Posted on 05/20/2011 4:20:35 PM PDT by Vision
NEW YORK (AP) — A report by "60 Minutes" says George Hincapie, a longtime member of Lance Armstrong's inner circle, has told federal authorities he saw the seven-time Tour de France winner use performance-enhancing drugs...
Hamilton said he also used PEDs with Armstrong.
Hincapie has often been depicted as one of Armstrong's most loyal teammates and was with him for all seven Tour victories. In an interview last year, Armstrong said Hincapie was "like a brother to me."
Armstrong has steadfastly denied doping...
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
I will take Armstrong any day to 60 Minuets.
Another suspicion of mine is that there hasn't been a clean champion since Indurain. I hate to see the sport tarnished like this, but that is because it is a violation of established rules. I think if the truth were known the majority of the peloton is probably juiced because everyone knows everyone is doing it and there is immense pressure to compete.
I've said it before - let all athletes use what ever they want. Sport has transgressed into entertainment and they are giving fans what they want to see. With all the money and perks that are on the line many athletes are obviously to risk both their health and their reputation to win. So, somehow they are going to find a way. PEDs are part of the evolution.
As we all know there was a time when riders thought smoking improved their ability to climb. Then came more advanced training and dieting methods along with the simple blood doping idea of training in high altitude and taking one's own blood to be saved for transfusions in crucial stages at a later date.
There's always going to be someone figuring out a way to gain an advantage.
Aero bars ...disk wheels, Ti frames - what about Power bars and carb drinks?
BTW - are the women all clean? Never a mention of them.
Bad. Cheryl will now divorce him!
Unless he was tested positive all those many times, they have no case. It is a matter of he said/he said.
The other thing that no one points out is that he SPECIFICALLY trained for the TDF, concentrating on that race alone, and only using the other races as training rides. Most of the other riders would wear themselves down by the time the TDF came around, where Lance was primed for it.
***Wonder how this will effect the 2011 TdF?***
Lance won’t win.
Thanks for the update. I hope this isn’t true and Lance is like Jim Thorpe and even Bob Mathias.
Naturally gifted and the best in the world in their heyday.
I don’t think a former doper should be rewarded with a coaching career.
In one sense, you could claim that he isn’t a doper because by the rules of the game, he hasn’t been found to be a doper. Just like a foul in basketball is whatever is called, and if the referee says it’s a catch, it’s a catch — not whether it was really a catch.
So Armstrong competed in a sport that included constant and pervasive drug testing, and he was never found to fail any of those tests. Others competed in football as linemen, and they didn’t hold because the referee didn’t say the held — it makes no difference if you or I think they were holding on every down, or that every professional basketball player takes 3 steps to the hoop.
For my part, until someone provides EVIDENCE, I’m not going to concede that a particular person was using drugs. Other druggies saying “he did it to”, no matter how “sincere” they appear to be, isn’t evidence, unless they give us a syringe with Armstrong’s fingerprints on it.
I will note that Hamilton is trying to salvage what he seems to admit is a lucrative coaching career, something that should end with his admission that his best coaching advice seems to be to take drugs — it is to his benefit to claim that he HAD to do it because everybody was.
Look at his letter, with the protests of how HARD it was for him to have to take drugs, and how he hopes to protect others from his fate — all the words of a person who blames others for their own actions.
Especially given that the drugs he is alleged to have taken weren’t illegal. Of course, they got some baseball players criminally by having them testify about their use, and nailing them for perjury.
It goes back further than that. Speed was widely used until a rider OD’d during a Tour in the sixties.
From Wikipedia, these highlights and a quote from Henri Pelissier that you may find fascinating. (Pelissier had a long time feud with Tour Director Henri Desgrange.)
Henri Pélissier, (winner of the 1923 TdF) Francis (his brother) and another rider, Maurice Ville, abandoned the Tour at Coutances in 1924 after Desgrange had not let Pélissier to take off a jersey as the sun came up. They were met in the station café by the journalist Albert Londres, who normally wrote about social and international affairs but was following the Tour for Le Petit Parisien. Londres’ piece, reproduced largely as a dialogue, appeared under the headline Les Forçats de la Route.
“You wouldn’t believe that all this is about nothing more than a few jerseys. This morning, in Cherbourg, a race official came up to me and without a word, he pulled up my jersey to check that I’m not wearing two. What would you say if I pulled open your waistcoat to see if your shirt was clean? That’s the way these people behave and I won’t stand for it. That’s what this is all about.”
“But what if you were wearing two jerseys?”
“That’s the point. If I want to, I can wear 15. What I can’t do is start with two and finish with only one.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s the rule. We don’t only have to work like donkeys, we have to freeze or suffocate as well. Apparently that’s an important part of the sport. So I went off to find Desgrange. ‘I can’t throw my jersey on the road, then?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘you can’t throw away anything provided by the organisation.’ ‘But this isn’t the organisation’s—it’s mine.’
“’I don’t conduct arguments in the street,’ he said. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘if you’re not prepared to talk about it in the street, I’m going back to bed.’
“’We’ll sort it all out in Brest’, he said. It will definitely be sorted out in Brest, I said, because I’m quitting. And I did.”
Pélissier went to his brother, Francis, told him his decision and encouraged him to do the same. Francis said that suited him because he had a bad stomach and no enthusiasm for racing. Ville said he hadn’t been part of the strike but that the other two had picked him up along the road. He was too tired to go on, he said.
“You have no idea what the Tour de France is,’ Henri said. “It’s a calvary. And what’s more, the way to the cross only had 14 stations — we’ve got 15.[7] We suffer on the road. But do you want to see how we keep going? Wait...’
From his bag he takes a phial. “That, that’s cocaine for our eyes and chloroform for our gums...”
“Here,” said Ville, tipping out the contents of his bag, “horse liniment to keep my knees warm. And pills? You want to see the pills?” They got out three boxes apiece.
“In short,” said Francis, “we run on dynamite.’
Henri takes up the story. “You ever seen the baths at the finish? It’s worth buying a ticket. You go in plastered with mud and you come out as white as a sheet. We’re drained all the time by diarrhoea. Have a look at the water. We can’t sleep at night. We’re twitching as if we’ve got St Vitus’s Dance. You see my shoelaces? They’re leather, as hard as nails, but they’re always breaking. So imagine what happens to our skin. And our toenails. I’ve lost six. They fall off a bit at a time all through the stage. They wouldn’t treat mules the way we’re treated. We’re not weaklings, but my God, they treat us so brutally. And if I so much as stick a newspaper under my jersey at the start, they check to see it’s still there at the finish. One day they’ll start putting lumps of lead in our pocket because God made men too light.”
...
By the way - will there be a Tour de France pinglist this year? Are there any Freepers who might be willing to manage a cycling / roadie pinglist?
The powers that be have gone out of their way to try to catch him, and he has never been santioned, not even once.
That's the evidence that counts. He has come up clean, clean, clean.
Innuendo and sour grapes just won't cut it...
I don’t think Lance will win this year.
Maybe because he will not be racing.
They need to give it up and focus on the people still racing.
If you can pass the control and racing checks - well then, you passed.
> Hincapie has often been depicted as one of Armstrong’s most loyal teammates
That all ended a couple of years ago after the 14th stage of the 09 Tour when Hincapie blamed Armstrong for leading, or certainly not discouraging, the chase that managed to keep George out of his only real shot at yellow in his Tour career.
I would rate George as one of the most respected men in US cycling. I don't want to believe it, but this is Hincapie, it's probably true.
Arguably the greatest feat in the long history of cycling could crumble before our eyes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.