Did He Do It?

I'm not about to take off my LIVESTRONG bracelet. But that also doesn't mean I think Lance is innocent. He may be, he probably is, because he is one of the most tested athletes in sport, and is this all they could come with in 7 Tours, a 1999 sample?

The french have been baying for Lance's blood for years. Lance has said as much in his previous books.

Is he guilty or he is he innocent?

Lance admits he did take EPO, while recovering from cancer as part of his treatment in 1998. But he never used the stuff to get an unfair advantage.

Here's what I think.

You can't win even one Tour de France by taking a pill and then going to sit on the couch. It takes hard work. Lance has a reputation for that. And for leaving no stone unturned to make sure he has the edge. In terms of his equipment, his preparation, his training. He even rides a lot of the Tour route to make sure he knows what to do when he's in the race.

But I also see Lance as someone who is very very competitive, and an extremely reluctant loser. So it's possible that in leaving no stone unturned to get an edge, he pushed the doping limit as well. It's possible. Afterall, in 1999 the science was unavailable to detect EPO. Now it is available, and they did a kind of retrospective test and apparently found something.

What Lance has done in his 33 years is quite remarkable, with or without these allegations. If they are true, it will be, for me, even more remarkable as a reflection of the degree to which the sickness in society had effected everyone. Even our best, even our champions.

What we love about Lance is how his hard work seems to have produced spectacular results. Life is not always fair, and sometimes, no matter how hard we work, we don't always get the reward. Lance is someone who worked about as hard as a human being can work, and every time he tried, he tried hard and succeeded. That's an inspiring story.
But life is rarely as simple as we believe it to be.

I understand, even though I don't agree with, this obsessive drive to win. I used to train with someone like that and I found it sort've sick in a way. I got to know this guy well and one thing he never did was admit a mistake, or spend a moment reflecting on a moment of weakness. When we did things, we did what he wanted to do. On a website where he recorded all of his training information, in great detail, and the details of every race, there is no mention of a disqualification of both himself and his friend.

Part of the glory of sport is the admiration. When there's a threat to that admiration, the athlete can have a sort of schizoid approach to something they've done, and refuse to believe they did something or have anything to do with being responsible or honest about it. Hansie did that too. He said, "The devil made me do it."

So did he do it? When he was at my most competitive, I used creatine, which is not banned, but is basically borderline. So I think he probably did what he (thought he)could get away with. And whether he did take EPO or not, there are other reasons why I respect him. His determination, his drive, his motivation.
I will be disappointed if it turns out his determination was so extreme that he did EVERYTHING he could to insure a victory in the world's biggest cycle race.

If there was any cheating or trickery, I'm sure the newspapers and Lance will get to the bottom of it. If it's credible we'll be hearing about it for a while. If it's verifiable this will be the biggest dupe in the history of sport. If it's defensible, I'm sure Lance will be able to defend himself.

In fact he's doing just that on Larry King:

Armstrong says he's victim of 'setup'; WADA to review lab work
By JIM VERTUNO, AP Sports Writer
August 26, 2005

Even facing the most serious drug allegations of his career, Lance Armstrong says he sleeps well at night.

The seven-time Tour de France champion continues to try to beat back reports in the French media that he used a banned blood booster in his first tour victory in 1999. On Thursday, he lashed out at the French lab that produced the findings in question.

``There's a setup here and I'm stuck in the middle of it,'' Armstrong told The Associated Press. ``I absolutely do not trust that laboratory,'' he said.

The French sports daily L'Equipe reported Tuesday that new exams on six urine samples Armstrong provided during the 1999 tour resulted in positive results for the red blood cell-booster EPO.

Armstrong's comment came after Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said officials had received the lab results and would review them. Armstrong also said that while Pound might trust the lab that tested the samples, ``I certainly don't.''

On Thursday night, Armstrong elaborated on that distrust during an appearance on CNN's ``Larry King Live.''

``A guy in a Parisian laboratory opens up your sample, you know, Jean Francois so-and-so, and he tests it -- nobody's there to observe, no protocol was followed -- and then you get a call from a newspaper that says `We found you to be positive six times for EPO.' Well, since when did newspapers start governing sports?''

Although frustrated by the report and the difficulty of proving his case, Armstrong said he sleeps well at night knowing that he's competed drug-free.

``All I can do is come on this stage and tell my story and be honest. I've always done that,'' he said. ``Since this stuff's rolled out, I sleep great at night .... I don't have a problem looking at myself in the mirror.''

Armstrong questions the validity of testing samples frozen six years ago, how those samples were handled since, and how he could be expected to defend himself when the only confirming evidence -- the 'A' sample used for the 1999 tests -- no longer exists.

He also charged officials at the suburban Paris lab with violating WADA code for failing to safeguard the anonymity of any remaining 'B' samples it had.

``Nowadays, we all want clean sport,'' Armstrong told King. ``And fortunately, an organization called WADA has come along and has really governed the world of anti-doping. They have set about a protocol and a code that everybody has to live by. And (the lab) violated the code several times.''

The French report appears stronger than previous doping allegations raised against Armstrong, said Pound, the WADA chairman.

``There's been an awful lot of rumor and accusation about him for a number of years, always of the he-said, she-said variety. This appears -- I haven't seen the documents myself -- to have some documentary connection. That's a lot more serious. It's got to be taken more seriously,'' Pound said.

``If he had one, you could say it was an aberration,'' Pound said. ``When you get up to six, there's got to be some explanation.''

Pound said the lab is accredited by the International Olympic Committee and that he trusts it handled the samples properly. Pound also questioned the need for two samples to confirm a positive test.

``You can count on the fingers of one hand the times a B sample has not confirmed the result of the A sample,'' Pound said. ``It's almost always a delaying tactic.''

Armstrong said that contradicts WADA's own drug testing policy.

``For the head of the agency to say he actually doesn't believe in the code ... if your career is riding on the line, wouldn't you want a B sample?'' Armstrong told the AP. ``The French have been after (me) forever, and `Whoops!' there's no B sample? The stakes are too high.''

Pound said the lab had asked WADA months ago if the agency was interested in reviewing its findings and that he agreed. He said the agency didn't expect names to be connected to the findings, but only wanted to see if the leftover samples from 1999 would show riders used EPO.

``They said it's simply research,'' Pound said.

Pound said he's waiting for WADA Science Director Olivier Rabin to return from Europe to review the results.

Armstrong told King he was tested dozens of times during all his Tour de France races, and was under exceptional scrutiny -- including right before his final race in June.

``Just a day before the start we had a knock on the door, and the minister of sport had sent a crew down there to collect two samples of urine and two samples of blood,'' Armstrong said. ``And we checked around and found out that nobody else in the peloton was tested that day. So I can't say 'witch hunt' loud enough.''