These are sad times for Lance. 
By Jere Longman - 11 Oct 12 - NY Times
"Just before the 1999 Tour de France, a teammate pointed out that Lance Armstrong had a bruise on his upper arm caused by a syringe. According g to a doping investigation, Armstrong cursed and said, Thats not good.
A public weigh-in of the riders was to be attended by the news media. A team masseuse found some makeup, and Armstrongs bruise, and the doping that investigators assert caused it, was ultimately concealed. The 1999 Tour was supposed to be one of renewal after a doping scandal engulfed the 1998 race. Instead, Armstrong won his first of his seven Tours by using the prohibited blood-boosting agent EPO and the steroid hormone testosterone, according to a 200-page report released Wednesday by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
While Armstrong has long protested his innocence, retroactive testing found EPO in six of Armstrongs urine samples from the 1999 race, according to the report. In addition, the report said, five fellow riders on Armstrongs 1999 United States Postal Service team George Hincapie, Frankie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton, Jonathan Vaughters and Christian Vande Velde provided affidavits testifying to firsthand knowledge that Armstrong violated antidoping rules, the report said. The evidence that Armstrong used EPO in the 1999 race was overwhelming, the report said, adding, No other conclusion is even plausible.
The tale behind Armstrongs first Tour triumph, an achievement that made him an instant celebrity, is laid out in the investigative report in almost novelistic fashion. It involves a man on a motorcycle who delivered drugs to Armstrongs team, an Italian doctor who was famous for helping riders dope, a training regimen designed to avoid drug testing, and the active complicity of the team masseuse.
The 1999 racing season began, the report said, with an unlikely goal for Armstrong, a cancer survivor: to win the Tour de France. He would skip many of the buildup races to concentrate on his sports major event. And for fuel, the report said, he would rely on banned substances. A new team director, Johan Bruyneel, and team doctor, Luis Garcia del Moral, were hired that year for the Postal Service team. Armstrong called the team the Bad News Bears. He wanted a new team, according to the affidavit by Vaughters, his teammate, because the outgoing doctor, Pedro Celaya, had not been aggressive enough for Armstrong in providing banned products.
Bruyneel and del Moral, on the other hand, had formerly been associated with a racing team widely known, the report said, for its organized team doping. Cyclists who wanted to dope had two main advantages in 1999, the report noted. Cyclings international governing body had no organized out-of-competition drug testing program considered the only effective way to catch those using banned substances. The governing body also did not require riders to make their whereabouts known during training so that they could be screened.
Much of Armstrongs pre-Tour training in 1999 was spent along remote mountain roads of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Two teammates Hamilton and Kevin Livingston assisted him with arduous climbing, the report said. A regular attendee at these training camps, the report said, was an Italian sports doctor named Michele Ferrari, who would later be accused by American doping officials of trafficking in banned substances.
Hamilton was first injected with EPO in 1999 by Ferrari during training at Sestriere, an Italian ski village that would be a mountaintop finish during the Tour, the report said. Andreu said in an affidavit that he received EPO injections at races that year from del Moral, the Postal Service team doctor.
Pepe Marti, the Postal Service team trainer, also provided EPO to riders in 1999, the report said. At a late dinner in Nice, France, Betsy Andreu, Frankies wife, said that Marti arrived to provide what she was told was EPO to Armstrong. The dinner was held late, she said, because Marti was traveling from Spain and considered it safer to cross the border at night. Armstrong took a brown paper bag from Marti, held it up and, according to Andreu, called it liquid gold.
Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/s...riumph-takes-a-dark-turn.html?ref=sports&_r=0
"Things do not pass for what they are"...Baltasar Gracian
By Jere Longman - 11 Oct 12 - NY Times
"Just before the 1999 Tour de France, a teammate pointed out that Lance Armstrong had a bruise on his upper arm caused by a syringe. According g to a doping investigation, Armstrong cursed and said, Thats not good.
A public weigh-in of the riders was to be attended by the news media. A team masseuse found some makeup, and Armstrongs bruise, and the doping that investigators assert caused it, was ultimately concealed. The 1999 Tour was supposed to be one of renewal after a doping scandal engulfed the 1998 race. Instead, Armstrong won his first of his seven Tours by using the prohibited blood-boosting agent EPO and the steroid hormone testosterone, according to a 200-page report released Wednesday by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
While Armstrong has long protested his innocence, retroactive testing found EPO in six of Armstrongs urine samples from the 1999 race, according to the report. In addition, the report said, five fellow riders on Armstrongs 1999 United States Postal Service team George Hincapie, Frankie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton, Jonathan Vaughters and Christian Vande Velde provided affidavits testifying to firsthand knowledge that Armstrong violated antidoping rules, the report said. The evidence that Armstrong used EPO in the 1999 race was overwhelming, the report said, adding, No other conclusion is even plausible.
The tale behind Armstrongs first Tour triumph, an achievement that made him an instant celebrity, is laid out in the investigative report in almost novelistic fashion. It involves a man on a motorcycle who delivered drugs to Armstrongs team, an Italian doctor who was famous for helping riders dope, a training regimen designed to avoid drug testing, and the active complicity of the team masseuse.
The 1999 racing season began, the report said, with an unlikely goal for Armstrong, a cancer survivor: to win the Tour de France. He would skip many of the buildup races to concentrate on his sports major event. And for fuel, the report said, he would rely on banned substances. A new team director, Johan Bruyneel, and team doctor, Luis Garcia del Moral, were hired that year for the Postal Service team. Armstrong called the team the Bad News Bears. He wanted a new team, according to the affidavit by Vaughters, his teammate, because the outgoing doctor, Pedro Celaya, had not been aggressive enough for Armstrong in providing banned products.
Bruyneel and del Moral, on the other hand, had formerly been associated with a racing team widely known, the report said, for its organized team doping. Cyclists who wanted to dope had two main advantages in 1999, the report noted. Cyclings international governing body had no organized out-of-competition drug testing program considered the only effective way to catch those using banned substances. The governing body also did not require riders to make their whereabouts known during training so that they could be screened.
Much of Armstrongs pre-Tour training in 1999 was spent along remote mountain roads of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Two teammates Hamilton and Kevin Livingston assisted him with arduous climbing, the report said. A regular attendee at these training camps, the report said, was an Italian sports doctor named Michele Ferrari, who would later be accused by American doping officials of trafficking in banned substances.
Hamilton was first injected with EPO in 1999 by Ferrari during training at Sestriere, an Italian ski village that would be a mountaintop finish during the Tour, the report said. Andreu said in an affidavit that he received EPO injections at races that year from del Moral, the Postal Service team doctor.
Pepe Marti, the Postal Service team trainer, also provided EPO to riders in 1999, the report said. At a late dinner in Nice, France, Betsy Andreu, Frankies wife, said that Marti arrived to provide what she was told was EPO to Armstrong. The dinner was held late, she said, because Marti was traveling from Spain and considered it safer to cross the border at night. Armstrong took a brown paper bag from Marti, held it up and, according to Andreu, called it liquid gold.
Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/s...riumph-takes-a-dark-turn.html?ref=sports&_r=0
