Lance Armstrong stripped of Tour de France titles

This press release is full of lies.

The USADA Arbitration court is a star chamber.

Even the Federal Judge who recently dismissed Lance's case, said as much.

As for Witnesses there are several problems:

1) The USADA does not provide full disclosure or access to the witnesses prior to the arbritation.

2) The USADA allows written and signed statements from witnesses to be submitted during abitration, thus obliterating the rights of the accused to face their accusers and to cross examine.

This one single issue alone, makes the USADA arbitration process worthless for anyone that is interested in some semblence of truth or justice.

3) Because of the star chamber set up by the USADA they have won the vast majority (something like 68 out of 70) cases brought before abritration. And because the accused can't possibly win a rigged system, EVERY SINGLE "WITNESS" to testify against Lance that is under the thumb of the USADA is suspect in that their testimony is worth as much as jailhouse snitches. Studies have shown that jailhouse snitches testimony is essential worthless if you are interested in the truth. They will say ANYTHING to cut a better deal for themselves.

Then there are the drug tests. It is little known that the USADA has set up a system where they have controlled the design of the tests, the labs and the staff of the labs. Everybody involved is on the "payroll" and are beholden to the system.

So, what are the checks and balances to this system? None. All reviews and controls are by internal folks and no outsiders are allowed.

Thus, there is effectively no way that a defense team can question the test results produced by the USADA.

And if you know anything about lab tests, you know that the are almost never - black and white. Pass/Fail. They are on a continuum. You also know that in lab tests most of them can have the results messed up by common (non performance enhancing) products/food. So, if tests are set to be very sensitive, you will get more false positives. But, if the design and processing of the tests is done in secret, how can expert outsiders point out problems with the test or reasons for false positives. The USADA doesn't care. They just ban the athletes anyway.

I just don't see the point for this campaign against Armstrong, other than to feed the ego of Tygart and to justify the existence of an organization that seems so poorly run and with such Nazi tendencies that the lack of a big kill may have seen it lose favor with Congress. However, the hamhandedness of this campaign may cause blowback in Congress that hurts the USADA anyway.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...9510839091278.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

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Here is an LA Times opinion piece complaining about the "process" of the USADA for anyone who is interested:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120825,0,4618562,full.column

Much more if you click the link.
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so you're okay with football and baseball's widespread juicing to this day? With assisting blind eyes turned by those in charge, players continue to press the edges of whats allowed, and use whatevers 1 step ahead of the tests. In baseball today, if a player's testosterone level tests to be 399% of normal levels, thats acceptable for the league. How is that policy not an encouragement to inject testosterone which is largely out of the system days later?

What amuses me most in this quagmire, is that while sports fans apathy towards PEDs grows, they still like to single out some individuals as villains for doing whats widespread throughout the sport. Got to have someone to hate... almost always a black guy. Lance is corporate golden goose who (I suspect) will be appearing on yet more commercials extolling consumers to be more like him

STOMP

 

This is a total sham IMO. Where is the proof? A bunch of other admitted dopers who say they saw or did dope with him? Hearsay, really?

Everyone I talked to about this felt that it was a witch hunt against Armstrong, I don't think the public perception is that Armstrong is guilty or that he cheated, but that he is the target of an organization (USADA) and specifically the head of that organization (Tygart) who comes off looking extremely petty....

Oh that, and the media which blasts out that he is guilty and is stripped of his 7 titles, when niether has occured yet that I am aware of? Isn't that UCI's call?

and then you have to listen to idiots on the radio (includidng hosts) who spout off how, if they were innocent they would never give up and fight to the end? Really? Easy to say when you haven't spent millions of dollars defending yourself, spent several years doing so, at a cost to you and your family's well being, and oh yeah, with the latest round being nothing more than a kangaroo court that you cannot win because it is rigged against you...

The whole thing is a joke, 7 years after the fact, you are going to go after him, really? and it isn't personal? bullshit....

It is one thing if you had undeniable proof, but I haven't seen anywhere where they do, just a bunch of hearsay and jumping to conclusions.

 

I'd guess a good percentage of people in prison are 100% innocent but were coerced into taking plea deals when faced with the likelihood of doing much longer sentences for the original trumped up charges. That's how our "justice" system is run these days. Guilty unless you have the money or connections to prove you are innocent.

 

they claim to have a lot more proof then just hearsay and would have had to produce that proof in court had Lance not given up the fight. Regardless of how much he's spent, Lance has more then enough $$$ to fight to clear his name... I sure take his recent actions as admitting guilt.

http://deadspin.com/5938299/usada-will-have-to-reveal-its-evidence-against-lance-armstrong

STOMP

 

You might be right if it was a (respected) court.

But, it is not. It is a widely derided Arbritration forum.

 

Sports talk radio in Seattle interviewed some expert (I don't remember who it was) and they said they had 10+ former teammates of Armstrong that were going to testify that they'd doped with Armstrong. If true, that is strong evidence, but that testimony likely won't happen given that Armstrong has given up. Obviously, that might be a pretty good reason that Armstrong folded.

Saying the evidence wasn't strong doesn't quite make sense because the evidence was never provided. Armstrong folded before it got that far.

Personally, I think there's enough smoke that there was a fire. I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't dope and it pains me to say that because I got up early to watch a lot of legs of those 7 tour wins.

 

You have to have more than just ex-teamates saying they saw or they did dope with him....That wouldn't float in any court of law....

 

It'd float. 10+ eye witnesses testifying that they saw him juice is strong. Only way it fails is if all of the 10+ witnesses aren't credible in the eyes of the court/jury/arbitrator. It's hearsay that wouldn't float and maybe that's what you're thinking of, but that doesn't apply here.

 

This is a very interesting (and long) article from a few years ago.

http://nyvelocity.com/content/interviews/2009/michael-ashenden

Cycling has always been dirty.

History of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports

 

Roger Clemens had the guy injecting him with steroids testify against him in court, and Clemens was acquitted. The Department of Justice dropped its case against Armstrong after two years because they had insufficient evidence to charge, yet something called the USADA has better resources and better evidence than the Department of Justice? Without being able to depose the "10 witnesses", or even cross-examine them, it makes for a kangaroo court, and not a true judicial process. The DoJ had access to the same witnesses, and decided that their testimony alone wasn't sufficient to charge Armstrong.


Please...

 

With Clemens it was one eye witness and he lacked credibility, so that's a bad example.

Can't say I've followed it closely, but do we know much about the DOJ decision? Shooting from the hip, I can imagine all sorts of reasons the DOJ didn't proceed...statute of limitations, doping occurred out of jurisdiction, etc. that would limit DOJ, but that would not apply to USADA. None of these would relate to the evidentiary weight of the witnesses testimony. Again, if the case is as strong as you seem to think, then why didn't Armstrong go foward with the process? But of course, it's much more fun to make it seem black and white and I'm sure you'll stick to that perspective. As grueling as the tour is, I have a hard time believing that Armstrong just tired out and gave up. You'd think it'd be part of his nature to just keep fighting, no matter how painful the process.

 

Did you miss the part about the Arbritration process being rigged?

In criminal court, even the accused that are guilty have a fighting chance of beating the charges.

In the USADA abritration there are several stories out about innocent athletes who were found "guilty", and something like 68 out of 70 cases were won by the USADA. It is nearly immpossible to win in that forum.

And yet, despite those facts, you continue to presume that Lance Armstrong is somehow suspect in his decision to not fight on through a rigged process.

Both Lance and his attorney said it was OVER once they lost their court battle to squash the USADA arbritration process. The recent decision to not fight on was anticlimatic.

 

I have no idea if it's rigged, but Armstrong would have good reason for people to believe that it is.

Your understanding about criminal courts isn't necessarily accurate...I have friends that have worked in various prosecutor positions and they generally don't prosecute unless they think they'll win. Their "won/loss" record is crazy high because of that...and it's not an indication that the process is rigged...they have a ton of cases and they focus on the ones in which they have strong evidence. I would think USADA would take a similar approach, so those numbers aren't necessarily a bad/unfair as they may seem.

As far as innocent athletes being found guilty, that is a bad fact of any judicial system. Genetic evidence has freed a lot of innocent people that were convicted and jailed. Horrible stuff, but there is no full proof way of getting it right 100% of the time.

Personally, if I were innocent and I had the means to fight it, I think I would fight any process no matter how low my chances of success. If I'm being unjustly accused, I'm ready to fight it. The only factor possibly against it is if I thought my wife and kids would be negatively impacted, but otherwise it'd be game on. Really, it comes down to one of two possibilities:

#1. Armstrong is innocent, but he thinks the process is rigged, a positive outcome is unlikely, so why bother fighting it?
#2. Armstrong is not innocent and he knows that 10+ guys that he rode with and doped with will be testifying publicly against him. Maybe some of those guys (Floyd, possibly Tyler) he could discredit, but then there'd be guys like Hincapie that would be difficult to discredit (I have no idea who the 10+ are...just throwing out guesses.) He very likely would lose and a lot of bad, very specific facts are made public in the process. So better not to get dragged through the mud in a public way, opt out of the process and claim it was rigged to begin with.

I have a hard time believing an innocent guy who fought through 7 tour wins and fought through cancer would fold like that...I don't think I would. So, personally, I think #1 is unlikely. #2 seems more likely. That said, none of us knows the truth, none of us were there to see him dope/not dope. I said it early on, I really, really, really wish that he didn't dope. Taking in all the facts, my gut feeling is that he did.

 

Which is why the DoJ ended a 2-year investigation of Armstrong. Because they didn't think they could win.

The USADA isn't worried about that, because there is no jury, and they control the entire process, and render their own decision. It's Soviet-style in some ways. A controlling agency makes accusations, controls all aspects of the trial, and then gets to decide the verdict. If you can't see the obvious bias and the potential for corruption involved in that process, then there isn't much more to discuss here.

Exactly who is the USADA accountable to in terms of keeping itself honest? Seems like they kind of just do as they please, and really don't answer to anyone.

 

DOJ is subject to statute of limitations, USADA not. DOJ needs jurisdiction, USADA has it. DOJ is criminal court (high bar for prosecution/beyond reasonable doubt), USADA has lower bar (no idea what it is, but it's not that high.)

Get off that DOJ pony, it's tired.

 

Yeah, due process and the ability to defend oneself is a tired idea.