incontrovertible that his appearance changed drastically over the latter half of his career. Lance Armstrong appearance, on the other hand, has remained constant during his time in the public eye.

Sure, but this is what a doping cyclist looks like, so I'm not sure what changes there could be.

I used to be incredulous that PEDs could destroy someone's interest in baseball, but they certainly destroyed any interest I ever had in professional cycling.

#31 Yeah they aren't trying to add bulk. Indeed one semi-plausible explanation I've heard for Armstrong's dominance lay in the loss of bone mass from his treatments for cancer. As long as the bones actually held together he had the same strength for less weight. (I've seen it called the "lucky to get cancer" explanation) He's been concerned about brittle bones for some time now, but to date, no problems.

As for losing interest in the sport, hasn't happened for me. I've heard it argued that Tours are set up with enhanced athletes in mind. I have no idea whether it's true that they're tougher than the used to be and I've never heard anybody making the claim offer up any evidence in support of the assertion.

I do know that cadence is higher (and increasing) but that could simply be down to technology or even technique. I know Lance Armstrong didn't use as big a gear range as his main competitors (meaning that in general he'd have to keep a higher cadence) and pretty much every sport follows successful athletes.

But... do women feel that cranial size is important?

FYI, the corrupt Jeff Novitsky was leading this investigation, too.

#34 -- Why do you call Jeff Novitsky corrupt? I have not seen any evidence that he has lined his own pockets during these investigations. If, on the other hand, you called Jeff Novitsky a self-promoting, humorless prig, and stated that he has been given limitless leash by supervisors who should have known better, I would not disagree.

Of course, if there are objective facts pointing to Novitsky being corrupt on top of all of his other flaws, please share it here. Always glad to learn.

He fabricates evidence. The word corrupt was just fine.

From what I understand, the drug of choice for cyclists is EPO, which is not an anabolic steroid and doesn't have any effect on adding bulk.

I wonder about basketball players. They need to balance strength and stamina, so I bet they can hide it better than baseball players can. Has anyone else noticed how easily everyone dunks now? Guys off the bench can throw it down like Dr J used to. And Blake Griffin is a complete freak show. It's like he's jumping off a trampoline.

#37 Cyclists experiment and they aren't what you'd call risk adverse. If there's a rumor that something is performance enhancing some cyclist has tried it. One of the earliest allegations of attempted performance enhancing involved strychnine (and no, not on other competitors)

According to recent tell alls, cyclists were using anabolic steroids at one time and switched to EPO at least in part because there was no reliable test for it. That one of the documentable side effects of EPO is sudden death in top level athletes doesn't seem to have affected its popularity. As I said, not risk adverse.

He fabricates evidence. The word corrupt was just fine.

Yes, that was my thinking. Corruption doesn't have to involve personal graft.

Cyclists have been WAY ahead of the curve (if that's the right way to put it) in abusing PED's. Amphetamines were routinely used since at least the 1940s, contributing to a couple of high-profile deaths

Yeah, I meant to mention that the dismissed case against Armstrong was a Novitzky special which is reason enough for me to not put much faith in the hearsay evidence against Armstrong.

One of the earliest allegations of attempted performance enhancing involved strychnine

Weren't marathoners using strychnine 100 years ago?

I wonder about basketball players.

I would be willing to bet everything I have and ever will have on MJ being a PED user.

And, as we speak, Alberto Contador got caught using clenbuterol and is being stripped of his 2010 Tour title..