Lance Armstrong

September 24th, 2008 filed in Cycling

Lance Armstrong has officially announced today that he is returning to cycling to race for Team Astana for no salary. He intends to race in 5 races next season, starting with the Tour Down Under in January, and concluding with the Tour De France in July. The motivation for his return is to promote his global cancer initiative, the Livestrong Campaign. Addressing the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, Armstrong said he would convene the first global summit of the Livestrong campaign to raise cancer awareness in Paris after the Tour. “I cannot guarantee an eighth Tour victory,” …”But I can guarantee that the Livestrong messages will touch all aspects of our society”

With his return to cycling, old allegations of doping have resurfaced. The 7 time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, has continually denied having used performance-enhancing drugs and has described himself as “the most tested athlete in the world”. He has been at the center of allegations and rumors for his entire career, though only one test showed indications of the presence of doping products. In 1999, a urine sample showed traces of corticosteroids, but the amount was not in the positive test range. He later produced a medical certificate showing he used an approved cream for saddle sores which contained the substance. His return to the sport has been greeted with both elation and skepticism, is he clean?

The New York Times reports on Lance’s Anti-Doping plans for his comeback :

Don Catlin, a leading antidoping scientist, said Tuesday night that he was in talks to head Armstrong’s personal antidoping program. Catlin, the former head of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory, is the chief science officer of Anti-Doping Sciences Institute, a testing and consulting company, and also leads an antidoping research organization.

The nuances of Armstrong’s antidoping program, which Catlin said would be much more aggressive than any other internal testing programs in cycling, have not yet been determined. He said the program would be focused on gathering and monitoring biological information of Armstrong, who has agreed to be tested at any time. That information will be posted on the Internet and available for public scrutiny. Any variation in those biological markers may indicate doping.

Catlin said that the program would not guarantee that Armstrong would be clean, but that it would be a good indicator of it. “I know as much as anybody does how to beat the system; he’s not going to beat me,” Catlin said. “You just have to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

Lance Armstrong CHEATed in the Tour de France
Chester Cheater

Lance Armstrong dominated cycling in a time where doping was the norm. He conveniently retired from the sport just as doping tests were progressing, and restrictions were tightening. Some of his biggest competitors have been implicated in doping scandals over recent years; Marco Pantani, Jan Ullrich, Alexandre Vinokourov, Ivan Basso, Roberto Heras, and Michael Rasmissen to name a few. In addition, some of Lance’s former lieutenants have also been implicated in doping scandals such as Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, and Frankie Andreu. Are we to believe that while everyone around Lance is caught up in doping, the man who beats them all is clean? Wikipedia has an entire history of allegations against Lance, which paint a not so rosey picture of the 7-time Tour de France winner. An excerpt from that article is below :

In 2004, sports reporters Pierre Ballester and David Walsh jointly published a book alleging Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs (L. A. Confidentiel - Les secrets de Lance Armstrong). It contains allegations by Armstrong’s former masseuse Emma O’Reilly who claimed that Armstrong once asked her to dispose of used syringes and give him makeup to conceal needle marks on his arms. Another key figure in the book, Steve Swart, claims that he and other riders, including Armstrong, began using drugs in 1995 while they were members of the Motorola team.

Now Armstrong has hired an antidoping scientist, to work on his payroll to prove he is clean. Somehow this is supposed to make us feel better? I’m not ready to just, “trust” that Catlin knows what he is doing. This is an obvious conflict of interest, that should be disregarded as such.

Lance Armstrong BEAT his competitors in the Tour de France
Billy Beater

Lance Armstrong is an American Hero and a Cylcing Legend. He defeated Cancer, returned to the sport he loves, and was able to climb to the top of that sport. He is a story of triumph over adversity, and his return to cycling should be applauded, as he does so in order to bring more awareness to his global cancer fighting campaigns. It has been proven many times that it is Lance’s physical attributes that allow him to dominate on a bike, not doping. His heart is 30 percent larger than average, and has a resting heart rate of 32-34 beats per minute, with a maximum heart rate of 201bpm. Armstrong’s most unusual attribute may be his low lactate levels. His ability of lactate removal, probably due to years of training, does not allow lactic acid buildup as easily in his body. This is directly related to Lance’s ability to not get fatigued as easily as other athletes. Lance’s high pedaling cadence is designed to take advantage of this natural attribute, and thus allows him to dominate on the climbs. I applaud Lance’s initiative in setting up his own anti-doping program. The transparency that will exist by having his test information posted on the internet should be enough to finally silence his critics.

What do you think, did Lance CHEAT, or did he BEAT?