Tour de France

[BullNBear52]

Langostino was way ahead of the curve! From a post on the baseball board here on Ihub back in 2009.

The IM link below is something to read.

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37786585

"A question on Armstrong: How has he been able to avoid detection"

Not to be trite, but by being always 1 step ahead. In 1999 when Lance returned to cycling, a test for EPO did not exist. So he (and his team) used EPO with impunity through 2000. This was confirmed in embarrassing detail when samples he gave during the 1999 Tour were later tested (after the EPO test was finally developed) and he was positive on all 6 samples from that year's Tour.

Then came a return to autologous blood doping. With no out-of-competition testing, the game became to dope the heck out of yourself in the off-season, and during early season races where you knew you wouldn't finish high enough in the standings to be tested. The equivalent in baseball was to dope in the off-season. Then, you maintain what you've gained by "micro-dosing". You continue on, but keep your dosages low enough to be below threshold. In the case of blood doping, mid-race, you re-inject.

You would be surprised at how easily blood (and urine) values can be toyed with, in a matter of hours. You can destroy a urine test by putting a little lye on your finger and making sure that gets into the sample, and boom, you've washed out the EPO test, for example.

Rather than carrying on in detail, here's a little IM chat between former Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreau with current Team Slipstream-Garmin manager Jonathon Vaughters.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/landis/instantmessage.html

As for your question whether his anti-cancer regimen helped him avoid detection, the answer is yes, for a while. The biggest scam in doping, is that you can LEGALLY dope -- all you need is a TUE (therapeutic use exemption). Lance carried TUEs for corticosteroids and other "medications" for the first three of his yellow jersey performances (and made good use of them).

But here again, he's hardly alone. Would it surprise you to learn that more than 70% of the riders in the European pro peloton have been diagnosed by their doctors as severe asthmatics? So severe they cannot be treated with mild medication, but instead require a TUE for Salbuterol or other steroid based medication? Yes, this is a scam. Give any cyclist a big hit of salbuterol prior to a 30 minute maximum effort time trial and give them unnaturally large dilation of the bronchii and voila, they can process more oxygen input to the bloodstream and produce a superior result.

You are absolutely correct, behind it all, there are sophisticated networks that make this all work. Dr. Fuentes alone had at least 300 clients, and was responsible for countless gold medals, several World Cups, scores of World Championships, etc. And he was just one of the Spanish based networks (granted he had "houses" all over Europe so his clients could get dosed no matter where they were competing). Italy's Francesco Conconi and his pupils Michele Ferrari (Armstrong's guy), Checcini, etc. have the longest and most "distinguished" record, dating back to the early 80s.

BALCO was just one of the U.S. based "outlets". If you go back, you'll find it wasn't just Bonds, Giambi and a handful of MLB guys, it was Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, and a host of elite track and field athletes, it was NFL greats, tennis players, and so on. BALCO alone produced literally dozens of Olympic medals for the U.S.

But here's the toughest part ... the U.S. Olympic committee itself has fostered and covered up doping since the late 1950s when it began the development of modern anabolic steroids. There is a load of evidence that Lance Armstrong was indoctrinated into doping when he entered the U.S. national team as a teenager, and there is a logical case to be made that his testicular cancer was a result of that doping. (More than 50% of his former teammates on the jr. national team suffer from bizarre autoimmune and endocrine diseases and issues, and three of the 5 elite members of that team ultimately sued the US Cycling Federation, which paid out substantial settlements to them, of course with the obligatory gag provision so they couldn't talk).

Ultimately, when you begin to understand the limits of testing, the advances in ways to manipulate body chemistry, and the ways in which sophisticated doctors can help athletes evade detection, one begins to wonder how anyone but the "little fish," who can't afford the expensive programs, ever gets caught.

Ironically, much as in business, where better capitalized businesses can capitalize on economies of scale and their bigger bankrolls to crush smaller competition, so too can the elite athletes use money as a competitive advantage in the doping arena, buying more sophisticated doping regimens that produce better results, and ... get by with stuff the competition can afford to buy.