Lance-I can beat Landis

That would have been interesting, I think it would been as pathetic as
Indurain in 96 !

A clean Landis vs. a clean Armstrong would, IMO, go to Landis hands down.

That is brilliant! Let's see what data there is.

As to be "being clean" niether rider has ever been proven to be clean
or not clean. So, really no way to say anything with certainty.

There is head to head race data. What does that show?

Here it is, Chump. No current or former employees/teammates of Landis have
indicated him to be riding anything but clean. Can't say the same for
Armstrong. No blood or urine samples of Landis have come up with EPO in
them. Can't say that for Armstrong. Landis' climbing wattages (and those
of the other Tour riders this year in the absence of Armstrong, Basso and
Ullrich) are at levels not consistent with EPO usage/blood doping. So like
I said, if Landis and Armstrong rode the Tour together clean, IMO, Landis
wins hands down. By all means have a different opinion, but remember, the
Tooth Fairy isn't riding this year.

You know I don't have any first hand knowledge of who takes what. But
the reality is that LA has so far won or settled every single case that
has been in the courts without any findings that he did anything. So,
while there are all sorts of stories there is still no proof.
Hey I can round up a bunch of folks who will testify that the Holocost
never happened. Others will swear that they went on a trip with aliens.
Statements are not proof.

BTW I recently rode with the Tooth Fairy, she says "hi" to you and asks
how you're doing.

How about urine testing that comes back positive but is justified by a
backdated prescription, if 1999 were 2006 he would have been sent home
direct.

How about the EPO found in his 1999 blood tests ?

It's obivous LA was doping, and if he turns out to be Cowboy in the
good Dr Fuentes' list that will nail it in. If the much more talented
Ullrich had to dope to keep up, you'd have to be naive to think LA was
not. I'd go so far as to say that LA's doping probably encouraged
Ullrich to dope.

Of course Landis would beat Armstrong. Armstrong's been training
on the 12-oz curl machine this year.

It's funny how Landis just rode the most dramatic Tour stage anyone's
seen since you were a junior, and the only thing that you can say about
it is to make comparisons to Armstrong. Who cares? Armstrong's
retired, done, not in the Tour anymore. Floyd's racing this year.

BTW, you all need to remember that the OP, village idiot/troller
Valerius, makes shit up all the time, including the fictional
"I can beat Landis" quote in the subject line.

Well none of this is at odds with my point. I said I have no first
hand knowlege of anyone taking anything. And there has been no finding
of guilt (yet) by any court. So, to my mind there are lots of
accusations but nothing has been proven.

That said I'm inclined to believe that ALL the top riders get some sort
of boost (again without any first hand knowledge so it is simply a
belief and not an accusation).

So, my point is that legally both guys are still not proven guilty and
in my mind they both use(d) something. That means it's even steven on
the drugs so lets look at the head to head racing.

Landis will write a book...........the book will tell all......in the
end the Tooth Fairy dies !

OMC

That's gonna really piss off the Easter Bunny who's gonna have to find
a new S.O. You think Jimmy Carter had rabbit problem's you ain't seen
nothing yet!
Bill C

> a new S.O. !

You mean the Easter Bunny is gay ?

I'm not sure about that, but whatever the Bunny is, it's definitely
very happy.
Not quite sure what Gender the Tooth Fairy is either but they make a
cute couple.
Bill C

If that's your position, then your position must also be Armstrong's
power on sustained climbs isn't consistent with EPO usage/blood doping,
either.

Andy Coggan

No.

Ullrich, Basso circa April 2006 were therefore clean.

No.

Please expand

No. Please don't. Expanding on a single idea doesn't work for short
stories > novels, nor Brain Freeze's obsession.

On the outcome of a fight between LA and FL...permit me a tangent. A
lunch acquaintance related his story of his surprising someone who had
broken into his NYC apartment and trashed it. He chased the guy
downstairs, out the door, down the block, through a Chinese restaurant
and out the back, down an alley, and pulled the guy out of a taxi which
the "alleged perpetrator" was in the process of trying to carjack as a
getaway vehicle (in Manhattan?). The perp then proceeded to smack my
friend around. It seems my friend neglected to tell the thief that he
was a Quaker and couldn't fight back. He probably should have thought
about that before chasing the guy.

Now Floyd, being something of the black sheep of his family
religion-wise, would probably have no problem with popping Lance in the
nose. Lance would retaliate with The Look, and Floyd would pop him in
the eye and make The Look all lopsided and squinty. Floyd wins in the
first round.

R

Brian is his own private universe. He cannot help but expand.

Sorry, I forgot: logic isn't your strong point.

Andy Coggan

As Zaphod Beeblebrox would put it, 'hey, what is clean, man?'

Averyone in pro cycling is doing a lot of things which aren't what Joe
Public understands as normal training. Some are legal this year, some
are not. Some of those which aren't legal this year were legal in
previous years. Some of the things which are legal this year won't be
legal next. And so on.

Clean isn't black and white.

--
si...@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

I shall continue to be an impossible person so long as those
who are now possible remain possible -- Michael Bakunin

Worse, Joe Public is doing a lot of things that would be banned.

Ron

Is she a virgin too ?

news:1153509607.4...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Apparently your reading comprehension is no better than your logical
skills: I've never taken a public position on whether I thought
Armstrong was guilty of doping.

Andy Coggan

I'm waiting to see your explanation for his ability to put out the wattages
for the periods of time that he did while climbing. No doubt it was all due
to efficiency and economy from training. Correct?

One way to tell: did he disagree with Tom?

--
tanx,
Howard

Never take a tenant with a monkey.

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

Let me put it this way: I have not seen any verifiable power data for
Armstrong that is so far outside the realm of believable that I would
consider it definitive proof of doping.

(Oh, and BTW: by my calculations, Landis has at least the potential to
get even better, even w/o raising his hematocrit.)

Andy Coggan

Candyass.

Prediction No. 1

If Floyd takes six more tours there will be a line of people to call
him dirty whether he is dirty or not.

Prediction No. 2

You will be at the head of that line.

And here's a truism for you; you're an asshole.

You must be losing (sorry I mean loosing) your religion. Whatever happened
to hug. or even headbutt.

Am I the only person on the planet who believes the differences pointed
out in the Discovery channel program on Lance's physiology are
factually correct, and that how his body reacts to stress and how it
processes food and fluids, and how his lungs are unique all have had a
direct impact on how he performs?

N.

Have you seen data that was "unbelievable"? Does someone like
Armstrong set the bar for what is believable?

No, I can't say that I have (keeping in mind, of course, that measuring
power output is hardly the best way to detect doping).

Lots of "someones" like Armstrong.

Andy Coggan

Can I interrupt this little tete-a-tete for a moment? Laff, it
seems that you took the position that somebody's power is
not high enough to cause suspicion of EPO/blood doping,
but Armstrong's power is (your "No" above). Then you asked
Coggan for an explanation of Armstrong's power. Have you
established that it needs an explanation? How high is too high?

Ben
I just want to know when I should reduce my training load -
don't want to be so strong that it makes people suspicious.

Hug for the asshole.

In a riders' nicknames cryptic crossword, this would the description for
Rimjobbie Ventura.

--
E. Dronkert

Wow! I just feel destroyed by your rapier like whit!

To wit, he is most whitty.

I don't that that anyone doesn't believe that LA has superior
physiology. Many of us elieve that is a "necessary but not sufficient"
explanation for his performance. So, if his native physiology made him,
say, 5% better than everyone else; and if drugs could result in a 10%
boost, then his physiology could not , by itself explain his beating
everyone else since we know there is doping going on.

Good grief, what's next in this 'debate'? 'Nanny-nanny boo-boo, stick
your head in doo-doo'?

~bob

He was never anywhere close to being 10% better.

Ron

Dave Zabriskie said of the dope crusaders something like: these people
can't understand that human beings are different.

Let's debunk the moon landings while we're at it.

--
Lynn Wallace http://www.xmission.com/~lawall
I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the
trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view,
the most insidious of traitors."
George H.W. Bush, April 16, 1999,

LANCE lost most of the races he rode. In the TdF, he wasn't even 5%
faster the closest competitors. He was a tiny bit faster than Jan
Ullrich in the ITT, and faster than Jan under only certain conditions in
the road stages.

It doesn't matter whether the Tooth Fairy is riding this year... what
matters is what the Tooth Fairy may have in store 7 years down the road.

Or to put it another way, who's to say that there isn't a 7-year (or
whatever) lag between new doping methods and ways to discover them? Meaning
that one can believe Landis to be clean, because he passes all manner of
current drug tests, even including those that some believe implicate
Lance... but what is the real value of real-time testing, except to expose
losers who aren't up to speed (so to speak) on the latest undetectable (for
now) technology?

I'm not suggesting Landis isn't clean. I'm just saying that we're not
dealing with a level playing field in terms of how we're determining who
might be clean vs not (when we're doing it in real-time).

--Mike Jacoubowsky
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com
Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA
"B. Lafferty" <Ma...@Italia.com> wrote in message
news:EU8wg.7816$vO....@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net...

Then why not set the unit of time to 20 seconds. It makes equal sense. If
you're going to grab numbers out to the air with absolutely nothing to tie
them to they carry no meaning.

The numbers were hardly grabbed out of the air. It represents the length of
time between the stored blood samples (1999) that supposedly indicate EPO
use for many athletes at the time, but *not* when tested at the time,
because the technology didn't exist. Fast-forward to 2006 and it's a
different story. As they say, ripped from today's headlines.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

"Tom Kunich" <cyclintom@yahoo. com> wrote in message
news:P5Cxg.27$0e...@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net...

In any case if there's some (unknown) procedure which won't be detectable
for seven years, it probably hasn't yet been banned. The rule currently
is that everything is allowed except those things which have been
explicitly banned, and a new, secret, unknown procedure can't have been
explicitly banned (unless it uses substances which have already been
banned).

Doping isn't - and can't be - a black and white issue, and it will never
be entirely cleaned up.

--
si...@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; better than your average performing pineapple

Besides, it has to be for drugs currently banned. The issue of level
playing fields can't be brought up if the argument is that someone is
using something unkown and currently not tested. Next we'll have
virtual prospective retroactive conditional drug testing, based on
latest suspicions and discoveries applied retroactively to whatever
blood samples are available.

Of course, that won't level the playing field prospectively,
retroactively, virtually or conditionally unless you have blood
samples from everyone relevant to the specific race and stored in
good condition with solid custody proven to all.

I think I'll pass this to our development people. We could use an
additional revenue stream.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

Of course! My 5% and 10% figures were simply for illustration. It works
the same with 0.5% and 1.0% or 0.0005% and 0.0010 %. The only issue
is if the effect of the agent is larger than the natural difference.

How about making the riders publish what drugs they take in, for a
sensible definition of drug? This definition is probably hard to get
right, but maybe it's possible. Be it Saline IV, Vitamin Pills, Aspirin,
whatever, everything should be published.
And now comes the important point: Every rider/team can see what the
others use - which would at least have the possibility to level the
playing field concerning unknowns.

Then you can retroactively test and make stuff illegal, but only
sanction riders where you found something later on which they hadn't
published at that point.

I like that idea! Talk about leveling the playing field. We can then
simply ban whatever the winners are doing.

LOL, if Jan had won this year, WADA would've banned bratwurst and
cookies ;-).

They are working on his sleeping chamber ;-)

This is why I think the doping regulations are so absurd. They are
oriented around 'peformance enhancement' rather than oriented towards
the safety or health of the rider.

I'm just waiting for the day that they figure out food is performance
enhancing and therefore require that riders must all eat the same
watery gruel until they retire from cycling.

You know, I wrote a post like this in rec.bicycle.misc and A LOT of
people became VERY pissed off, although my point was basically:

Is Lance Armstrong that gifted of an athlete to win the TdF for seven
consecutive years without doping or using whatever illegal substance?
It's possible, but is it likely? Not really.

There is a religous like split. Many feel that Lance is a god like
creature and could do no wrong. Many others feel that Lance is the
devil incarnate and is pure evil.
I'm agnostic.

Wasn't it Indurain who said of him, pre-cancer, that if he lost 30
pounds or so he would win the Tour de France?

It's clear that water is a more potent performance enhancer than food
is, and you should know that. Of course, both of those were banned
through Eddy Merckx's time...

Winning the Tour for 7 straight years would be nearly impossible
regardless of any illegal substances he might have taken.

Truly...

Look, what is 'doping' and what is 'illegal'? I personally believe
Armstrong used testosterone HRT. I don't have any evidence of that apart
from his demeanour and behaviour while racing, but I believe it.
However, if he did, as a man with only one testicle, he could reasonably
and legally have been prescribed it. Similarly, as a man with a history
and possibility of recurrence of serious cancer, he could reasonably and
legally have been prescribed EPO, and a whole battery of other things
which are normally proscribed as performance enhancing.

Taking drugs for a genuine medical condition is not against the rules,
even if they do enhance your performance. It's only cheating if you
don't have a valid medical reason.

And, let's lose the 'illegal'. Almost all of the drugs used to enhance
cycling performance are valid, legal drugs, part of the standard
pharmacopia. They are against the rules for athletes, /unless/ there is
a valid reason for prescribing them.

;; Semper in faecibus sumus, sole profundum variat.

Not so on the EPO. It is only prescribed during the course of chemo to offset
some of the chemo's side effects, like killing red blood cells. If he isn't
getting chemo NOW he won't be prescribed EPO.

This is where it gets interesting. Especially for us fattie masters who all have
friends getting testosterone patches, creams etc.

Ron

True. But can you say for certain he wasn't being prescribed chemo while
racing? If you're prescribed a course of drugs and you only take some of
them, that isn't the doctor's fault, is it? It would have been legal and
ethical for a doctor believing a rider to be at risk of a recurrence of
cancer to have prescribed some level of chemotherapy and some level of
EPO and other stuff to counteract the side effects. And if the rider
forgot to take some of his medications, well, people do forget, don't
they?

Not that I'm saying this was the case, but that if it had been it would
have been pretty hard to prove that anyone had acted improperly.

Due to financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel
has been switched off.

Yes.

Not likely. Chemo works on the principle of the game of chicken. You poison the
cancer slightly faster than the patient. That isn't always the outcome.

Sure could. There are no prophylactic doses of chemo.

Ron

I personally think there should be double blind and/or real scientific
studies done on drugs that are harmful and efficacious (i.e., actually
work to do something to give an unfair advantage, and not just a
placebo). Only these drugs should be banned. For example, excess
testosterone works to increase muscle mass, and has harmful side
effects so it should be banned. But not "herbal teas" and other such
placebos.

And a 'ratio' of testosterone to epitestosterone? That's a bit absurd
(see the below). Even drinking alcohol can influence the test (see
below, recall Landis had a beer before Stage 17)

I think the better thing to do is ban synthetic testosterone, and any
other synthetic performance enhancing drug that is harmful. Otherwise,
cycling will become too much like auto racing with all the 'handicaps'
put in to 'level the playing field'

But we need more solid research, not just media hype to placate the
anti-drug crowd.

What a shame. Landis is just what the sport needs and they destroy him
(BTW I don't follow cycling though I used to race 20 miles a day on my
bike--now I jog, can't find a decent asphalt trail where I live now).

RL

>From the web:

One-time use of steroids could result in an abnormal test, but it would
have no effect on performance and could not account for Landis?
astounding feat Thursday. ?So something?s missing here,? Wadler
said. ?It just doesn?t add up.?

Alcohol can influence testosterone-epitestosterone levels, but more
often in women than in men and it would be unlikely to have a huge
effect, Wadler said.

Some men have naturally occurring high levels of testosterone and/or
epitestosterone, but there is a sophisticated lab test called a carbon
isotope ratio test that is often used to detect synthetic forms.