OK, I've been commenting on a lot of blogs about the Lance Armstrong/EPO accusations, and figured it's about time to put my thoughts into a blog post. First of all Daily Pundit can get you caught up on the all-important minutia of the controversy: whether the EPO test is definitive; what a "B sample" is; what the specific accusations are and who's making them; and what kind of things strike people as suspicious about choices made by L’Equipe. Go get caught up.

Now it's my turn.

It seems to me that whether or not EPO was illegal at the time that Lance is supposed to have used it in 1999 is largely irrelevant; and not just because he's protected from prosecution by technicalities. If he had been smoking marajuana we'd be a bit disappointed in him, but it just wouldn't be very relevant to his cycling career. Marajuana isn't generally considered a performance enhancer, except for people on chemotherapy. The basic contention is that he cheated, by using a substance that gave him an unfair advantage. And I submit that the pattern of his career places a much larger burden on the accusers than on Lance. The fact that he won the same race six more times after 1999, often by greater margins, mostly during a period when there were good tests for EPO, suggests that whatever he used in 1999 didn't give him an advantage he didn't also have in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. And that advantage just might have been that he was a better athlete, with a better team and a better trainer.

Compare this to the performance pattern of another great American cyclist, Greg Lemond. Unlike Lance, his performance significantly degraded over time, and it was demonstrably due to the presence of a foreign substance in his system. Not a banned substance, mind you, but one that had a marked hindering effect on his health: lead slowly released into his bloodstream from pellets embedded during a hunting accident. The pattern is clear, and has a rational explanation.

One doesn't use a substance with a documented impact on performance, without having it show up in the performance pattern somewhere. So, where is it L’Equipe?

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

Posted by: Demosophist at 12:35 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 The French media have been after him since day one. I donÂ’t trust the chain of custody with these samples from 1999. How does anyone know who had access to them? These samples could have been tampered with anytime over the last 7 years. IÂ’ll stick with Lance on this one.

Posted by: Brad at August 25, 2005 01:09 PM (3OPZt)

2 I would have bet the French would have supported the Iraq war if they could have defeated Lance Lance's record establishes a bar that is going to stand for a long long long time. I am with you, the later years were full of valid sophisticated drug testing methodology and they found nothing. By the time Lance had won 6 times, you know they had him tested everytime he walked by. Unless someone can prove he tested positive in the last win, it's just a bucnh of smoke.

Posted by: bill at August 25, 2005 01:51 PM (7evkT)

3 It comes down to the French jsut want to get them, mostly because their cycling hero of the 90's and 2000's Richard Virenque (who won a record 7 King of the Mountains) will for ever be tained when he confessed under oath to using performance enchancing drugs as a fall out from when his Festina team was kicked out of the Tour in 1998, when a health assistant got busted by customs bring the drugs into the country. On a side note Armstrong did admit he had been administered EPO during his chemotherapy, but never in racing.

Posted by: the Pirate at August 25, 2005 02:47 PM (SksyN)

4 PapaCool shouts slander and hopes Lance wins the eventual lawsuit!

Posted by: PapaCool at August 25, 2005 04:39 PM (/Uv1y)

5 the French....hmmmmm...what a bunch of pansy ass, frog leg eating, unshaved, unwashed, stinkin loosers

Posted by: THANOS35 at August 25, 2005 11:45 PM (hcN1S)

6 Just have to agree with Thanos35, the French are just a bunch of Whiney Assed PeePee Pants who can't stand to see a non Frenchman win.

Posted by: Nelda J. Foster at August 29, 2005 10:38 PM (6mUkl)

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