Is Lance Armstrong Guilty?

[Reub]

Lance Armstrong has just announced that he is no longer going to fight doping charges after years of defending himself. He has taken hundreds of drug tests over the years and never tested positive. Does this new announcement make him guilty?

[MediumTex]

Yes.

The idea that one person could dominate a sport over a 7 year period when everyone else in the sport was apparently doping is hard to accept if that person wasn't doping as well.

What we have learned about doping is that it does enhance performance and will make you better than those who aren't doping. 

Everyone in cycling was doping during that period.  It doesn't take anything away from Armstrong's achievements to say that he was the best doped cycler of the 1999-2005 period.

Why would former teammates be willing to testify they had seen him doping and overheard him talking to others about doping?  What's the incentive to do this if it was all made up?

Passing drug tests is meaningless if we are talking about types of doping that were specifically designed to evade testing technology.

[Ad Orientem]

I don't know. But there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence against him. And it seems that he bowed out just before we would have heard from a large number of his teammates who were supposedly ready to testify against him. His decision sounds like a plea of "nolo contendere" or "no contest." That is the functional equivalent to a guilty plea.

[TBV]

Compared to baseball players or weightlifters, tour cyclists are supermen.  Juicing to gain a prohibitive advantage in a sport where a few seconds of exertion is all that's required to win is truly despicable.  Having to submit to grueling weeks-long ordeals under all kinds of conditions while weaving intricate team strategies that shift each day is another thing entirely.  So is coming back from crashes and deliberate roadside sabotage by "fans."  Whatever advantage may be gained via doping simply cannot be as highly correlated with the final outcome as in other sports.  And nowhere else is detection so likely, since cyclists are tested more frequently than participants in any other sport.  So tour cycling is "different."

Any sport where you can pass every test given and then still get retroactively disqualified 13 years later is a thoroughly suspect and pointless one.  If one asks "Who won the Tour de France?"  The answer can only be "Stay tuned. In a decade or two, we'll let you know."  If this is all fans can expect, they might as well be watching professional wrestling.

Is Armstrong guilty?  I don't know, and now we'll probably never know for sure.  But one thing's for sure: I no longer care.

[MediumTex]

Compared to baseball players or weightlifters, tour cyclists are supermen.  Juicing to gain a prohibitive advantage in a sport where a few seconds of exertion is all that's required to win is truly despicable.  Having to submit to grueling weeks-long ordeals under all kinds of conditions while weaving intricate team strategies that shift each day is another thing entirely.  So is coming back from crashes and deliberate roadside sabotage by "fans."  Whatever advantage may be gained via doping simply cannot be as highly correlated with the final outcome as in other sports.  And nowhere else is detection so likely, since cyclists are tested more frequently than participants in any other sport.  So tour cycling is "different."

If it's different and doping doesn't confer that much of an advantage, why do you think so many cyclists do it?

Any sport where you can pass every test given and then still get retroactively disqualified 13 years later is a thoroughly suspect and pointless one.  If one asks "Who won the Tour de France?"  The answer can only be "Stay tuned. In a decade or two, we'll let you know."  If this is all fans can expect, they might as well be watching professional wrestling.

Is Armstrong guilty?  I don't know, and now we'll probably never know for sure.  But one thing's for sure: I no longer care.

I don't care either, but the whole story is pretty bizarre.  How do we know that whoever won second place in the Tour de France in 1999-2005 wasn't also doping?

[TBV]

If it's different and doping doesn't confer that much of an advantage, why do you think so many cyclists do it?

I don't care either, but the whole story is pretty bizarre.  How do we know that whoever won second place in the Tour de France in 1999-2005 wasn't also doping?

I didn't say it didn't confer an advantage, but that the advantage was not as highly correlated with who eventually wins as in other sports.  Tour cyclists must possess prodigious talent, extraordinary mental toughness, and multiple skills (sprinting, attacking mountains, all-weather endurance) to win.  They must also avoid accidents.  If most riders are doping, then it's clear that doping alone does little for the also-rans who end up at the back of the peloton.  So then, what distinguishes a winner from the rest of the pack?  Apparently not the drugs.  Probably the very thing(s) that we watch cycling to admire.  That anyone, a cancer survivor no less, could put it all together seven times, in a row, is astounding.

How do we know what everyone else was doing?  Apparently we don't.  Not even after several highly publicized and highly suspect efforts by French authorities to nail Armstrong.  Not even after several more timely investigations of other prominent riders.  It's the mixture of vendetta, delayed justice and inadequate scientific controls that makes this unworkable.  Do we want to know who passed whom in the 75th mile of a climb on day 16?  No.  We want to know who won.  And year after year, disqualification after disqualification, we are now seldom sure.

During the Olympics, I learned that long distance speed walkers can be disqualified for breaking stride by any one of the many on-course field judges.  Makes sense.  They walk up to you as you pass by and escort you off the course.  But incredibly, they can also do this after you've crossed the finish line and won the race!  Something about that strikes me as wrong. Though not a direct analogy, I feel the same way about the Armstrong affair.

[Reub]

If Lance Armstrong was doping then why did his tests always come back clean? If he was doping in ways not tested for then that seems like it should be a non-issue since it can never be proven and may not violate the rules anyway. Is this really an attempt to bring down an American icon? Is this some kind of vendetta? I heard somebody from the doping agency today who sounded almost gleeful and was stating that this proves Armstrong was guilty. I think that a reasonable individual would say that this proves nothing. But he sure sounded happy to make the point that Armstrong was guilty.

[Storm]

If Lance Armstrong was doping then why did his tests always come back clean? If he was doping in ways not tested for then that seems like it should be a non-issue since it can never be proven and may not violate the rules anyway. Is this really an attempt to bring down an American icon? Is this some kind of vendetta? I heard somebody from the doping agency today who sounded almost gleeful and was stating that this proves Armstrong was guilty. I think that a reasonable individual would say that this proves nothing. But he sure sounded happy to make the point that Armstrong was guilty.

Most of the tests have no way of detecting the substances that people use to enhance performance.  For example, a lot of tests for synthetic testosterone completely miss real testosterone, when it is stimulated by a substance that causes the body to produce a greater amount than normal.

[Ad Orientem]

The Times has a piece out on the evidence against Armstrong. I think he realized the jig was up and he bowed out before all these witnesses could call him a cheat under oath.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/sport ... es.html?hp

[MachineGhost]

Just divide sports into natural and enhanced competitions and quit with the witch hunting.  Oh wait, that makes too much common sense...

[Reub]

I read the Times article and it was full of hearsay and conjecture. There was not one shred of evidence in the article that proved that Armstrong was doping. The article did cite a few names of other riders who might have testified against Armstrong but their testimony could easily have been coerced or would have been given out of jealousy.

Here is an article that says it better than me:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ot ... story.html

This from the article by Tracee Hamilton:

"People lie. Blood and urine usually don’t. And if they do, they don’t lie 500 times. People do. Some lie that many times in a week. But okay. Let’s assume these people really are witnesses, let’s assume they’re telling the truth, and then let’s assume that their testimony is the new standard, outweighing all drug test results.

Then what in the world is the point of drug testing? In any sport, by any group, at any level of competition? If the results can be discarded in favor of testimony, then let’s go right to the testimony phase and quit horsing around with blood and urine."

[MediumTex]

I read the Times article and it was full of hearsay and conjecture. There was not one shred of evidence in the article that proved that Armstrong was doping. The article did cite a few names of other riders who might have testified against Armstrong but their testimony could easily have been coerced or would have been given out of jealousy.

Here is an article that says it better than me:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/ot ... story.html

This from the article by Tracee Hamilton:

"People lie. Blood and urine usually don’t. And if they do, they don’t lie 500 times. People do. Some lie that many times in a week. But okay. Let’s assume these people really are witnesses, let’s assume they’re telling the truth, and then let’s assume that their testimony is the new standard, outweighing all drug test results.

Then what in the world is the point of drug testing? In any sport, by any group, at any level of competition? If the results can be discarded in favor of testimony, then let’s go right to the testimony phase and quit horsing around with blood and urine."

If we're talking about performance enhancing substances that don't show up in drug tests, I don't see what the relevance is of passing 500 drug tests.

I agree that people will sometimes lie for many different reasons, but why would members of Armstrong's own team lie about something like this?  What's the incentive?  Why would you lie to destroy the accomplishments of your own cycling team?  How could you get multiple people on the same team to engage in coordinated lying about something that seems to be of no benefit to the people engaging in the supposed lying?

Why would Armstrong decline to participate in an arbitration process that would allow him to confront these "liars" and expose inconsistencies in their stories?  Participating in the arbitration process would allow him to get all of the liars' lies on record and then he could patiently go about suing each of them for defamation, slander, etc. 

There is also the matter of being the dominant cyclist in a period where apparently all of the top cyclists were doping.  Are we really supposed to believe that even with the doping none of Armstrong's competitors were good enough to beat Armstrong over a 7 year period when Armstrong supposedly wasn't doping at all?

[Reub]

Why would members of his own team lie? I don't know for sure. They might be doing it out of jealousy for a man who got all of the glory. Or possibly to extract a better deal for themselves. Or to make money off of a book. There are many reasons why people lie.

If there are substances that one can take that cannot be tested for then why have a testing process at all? What does it really prove?

"Okay Mr. Armstrong, we tested you for the above banned substances and now we know that, well, we know that you didn't take them. Well, not in sufficient quantities to be caught. Or at least we were not able to find proof of them in your system because you might have diluted them or masked them. Actually, Mr. Armstrong, we really didn't accomplish much at all with these 500tests. You might have used completely different substances that we didn't test for. So we will go after you anyway. And we will continue to go after you, despite these 500 negative tests that we insisted upon, for decades until we finally get you or you stop fighting us, in which case we win anyway."

What a system! 

[MachineGhost]

I would say the witch hunting occurs because there is a pretense that the competitions are supposed to be natural now.

But if there were a separate "natural" competition, who gets to define what is natural?  How would we know whether an athlete was "natural" or not?  It seems to me there would still be witch hunting.

Unfortunately, there is not a great solution.  The "market" rewards people who know how to cheat and not get caught.

On a lighter note, from a 1988 Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment:

An idea whose time has come: The All-Drug Olympics

Well, it would at least allow a legal outlet rather than trying to ban it and drive it underground.  We know that simply doesn't work now.  Those that would want to cheat in the natural competition would find the path of least resistance to be just competing in the enhanced.  I'm sure there's an example of this kind of dualistic thing working successfully in some other field.  People tend to respect boundaries when they don't feel powerless.

But, I bet over time the enhanced competition would attract more money and attention ("Real Steel") and the natural competition would seem quaint and NeoLuddite and slowly die off.  But if that is what the market wants, so be it.  Who is anyone to say the collective wisdom of the crowd is wrong?  I've never understood the statist inclination to promote voluntary "free markets" at the same time want to forcefully impose their own individualistic view of morality on everyone.  Oxymoron.

[Tortoise]

I understand the desire to keep sports and Olympic competitions as "natural" as possible, but I look at it this way: There is already a huge--and one might even say "unnatural"--gulf separating amateurs from professionals.

Professional athletes spend an inordinate amount of time each day in intense physical training, usually with personal trainers and coaches, to achieve their impressive level of performance. Even in the absence of performance-enhancing drugs, is this level of performance "natural"? Depends on your perspective, I suppose, but I'd say it's definitely not natural. If we define natural as what the human body is designed to do--what it evolved to do--then it's not natural for the human body to be subjected to 6+ hours of intense physical exertion every day. A couple of hours, perhaps, but certainly not half the day.

Professional athletes push the boundaries of what the human body is capable of, so they reside in the tail of the human bell curve even without performance-enhancing drugs. In such a rarefied and arguably "unnatural" region of human ability, I would argue that drugs are simply the next step. It may not be long before most humans are partially cybernetic anyways--genetically modified, enhanced with prosthetic technical devices and neural interfaces, etc.

Humans are already in the process of consciously wresting their own evolution away from Mother Nature. We are re-designing ourselves. Drugs are just part of that process.

[Lone Wolf]

Professional athletes push the boundaries of what the human body is capable of, so they reside in the tail of the human bell curve even without performance-enhancing drugs. In such a rarefied and arguably "unnatural" region of human ability, I would argue that drugs are simply the next step. It may not be long before most humans are partially cybernetic anyways--genetically modified, enhanced with prosthetic technical devices and neural interfaces, etc.

Humans are already in the process of consciously wresting their own evolution away from Mother Nature. We are re-designing ourselves. Drugs are just part of that process.

Yes, I think that we'll soon be tackling the issue of human beings whose bodies are enhanced in various and interesting ways by technology.

In fact, just look at double amputee Oscar Pistorius, who competed in the 2012 Olympic Games.  You probably heard about the allegations that his Cheetah Flex-Foot gave him an unfair advantage over other competitors.

This is just the beginning.  Wait until China starts genetically engineering athletes.    The future is going to be an interesting place in more ways than I can list (or even imagine.)

[craigr]

This is just the beginning.  Wait until China starts genetically engineering athletes.    The future is going to be an interesting place in more ways than I can list (or even imagine.)

What's strange to me is how much importance people put on athletics and things like the Olympics. Seems kind of bizarre to me thinking that a country that turns out great athletes is somehow better than a place that does less so. For instance East Germany turned out great drug-enhanced athletes, but I doubt anyone would argue it was a better place to live than Sweden.

[dualstow]

What's strange to me is how much importance people put on athletics and things like the Olympics. Seems kind of bizarre to me thinking that a country that turns out great athletes is somehow better than a place that does less so.

I couldn't agree more, but that's partly because I'm not that athletic. I like noncompetitive outdoor activities like leisurely rowing in a rowboat (but not crew). I never understood the excitement at high school pep rallies, let alone pride on a national scale. Maybe the East Germans were compensating for the drudgery of the 3 years and 11 months between Olympic events.

Still, I like the fact that we use (or are supposed to use) non-professionals for those competitions.

[MediumTex]

I just wanted to raise this topic again since the story has shifted quite a bit since this thread started.

As much of an arrogant jerk as Armstrong seems to be, I think that people are failing to appreciate that everyone was apparently doping during the era in which Armstrong was winning his titles.  If you wanted to be competitive, it seems like it was understood that you would have to utilize a sophisticated doping strategy.

It's true that Armstrong apparently cheated, but what is the significance of this fact if everyone was cheating?

I think that the storyline is shifting too much in the direction of demonizing Armstrong, rather than being realistic about what was actually going on across the whole sport at the time (and may still be--who knows?).

[Xan]

I think some of that is reflected in the UCI's decision to leave those Tour championships vacant rather than give them to the runner up.  If all of them are cheating, then none of them deserve medals.  None of them.

[Pointedstick]

If they were all cheating, doesn't that make it a fair competition again? 

[MediumTex]

If they were all cheating, doesn't that make it a fair competition again? 

That's sort of what I was thinking, except presumably some were better than others at doping, like some were better than others at cycling.

Perhaps they should create a new competition and call it the Tour de Dope, and Armstrong's titles could just be transferred.

[Reub]

If he was cheating then why did ALL of his tests come back negative?

[MediumTex]

If he was cheating then why did ALL of his tests come back negative?

Because he was using substances that the drug tests were not able to detect.

That said, he did fail at least one test, but apparently got a doctor to back-date a prescription for a permitted use of the banned substance.

Are you still thinking that he wasn't doping over the period that he was winning all of his tour victories?  The cumulative effect of the whole body of evidence is pretty powerful.

[Reub]

There is a hint of a witch-hunt here. He used substances that were banned but not detectable. That's like accusing a banker of stealing funds even though the books all add up. I guess that the strongest evidence may be eyewitness testimony but has that ever been given under oath? And how do we know that those giving that testimony don't have an axe to grind or are motivated out of fear or duress?