Lance Armstrong geeft gevecht met USADA op

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:19 schreef Awesome_ het volgende:
Hoe zit het met het principe "onschuldig tot het tegendeel bewezen is"?
Als tien mensen zeggen dat ik een heel weeshuis vermoord heb, maar er is vervolgens geen enkel bewijs, kan ik dan alsnog levenslang krijgen?

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:19 schreef Da_Sandman het volgende:

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Als jij, ondanks het ontbreken van bewijs, schuldig wordt bevonden heb je levenslang.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:19 schreef Awesome_ het volgende:
Hoe zit het met het principe "onschuldig tot het tegendeel bewezen is"?
Als tien mensen zeggen dat ik een heel weeshuis vermoord heb, maar er is vervolgens geen enkel bewijs, kan ik dan alsnog levenslang krijgen?

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:15 schreef Tja..1986 het volgende:

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Er zijn al meerdere processen geweest. Je kan wel bezig blijven.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:21 schreef Mani89 het volgende:

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Overigens weten wij helemaal niet of er geen hard bewijs is want het is niet openbaar, als het USADA hard kan maken dat zijn afwijkende bloedwaarden in 09/10 met doping te maken hebben is dat gewoon bewijs.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:17 schreef Barbaaf het volgende:

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En blijkbaar zijn de verklaringen voldoende om processen te blijven beginnen tot het onderwerp van beschuldiging dood is of zo

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:01 schreef Da_Sandman het volgende:

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Ja. De Ullrich die wél diverse keren betrapt is op dopinggebruik .

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:22 schreef Da_Sandman het volgende:

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Prima, maar dan moeten ze zijn derde plaats van '09 afpakken. Niet zijn zeven Tourzeges omdat het Lance Armstrong betreft.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:25 schreef OProg het volgende:

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Op een pilletje na natuurlijk net zo min echt betrapt op basis van testen.

Probleem was meer dat ze een zak bloed bij Fuentes in Spanje hadden laten slingeren. Dus dat was niet helemaal goed gegaan.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:25 schreef OProg het volgende:

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Op een pilletje na natuurlijk net zo min echt betrapt op basis van testen.

Probleem was meer dat ze een zak bloed bij Fuentes in Spanje hadden laten slingeren. Dus dat was niet helemaal goed gegaan.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:30 schreef ssebass het volgende:
Al die renners gebruikten toch? Wie moet er dan winnen? Hele veld kun je zo wel schuldig bevinden. Ik heb wel eens wat dingen gehoord en geloof echt niet dat iemand clean reed.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:28 schreef Da_Sandman het volgende:

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Maar wél betrapt. Dat is wat mij betreft echt een wereld van verschil.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:31 schreef Da_Sandman het volgende:

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Het ligt aan de definitie van clean.

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When do you recall first coming into contact with or consciously realizing that there was this unintentional or accidental conspiracy?
Well, I guess the story of it is kind of funny. I turned pro in 1994 and got my ass kicked over and over again. During that year I began to learn doping was going on. There were some stories told.

Did you know what EPO was at that time?
By the end of the year I did. At the start, not really. So in 1995 it was much more apparent. I was in the Spanish pro peloton and they were talking about it. I remember one Spanish rider, I can’t remember his name, who used to stand up and flex his muscles and say, ‘Am I really this strong? Or did the chemicals make me this way?’ And so it was being openly joked about. And we were a team that was funded in a roundabout way by Opus Dei, which is an arm of the Catholic Church. Our head director, Jose Luis Nunez, went to church like four times a day. You think I’m joking, but literally four times a day. And his perspective was ‘No, we’re going to work harder than everyone else, and find all the little training methods that no one else has thought of, and look at nutrition,’ and so on. It was the original marginal gains philosophy before Sky! We were doing VO2 max tests every week. The guys on the team—a funnier analogy to Sky—the Russians were Olympic and world champions in team pursuit, individual pursuit, points race, the best in the world at track racing and then with these Spanish guys who’d won tons of amateur races in Spain. So it was a natural group of talented young riders who should have—with all these marginal gains—just popped right in and kicked butt.

And what happened?
What happened is we were the worst team in the Spanish peloton by far.

I recall you told me once your whole team was getting dropped on climbs.
Yeah, in the 1996 Basque Country the director came up and said ‘We’re doing to do a new tactic today.’ And it was like, ‘OK, what’s that going to be?’ And he said, ‘Well because guys have been getting cut off one by one from the pack and missing the time cut or coming very close to it, now, when the first guy is in trouble, the whole team will drop back and do a team time trial at our own speed to catch back up to the grupetto in the waning kilometers of the race.’ And that was the strategy.

That’s a discouraging way to race.
Incredibly. For people who follow VO2 max numbers, when I was getting mine tested during this period at the same lab Miguel Indurain went to, I was testing mid/high 80s. So why was I one of the very first people getting dropped? So anyway, as 1996 progressed, and we got closer to the Vuelta, all of a sudden there was a shift. And all of us riders knew at this point that we were getting our asses kicked because everyone is taking EPO in the peloton. And the management had held the line: ‘No doping.’ We weren’t getting paid enough to buy it on our own and if we had bought it, we didn’t know enough how to use it on our own.

But finally some months before the Vuelta, Nunez comes to me and he said, ‘You know Jonathan, I’ve been thinking about this, and we aren’t going to dope you. But we think that since you’re training so hard, that we want to make sure we keep your red cell count the same it was at the beginning of the year when you came from Colorado fresh.’ And I said ‘OK, sounds good.’ So he said, ‘There’s going to be some medication we’ll use to make sure that happens.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ And I quickly figured out that what he was talking about was EPO. But again, the way he phrased it to me allowed me to justify it. As much as I shouldn’t have, and been intelligent and said, ‘Wait this is bullshit,’ in my mind he had just spelled out to me that I wasn’t going to dope, we’d just make my hematocrit what it would have been had I not been riding my bike so damn much. And we’re never going to use doses high enough to push you where you shouldn’t be, so I shouldn’t worry about health consequences like stroking out. And of course there’s no chance of you testing positive. So it was like ‘Oh, well my blood’s going to be the same thickness as it is normally, so we’re just avoiding anemia right? So this is actually healthy!’ And so there won’t be health consequences and so it won’t be cheating.

Did you consciously realize those rationalizations at the time?
Of course I can look back 16 years later and say, ‘Clearly these were rationalizations.’ If I had sat down and been honest with myself, I was logical enough to realize that. But at that point in time, I was ripe soil. When you’re team-time trialing off the back to make the back end of the grupetto in every race and you hear that message, your mind is fertile for hearing that. When I look back on that I think, ‘Holy Toledo, here’s a guy who founded a team on the principles of clean racing and to make up the difference through marginal gains and hiring the most talented young athletes, unspoiled athletes, and focusing them and that little by little that the sport could be moved and changed.’ Jose Luis Nunez had the same damn dream and the same damn conviction I did. But his timing was incredibly bad. He held out for 30 months of his dream and then he cracked. And the athletes, once he cracked, the dam broke.

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USADA CEO speaks after Texan indicates he won’t contest doping charges

Head of the US Anti-Doping Agency Travis Tygart has said that USADA plans to strip all of Lance Armstrong’s results from 1998 onwards, as well as imposing a lifetime ban on the Texan.

Armstrong indicated Thursday that he did not intend to contest USADA’s doping charges against him, saying that the process has been a witch hunt and that he wanted to get on with his life.

Tygart had previously been tight-lipped on the US Postal Service investigation but with Armstrong’s process now officially over, he was able to answer a number of questions put to him by VeloNation. He said that the evidence in relation to the case would emerge once the other arbitration hearings concluded, and that he had expected Armstrong to choose his current course of action rather than fight the charges.

“He knows all the evidence as well and he knows the truth, and so the smarter move on his part is to attempt to hide behind baseless accusations of process,” he said.

VeloNation: The long-running investigation into Lance Armstrong appears to be at an end now, with the rider saying he doesn’t want to go before an arbitration panel and contest the case. How do you react to this development?

Travis Tygart: It is obviously a sad day for all sports fans when there is a realisation that any athlete has decided to use performance enhancing drugs in order to win. On the other hand, it is a reassuring message to clean athletes of all generations that their decision not to use those drugs was the right one and will be supported by the entities in place to ensure a level playing field.

VN: Were you satisfied with evidence that you had amassed, and were you confident in your case?

TT: Absolutely. We never would have brought a case if we were not extremely confident in the level of evidence. And the truth – at the end of the day, our job is to search for truth and justice, to expose the full truth and ensure, to the best of our ability, perfect justice.

VN: Are you surprised by what happened, that this didn’t go to arbitration?

TT: No, I think it was our expectation from the beginning. He knows all the evidence as well and he knows the truth, and so the smarter move on his part is to attempt to hide behind baseless accusations of process. It is pretty telling because the federal court was crystal clear on Monday that our process meets constitutional due process, and that is the appropriate forum for the evidence to be presented and all the arguments to be made.

VN: It was said before that the likely sanctions would be a lifetime ban and the loss of seven Tour titles – will that be the case?

TT: Yes…the charges were not contested, so what automatically goes into place will be a lifetime ban from any participation from any sport which recognises the WADA Code and disqualification from all results, including ant Tour de France victories, any other victories and placings beginning August 1st 1998 to the present.

VN: Armstrong’s lawyers have said in a letter to USADA that USADA can’t impose these sanctions, and have threatened legal action if they go through. Do you have any concerns about that?

TT: No, they have already taken legal action and the federal judge told them we do have authority and our process is the process where those complaints can be made. It is kind of funny that they walking away from a process, but are threatening to attempt to go back to somewhere else to fight. It is a little ironic but, no…it means nothing.

VN: There was reportedly a lot of evidence in the case, there was witness testimony and presumably more…do you expect any of those details to emerge?

TT: Yes, absolutely…at the right time. Obviously there are other cases that are alleged to be involved in the conspiracy. Their cases are still proceeding, so it will be in due course.

VN: So there is no impediment to USADA releasing the evidence?

TT: No, no.

VN: Finally, Armstrong’s lawyers claimed again today that this is a waste of taxpayers’ money – how would you respond to that?

TT: I think cheating with dangerous drugs in sport is an important public health issue, it is the number one issue that clean athletes are concerned about. It is why we are in existence. If people don’t think it is important and we shouldn’t do our job, then shut us down.

But that is not what the overwhelming majority of clean athletes want and it’s certainly not what any sport entity wants….to have a drug-infested sport that is won by those who have the most professionalised doping programmes.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 09:17 schreef Tja..1986 het volgende:

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Nee, het is nog nooit bewezen.

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VN: There was reportedly a lot of evidence in the case, there was witness testimony and presumably more…do you expect any of those details to emerge?

TT: Yes, absolutely…at the right time. Obviously there are other cases that are alleged to be involved in the conspiracy. Their cases are still proceeding, so it will be in due course.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:58 schreef sorcees het volgende:

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Armstrong is in zijn carrière meerdere keren betrapt. Echter is hij slechts 2x aangeklaagd. In die andere gevallen besloot men hem niet aan te klagen en de bewijzen te vernietigen.
Van de 2 aanklachten was 1x sprake van ontslag van verdere vervolging omdat het positieve resultaat het gevolg zou kunnen zijn van een vervuild product (aldus de rechter) en de andere keer werd de zaak geseponeerd wegens een vormfout (vermoedelijk was die bewust gemaakt).

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 11:07 schreef Leatherface het volgende:
USADA is toch helemaal niet bevoegd om een zege te ontnemen? Dat kan toch enkel de UCI?

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Het Amerikaanse antidopingbureau Usada mag Lance Amstrong zijn zeven tourtitels afnemen. Herman Ram, directeur van de Dopingautoriteit, heeft dit vrijdag gezegd.

„Een tuchtcommissie heeft altijd deze autoriteit bij de behandeling van een dopingzaak. De internationale wielrenunie UCI moet dit oordeel ook overnemen als onderdeel van de wereldwijde antidopingcode. Al kan de UCI dit besluit nog wel aanvechten bij het hoogste sporttribunaal CAS.”

De tuchtcommissie van Usada moet nog wel een definitieve straf uitspreken. „Directeur Tygart loopt wel op de zaken vooruit, maar dat doet hij ongetwijfeld niet zonder reden. Ik ga er ook vanuit dat er nu wel heel snel een uitspraak komt”, zegt Ram.

Geen positieve test
Armstrong heeft nooit positief getest, maar volgens Ram hoeft dat ook niet. „De tuchtcommissie heeft waarschijnlijk genoeg ander bewijs. Er wordt gesproken over tien verklaringen over dopinggebruik. Het is alleen wel erg onbevredigend dat we nu nooit zullen weten wat er precies is gebeurd, want daar zal nu niets over naar buiten komen.

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Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2012 10:39 schreef Da_Sandman het volgende:
Net zijn verklaring gelezen. Moest lachen bij "There were no shortcuts".