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Cycling Doping Fallacies

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Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#31

Post by ajcp »

stevage wrote: post #25
ajcp wrote: post #4

> I do think that history has treated Mr. Armstrong unfairly for the essential act of his cheating. > To be sure, Mr. Armstrong brought much of his disparate treatment on himself. Perhaps history, but I think modernity has been far too kind to Mr. Armstrong. I'm floored that Lance Armstrong is still given a degree of celebrity and room as a public figure, and still more that he can make money off of that. That his ce…

>and all the while he openly and literally tried to destroy the lives and reputations of those who said as much Not just "tried", he completely destroyed a couple of journalists' careers. This is not something that should ever be forgiven.

I agree.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#32

Post by nafnlj »

stevenwoo wrote: post #30

I don’t buy his theory that Lance was clean early in his career because he only won one day races up to that point. Exogenous EPO was available for the first time by the time Indurain began his run on the Tour de France several years earlier- this was quite startling because he was huge weight wise by grand tour standards up to that time. Armstrong might just have not dialed in the doping just right in those early ye…

(I am the author of the article) You are correct that he wasn't clean early in his career. He admitted to first using a banned substance in 1993, which was the year he won the World Championship, and I recall the 2012 investigation had testimony of his using drugs on Motorola in 1994. I also don't think there's any convincing evidence he actually lost much weight in 98 when he had his first high GT finish at the Vuelta. There are probably many possible reasons for how he transformed into a grand tour contender in 1998 -- from "dialing it in" to completely changing the strategy, but I haven't seen any agreed upon theory.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#33

Post by loeg »

What an extremely wordy and repetitive article mostly to say the author doesn't believe anyone can prove that Lance would have won in a clean field. Obviously, it never happened, so no one can know what would have happened. No one can prove a counterfactual. But I don't think the rest of the words adds to the discourse any more than the single sentence:

> I do not think it follows from Mr. Armstrong having been stronger than other cheaters while he himself was cheating that he would have been the strongest clean cyclist if everyone was clean.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#34

Post by pge »

stevage wrote: post #23

There's a link to this graph here: https://web.archive.org/web/20240105023309/https://nitter.no... Took me a very very long time to make sense of the chart. Watts/kg up, minutes over which that power output was sustained to the right. White points are Vingegaard climbs in the past, yellow points are Vingegaard climbs in 2022, pink points are other cyclists. The yellow and white curves are just trend lines? They seem…

Note that Riis's results were before the 50% hematocrit limit (he was nicknamed "Mr 60%'). Hematocrit is a measure of the hemoglobin content, or oxygen carrying capacity, of the blood. So, even though later cyclists were also blood doping or using EPO, they have been limited to a 50% hematocrit, and that may explain why Riis's power output has not been matched.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#35

Post by loeg »

nradov wrote: post #14
ajcp wrote: post #4

> I do think that history has treated Mr. Armstrong unfairly for the essential act of his cheating. > To be sure, Mr. Armstrong brought much of his disparate treatment on himself. Perhaps history, but I think modernity has been far too kind to Mr. Armstrong. I'm floored that Lance Armstrong is still given a degree of celebrity and room as a public figure, and still more that he can make money off of that. That his ce…

For those interested in the Armstrong saga it's worth listening to his interview in the Peter Attia Drive podcast. For personal reasons that I won't go into here I still feel betrayed by his cheating and vindictive lying, but hearing about what has been doing since partially redeemed him in my eyes. https://peterattiamd.com/lancearmstrong/

It was an interesting interview.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#36

Post by alistairSH »

Zigurd wrote: post #21
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like Formula 1 for rich fitness enthusiasts. You can't buy the engine for professional cyclists. Even though they were doping, people like Armstong are still individuals with insanely high VO2max levels, beyond anything you could achieve through training alone (i.e. you need genetic good luck too). So I am not sure where you see the similarities with F1 ...

I meant the milieu, not the sport itself. It's about providing a party for executives of corporate sponsors.

Isn’t that true for most pro sports? Skyboxes at football matches, horse racing, etc.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#37

Post by buzzdenver »

nradov wrote: post #14
ajcp wrote: post #4

> I do think that history has treated Mr. Armstrong unfairly for the essential act of his cheating. > To be sure, Mr. Armstrong brought much of his disparate treatment on himself. Perhaps history, but I think modernity has been far too kind to Mr. Armstrong. I'm floored that Lance Armstrong is still given a degree of celebrity and room as a public figure, and still more that he can make money off of that. That his ce…

For those interested in the Armstrong saga it's worth listening to his interview in the Peter Attia Drive podcast. For personal reasons that I won't go into here I still feel betrayed by his cheating and vindictive lying, but hearing about what has been doing since partially redeemed him in my eyes. https://peterattiamd.com/lancearmstrong/

Can you describe in a sentence or two what he has been doing? That 2-hour podcast is quite the commitment.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#38

Post by jdietrich »

Swizec wrote: post #5
ajcp wrote: post #4

> I do think that history has treated Mr. Armstrong unfairly for the essential act of his cheating. > To be sure, Mr. Armstrong brought much of his disparate treatment on himself. Perhaps history, but I think modernity has been far too kind to Mr. Armstrong. I'm floored that Lance Armstrong is still given a degree of celebrity and room as a public figure, and still more that he can make money off of that. That his ce…

> That his celebrity and accolades were obtained fraudulently Important to remember that when they took Armstrong’s trophies away, the next person who hadn’t yet been caught doping finished 10th. During that era of cycling, 87% of top 10 finishers tested positive for doping at least once. https://www.businessinsider.com/lance-armstrong-doping-tour-... That doesn’t excuse his doping, of course. It just means that at t…

>at the time doping was a baseline requirement for competing at the top levels of cycling

To a great extent, that was the direct fault of Lance Armstrong. He was the chief enforcer of the code of silence around doping. 1998 could have been a turning point for cycling after the Festina affair, but Armstrong scuppered any chance of that; where others saw the shame of a sport in turmoil, Armstrong saw opportunity.

Armstrong's comeback after cancer was a story that sponsors loved, he was the first American to be a serious yellow jersey prospect for nearly a decade, so he brought an unprecedented amount of money into the sport. Armstrong effectively became too big to fail, ruthlessly dominating the sport around him. When riders spoke out, he had the power to make them outcasts. When journalists tried to reveal the truth, he had the resources to silence them in court.

The bitterness that many in the cycling community feel towards Armstrong isn't really about the doping or the stolen yellow jerseys - it's about all the lives that he ruined in the process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Bassons#1999_Tour

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Simeoni#Feud_with_Lanc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Confidentiel

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#39

Post by gonzo41 »

Swizec wrote: post #5
ajcp wrote: post #4

> I do think that history has treated Mr. Armstrong unfairly for the essential act of his cheating. > To be sure, Mr. Armstrong brought much of his disparate treatment on himself. Perhaps history, but I think modernity has been far too kind to Mr. Armstrong. I'm floored that Lance Armstrong is still given a degree of celebrity and room as a public figure, and still more that he can make money off of that. That his ce…

> That his celebrity and accolades were obtained fraudulently Important to remember that when they took Armstrong’s trophies away, the next person who hadn’t yet been caught doping finished 10th. During that era of cycling, 87% of top 10 finishers tested positive for doping at least once. https://www.businessinsider.com/lance-armstrong-doping-tour-... That doesn’t excuse his doping, of course. It just means that at t…

Bill Burr had a fantastic Conan O'Brian interview about this. Made that point. Our doped up guy, beat your doped up guys.

Re: Cycling Doping Fallacies

#40

Post by buzzdenver »

dogmatism wrote: post #26

1) Armstrong was (is) an asshole who destroyed careers and lives, which is part of why they threw the book at him as opposed to others 2) That said, 7 in a row is still incredible. While he had a few incidents, he was always able to recover and never had an injury or illness that knocked him out. If Roglic could say the same, he'd probably have won at least 2 Tours if not three 3) Of course they're still all doping.…

> I'd rather see van der Poel do inhuman things. Cadel Evans era was boring

How does doping make cycling a more interesting sport? I'm a mediocre fan, but Armstrong winning every year was boring. I would think that most fans like to see battles on climbs, attacks, etc... Doping makes you fastre, but whether it takes 45 or 42 minutes to do a certain climbs doesn't matter.

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