tagged w/ Doping
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A Con Artist Hiding Behind the Guise of Philanthropy and False Heroism --
Cheating, lying, libel, intimidation, and indignant defiance are not traits that one would normally associate with a legendary world-class athlete. They are, in fact, typical traits expected of a common grifter and calculated professional liar and scumbag. A scumbag that cheats, lies, and ruins the reputations of others who’ve had the boldness and integrity to tell the truth at their own personal peril. -- Today is the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) imposed deadline on cyclist Lance Armstrong to finally come clean on what everyone already knows, or face a lifetime ban from cycling...
http://veracitystew.com/?p=48551A Con Artist Hiding Behind the Guise of Philanthropy and False Heroism --
Cheating,... more
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(Reuters) - Lance Armstrong "did not come clean in the way I expected" on whether he used performance-enhancing drugs in his cycling career, celebrated talk show host Oprah Winfrey said on Tuesday, a day after a lengthy interview with the disgraced athlete.
Armstrong, 41, has always vehemently denied using the drugs and had never tested positive to a doping test. But the evidence against him has been overwhelming and pressure has been building on him to admit that he cheated.
USA Today reported on Monday that Armstrong had confessed to the doping in the interview with Winfrey, which will air on Thursday and Friday on Winfrey's OWN Network, and other media say they have confirmed the report.
In an appearance on CBS' "This Morning" show on Tuesday, Winfrey stopped short of confirming a confession and said she would leave to others to decide if Armstrong had been contrite in the interview. She added that she found him to be thoughtful and serious.
The World Anti-Doping Code stipulates athletes must provide a complete admission, fully detailing their transgressions to anti-doping authorities, to be considered for reinstatement to competitions such as the triathlons and marathons Armstrong competed in last year.
"I don't know what he said to Oprah, but I think he has to be completely honest and transparent about this whole thing, and who aided and abetted him, to USADA and" the World Anti-Doping Agency, said Betsy Andreu, one of Armstrong's most persistent critics.
Andreu has long maintained that she and her cyclist husband, Frankie, a former teammate of Armstrong's, heard him confess to taking a slew of performance-enhancing drugs while talking to cancer doctors in 1996. Armstrong has long denied the episode, occasionally in a hostile manner toward Andreu.
"I hope he admits the hospital room," Betsy Andreu said. "That is where it all started."
The person who made the revelation is "familiar with the situation" and spoke on the condition of anonymity because Monday's taped interview is set to air Thursday on the Oprah Winfrey Network, AP said.
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School, said that although details of the depth of Armstrong's admissions remain unknown, he may be left vulnerable to damages by disclosing many details.
A federal whistle blower lawsuit against Armstrong for defrauding his former team sponsor, the U.S. Postal Service, could be pursued by the U.S. Justice Department.
"The whistle blower suit asks Armstrong to pay back millions for defrauding the Postal Service, and the whistle blower would get a cut of that action," Levenson said.
A Dallas company that paid Armstrong a $7.5-million settlement after originally declining to give him a $5-million bonus for winning the 2004 Tour — after alleging he had cheated to win — has also expressed interest in revisiting its case.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/15/us-cycling-armstrong-idUSBRE90D10X20130115
"While there may be civil issues implicated by whatever he said in the interview, from a federal criminal liability perspective, this case appears to be quite different from the Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens cases, where Bonds and Clemens both testified under oath — Bonds before a federal grand jury and Clemens before Congress," former federal prosecutor Mathew Rosengart said.
"Although grand jury investigations are secret, Mr. Armstrong appears to have heeded his counsel's advice and did not testify under oath. Although the Justice Department also has the authority to charge someone for lying to federal investigators even if they are not under oath — under the federal false statement statute — it would be surprising if he ever agreed to speak with investigators or the DOJ."
A group of about 10 close friends and advisers to Armstrong left an Austin, Texas, hotel on their way to the Winfrey taping Monday afternoon, the Associated Press reported. Among them were Armstrong attorneys Tim Herman and Sean Breen, along with Bill Stapleton, Armstrong's longtime agent, manager and business partner. All declined to comment entering and exiting the session.
Soon afterward, Winfrey tweeted: "Just wrapped with @lancearmstrong. More than 2 1/2 hours. He came READY!" Winfrey is scheduled to appear on "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday to discuss the interview.
The AP reported that Armstrong stopped at the cancer-fighting Livestrong Foundation, which he founded, on his way to the interview and said, "I'm sorry" to staff members, some of whom broke down in tears.
Armstrong also apologized for letting the staff down and putting Livestrong at risk, but he did not make a direct confession to using banned drugs. He said he would try to restore the foundation's reputation, and urged the group to continue fighting for the charity's mission of helping cancer patients and their families.(Reuters) - Lance Armstrong "did not come clean in the way I expected" on... more
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This compelling programme provides an antidote to the obsession with drugs testing, distrust and suspicion we’ve seen in the run up to and during the London Olympics. Stating that the anti-doping crusade is both illogical and immoral, Professor Sam Shuster, a clinical scientist, argues: “you destroy some-one’s life and their career; you destroy the pleasure for all of us, all because of some stupid rule for an effect that’s never been proved.”This compelling programme provides an antidote to the obsession with drugs testing,... more
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Seems that Lance needed an illegal boost to accomplish all he did. What does this make of his Live Strong products and marketing?Seems that Lance needed an illegal boost to accomplish all he did. What does this make... more
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OhSee
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added this
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11 months ago
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“ Mamma, che ne dici di un boemo a Roma ?”
Sicuramente le mamme che detestano il calcio, sentendo questa frase che riecheggia un brano dei Baustelle, comincerebbero a sbuffare.
I malati del calcio invece cominciano a discuterne e a dividersi. Il boemo Zeman, fumatore romantico, disciplinato e per nulla sdolcinato, torna nella Capitale.
Sarà il nuovo allenatore della Roma, il successore dello spagnolo Luis Enrique, andatosene dopo aver compreso che il suo calcio non può essere italianizzato.
Da un hombre vertical ad un altro più scomodo, che fu tra i primi a denunciare il doping nel calcio e ad accusare la Juventus della triade e di Marcello Lippi ( i bianconeri furono poi condannati e prescritti per illecita somministrazione di farmaci ).
La bellezza zemaniana sta nell’ essere un militante del calcio pulito e spettacolare, un maestro del 4-3-3 tutto rapidità, polmoni e tocchi di classe che vuole far divertire il suo pubblico, tanto lui sorridere non lo vedremo quasi mai e guarire un sistema calcistico scandaloso.
Zeman torna a Roma per la seconda volta ed ha l’ opportunità di consacrarsi.
Foggia e Pescara resteranno due splendide favole, due esempi di come si possono costruire dal basso squadre coraggiose ed esaltanti.
Ma questo è il momento di zittire chi sostiene che il Boemo sia inadatto a farsi rispettare dalle piazze grandi e dai grandi nomi, un perdente di successo bravo a fomentare i dibattiti che mai riuscirà ad alzare un trofeo.
Forse in quell’ uomo c’è troppa grandezza per un mondo come il nostro ?“ Mamma, che ne dici di un boemo a Roma ?”
Sicuramente le mamme che... more
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Following the announcement by the UCI that it has filed a defamation suit against Floyd Landis, the deposed Tour de France winner says he is ready to fight the case in an effort to expose “the corruption within cycling.”
Cycling’s international governing body, as well as its current president, Pat McQuaid, and his predecessor, Hein Verbruggen, have filed a law suit in Swiss courts, seeking damages from Landis after a year of allegations that the UCI and its leadership had covered up positive doping tests of select riders, particularly at least one from his former teammate Lance Armstrong.
Contacted by VeloNews, Landis said he intends to mount a vigorous defense against the suit, arguing that all of the allegations he’s leveled against the UCI and its former leaders are true, and that the governing body’s suit “will strengthen my resolve to expose them as the criminals that they are.”Following the announcement by the UCI that it has filed a defamation suit against... more
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Sports Illustrated is reporting new information about embattled, seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, who is the focus of a federal grand jury inquiry in Los Angeles. The investigation is headed by Jeff Novitzky of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, who previously investigated Barry Bonds and Marion Jones.
Agents have been looking into whether Armstrong was involved in an organized doping operation as a member of the team sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service from 1999 to 2004, and since August the grand jury has been hearing testimony from Armstrong's associates and confidants. In light of those proceedings, SI writers Selena Roberts and David Epstein reviewed hundreds of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of sources in Europe, New Zealand and the U.S. for a story in the Jan. 24 issue of the magazine, which will be available on newsstands Wednesday.
According to the story, "If a court finds that Armstrong won his titles while taking performance-enhancing drugs, his entourage may come to be known as the domestiques of the saddest deception in sports history."
Among SI's revelations:
• In the late 1990s, according to a source with knowledge of the government's investigation of Armstrong, the Texan gained access to a drug, in clinical trial, called HemAssist, developed by Baxter Healthcare Corp. HemAssist was to be used for cases of extreme blood loss. In animal studies, it had been shown to boost the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity, without as many risks as EPO. (Armstrong, through his lawyer, denies ever taking HemAssist.)
• One of the perks of traveling with Armstrong, former USPS rider Floyd Landis recalls, was frequent trips on private airline charters. Private airports often subject travelers to less stringent customs checks. But Landis tells SI about the day in 2003 that he, Armstrong and team members flew into St. Moritz, where customs officials requested that they open their duffel bags for a search. "Lance had a bag of drugs and s---," says Landis. "They wanted to search it, which was out of the ordinary." Sifting through Armstrong's bag, agents found syringes and drugs with labels written in Spanish. As Landis recounts, Armstrong then asked a member of his contingent to convince the agents that the drugs were vitamins and that the syringes were for vitamin injections. The agents "looked at us sideways," says Landis, "but let us through." (Armstrong denies that this incident ever occurred.)
Armstrong won that year's Tour de France by a scant 61 seconds over his archrival, Jan Ullrich of Germany. It was by far the narrowest of his seven Tour victories.
• When Italian police and customs officials raided the home of longtime Armstrong teammate Yarolslav Popovych last November, they discovered documents and PEDs as well as texts and e-mails linking Armstrong's team to controversial Italian physician Michele Ferrari as recently as 2009, though Armstrong had said he cut ties with Ferrari in 2004.
• In a letter reviewed by SI, Armstrong's testosterone-epitestosterone ratio was reported to be higher than normal on three occasions between 1993 and 1996, but in each case the test was dismissed by the UCLA lab of renowned anti-doping expert Don Catlin, whose lab tested the Texan some two dozen times between 1990 and 2000. In addition to detailing those test results, SI reveals what appears to have been a reluctance from USOC officials to sanction athletes using performance-enhancing drugs.
In 1999, USA Cycling sent a formal request to Catlin for past test results -- specifically, testosterone-epitestosterone ratios -- for a cyclist identified only by his drug-testing code numbers. A source with knowledge of the request says that the cyclist was Armstrong. In a letter responding to those requests, Catlin informed USA Cycling that his lab could not recover five of the cyclist's test results. Of the results that could be found, "three stand out," SI reports: "a 9.0-to-1 ratio from a sample collected on June 23, 1993; a 7.6-to-1 from July 7, 1994; and a 6.5-to-1 from June 4, 1996. Most people have a ratio of 1-to-1. Prior to 2005, any ratio above 6.0-to-1 was considered abnormally high and evidence of doping; in 2005 that ratio was lowered to 4.0-to-1."
While he didn't address the 6.5-to-1 result, Catlin wrote that he had attempted confirmation (a required step) on the 9.0-to-1 and 7.6-to-1 samples, and "in both cases the confirmation was unsuccessful and the samples were reported negative." (Armstrong says he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs and has never been informed that he tested positive.)
• Stephen Swart, a New Zealander who rode with Armstrong on the Motorola squad in 1995, describes the Texan as the driving force behind some of the team members deciding to use the banned blood booster EPO. "He was the instigator," Swart tells SI. "It was his words that pushed us toward doing it."
Swart, who admits to using EPO himself, also describes a hotel-room ritual in which riders pricked their fingers, put the blood in a vial, then ran it through a toaster-sized machine that provided their hematocrit levels.
Before 2001, when cycling began using a test for EPO, riders with a hematocrit level higher than 50 were subject to a 15-day ban. Swart recalls a rest-day during the '95 Tour when the Motorola riders tested their hematocrit levels. Swart was at 48. "Lance was 54 or 56," Swart recalls.
The next day, their teammate Fabio Casartelli was killed as the result of a crash while descending Col de Portet d'Aspet, in the Pyrenees. Three days later, Armstrong attacked a group of breakaway riders, soloing to victory in Stage 18, pointing to the heavens as he crossed the line, in honor of his fallen teammate. "I rode with the strength of two men today," he proclaimed. (Armstrong denies ever using performance-enhancing drugs.)
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/more/01/18/lance.armstrong/index.html#ixzz1BSTlN15sSports Illustrated is reporting new information about embattled, seven-time Tour de... more
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Roger Clemmons, Andy Pettite, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriquez, and now Tiger Woods and the FBI are involved.
Tiger Woods and the sport of golf may never be the same if these new allegations of Tiger Woods traveling all the way to Canada just to see a doctor who now is under investigation for distribution of performance enhancement drugs are found to be true, Bill Clinton, Marve Albert and many other have escaped the extramarital affairs scandals, but only Lance Armstrong survived the drug rumors, only because there is no test still today for HGH, unlike the sport of golf, cycling is considered to be dirty inside out.
It seems as if Woods is actually in a bottomless pit, and still falling.Roger Clemmons, Andy Pettite, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, Lance Armstrong,... more
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Two Olympic medalists — one gold and one silver — from the Beijing Games had eight fleeting months to celebrate their performances last summer.
But their hold on those precious Olympic medals could soon come to an end.
The runner Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain, the gold medalist in the 1,500 meters, and the cyclist Davide Rebellin of Italy, the silver medalist in the road race, are two of six athletes who failed tests for the blood-booster CERA in recent reanalysis of blood samples collected at the Beijing Olympics.
Their national Olympic committees confirmed that Ramzi and Rebellin had tested positive. So far, no American athletes have been linked to the positive cases.
If the analyses of Ramzi and Rebellin’s backup blood samples confirm the initial findings of CERA in their blood, those athletes will face disciplinary hearings. If found guilty, the International Olympic Committee would strip them of their medals. The standings in their Olympic events would also be reordered.
But as athletes like the track star Marion Jones have learned, there is more to the process than that. The reputations of Ramzi and Rebellin will be forever tarnished by the dark cloud of doping.
“This step shows that athletes who cheat can never be comfortable that they will avoid detection, and sends a strong message of deterrence,” the international governing body of track and field said Wednesday in a statement on its Web site.
The sport’s organization also confirmed that three of the six athletes who tested positive were track and field athletes, but said it could not name them. Under antidoping rules that govern the Olympics, governing bodies of sports are not authorized to divulge the names or the nationalities of those athletes at this point in a doping case.Two Olympic medalists — one gold and one silver — from the Beijing Games... more
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Biathlon world champion Yekaterina Iourieva and two Russian teammates were barred from the World Championships after testing positive for banned substances.
Follow-up tests confirmed positive results for Iourieva, Albina Akhatova and Dmitri Yaroshenko, the International Biathlon Union said Friday.Biathlon world champion Yekaterina Iourieva and two Russian teammates were barred from... more
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