Saturday, August 18, 2012

It’s Only Lying About Drugs (A Guest Post)

Lance Armstrong (from the internet)
Note: The following is a guest post by R. Duke Dougherty, Jr. Fraudbytes publishes high quality guest posts on fraud-related topics.

If I doze off while reading a cycling article, I run the risk of dreaming about Lance Armstrong. The dream goes like this: I’m watching TV while Armstrong addresses a press conference. Armstrong gives his questioner “the look” and angrily wags a finger as he says, “I did not admit to drug abuse around that woman...Ms. Andreu.” Then my head bobs up a little, but I don’t wake up. Instead, I see Armstrong angrily wagging his finger again as he says, “I did not give used syringes to that masseuse...Ms. O’Reilly.”


My head bobs again, but I’m still in it, and Armstrong angrily wags his finger as he says, “I did not take EPO with that teammate...Mr. Hamilton.” And then, I see it repeated as I hear, “I did not do blood transfusions with that teammate...Mr. Landis.” By now, my neck is sore from dozing in a chair, and the pain partially wakens me, and I’m caught between dreaming and an incoherent waking state. And I kinda think I hear denials about something with teammates named George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer.
Levi, Lance and George (from the internet)
Of course, those nestled snug in their beds dream of jolly Saint Lance, and if they belatedly conclude that he drove the peloton with a cocktail of PEDs, they quickly mature from believing his lies to dismissing the importance of his lies. It’s only lying about drugs seems to be the talking point they’d like to enunciate. What they say, however, is that everyone in professional cycling used drugs. And so, they who once vociferously defended the children’s tale, now admonish others to grow up and face the facts of life.

Implicit in the “everyone did it” defense is the notion that Armstrong didn’t competitively benefit from doping. After all, if he only did what everyone else was doing, his achievements are the same as they would have been if no one had cheated. Unfortunately, both the premise and the conclusion are wrong.

Marion Jones liked to state that
she never failed a doping test before she
later admitted to doping in the BALCO scandal
(from the internet)
Starting backward, the conclusion is wrong because different athletes respond differently to the same drugs. Victor Conte of BALCO infamy told sportswriter Mark Zeigler that he was able to take one-tenth of a second off most 100 meter runners with his doping program. But Kelli White responded so strongly that her time came down twice that much, and she won two events at the world championships.

Even common sense tells us that different people respond differently to the same drugs. Whether it’s guzzling down Armstrong’s beloved Shiner beer or taking blood pressure meds, some bodies react more strongly to the drug influence than others. Indeed, Armstrong himself survived advanced metastatic cancer because his body responded so well to the chemotherapeutic drugs. His beating those odds warrants celebration. But should he be feted for athletic achievement that may have resulted because his body—like Kelli White’s—responded more strongly to doping?
Kelli White (from the internet)
Armstrong defenders begin with the flawed premise that everyone in cycling doped. Of course,  cycling—like all sports—does have serious and longstanding doping problems. And if one considers the full gambit of corticoids, anabolic steroids, testosterone, amphetamines, human growth hormone, and blood doping, there’s a strong case that at some point in their careers, most top athletes have doped.

A very common doping practice is to claim a medical condition which allows the use of drugs otherwise prohibited. Ever wonder why so many more athletes have asthma than the general population? It allows them to gain a competitive advantage with clenbuterol. Ever wonder how Armstrong skated away from his positive test for corticoids in the 1999 Tour de France? He retroactively claimed it came from his use of ointment to treat saddle sores (even though he had both officially and unofficially declared he wasn’t taking anything needing a medical exemption).

In the 1990s the most serious form of cheating involved recombinant erythropoietin (r-EPO). It gave endurance athletes an advantage that made their performances untouchable by anyone not using it. Cyclists weren’t tested to detect r-EPO until 2000, and so, in 1999, Armstrong used it. But in 2004, retroactive testing of samples taken during the 1999 Tour showed Armstrong’s use of r-EPO. It would be foolish to claim the peloton was clean before the 1999 Tour began, but as doping scientist Michael Ashenden and blogger Andy Shen point out, the retroactive testing strongly suggested that unlike Armstrong, over 90% of his competitors were not using r-EPO during the race.

The Festina drug bust in 1998 had scared most of the peloton about crackdowns in the Tour de France. Just like Armstrong, most of the Festina riders could have smugly said that they’d never failed a drug test. But the police caught their soigneur smuggling a carful of drugs for use at the Tour, and their director subsequently confessed to the teamwide doping program. The aftermath left most cheaters in fear, and as the 2004 retroactive tests show, they refrained from using r-EPO. And yet, Armstrong brazenly pushed on and won his first Tour de France. So far from Armstrong merely doing what everyone else was doing, he led the charge back to the most performance-enhancing doping.

Cheating athletes modify their behavior as newer tests are developed. They learn to take what’s not tested for, and to microdose, and to take masking agents that haven’t yet been outlawed. Victor Conte has joked that athletes who get caught are really failing an IQ test. But sometimes they’re actually failing a means test because the advisors who know the best and latest ways to cheat often charge the most. Dr. Michele Ferrari is noted as the best advisor for cyclists who want to cheat, and he’s also the most expensive. So naturally, Armstrong—who always had more than his less affluent competitors—got the best.

Thus, both the premises and conclusions of those who slough off Armstrong’s cheating are incorrect. He wasn’t merely doing what everyone else was doing. He was worse.

Those who came forward to challenge Armstrong’s performances found that his unsportsmanlike behavior was not just about the bike. As David Walsh documents in From Lance to Landis, the US Postal soigneur Emma O’Reilly paid for telling the truth. She disclosed how Armstrong unloaded a package of dirty syringes on her at the airport, and how he had her smuggle drugs for him, and how he had her get concealer makeup to cover his EPO injection bruises, and how she overheard the team officials deciding on a backdated prescription to cover Armstrong’s positive for corticoids. For disclosing those damning incidents, she was smeared as a liar, and she was tarred with innuendo of sexual misbehavior.

Betsy Andreu truthfully testified about Armstrong’s hospital admission only because she was subpoenaed  and was unwilling to commit perjury. She disliked Armstrong because he had dragged the team—including her husband—into doping. In fact, she had almost called off her wedding to Frankie after hearing Armstrong tell a doctor about his own drug usage. Then three years later. when she saw Frankie pulling for Armstrong up Sestriere in the 1999 Tour, she suspected Frankie had succumbed to the pressure, and she was furious. Frankie then rode clean in 2000, but he lost his usefulness to Armstrong, and he had to retire at the end of the season.

Frankie and Betsy Andreu (from the internet)
Despite Betsy’s opposition to doping, and her disappointment that the doping culture had forced Frankie into retirement, she never tried to get even by revealing Armstrong’s doping admission to journalists. Nonetheless, the admission made its way to David Walsh (possibly from Greg LeMond via Stephanie McIlvain or James Startt.) And when Walsh and Pierre Ballester published it in LA Confidentiel, Armstrong’s off-the-bike team went into action. Among their strategies was an attempt to make Betsy discredit Walsh.

During the 2004 Tour, Frankie Andreu secretly recorded a conversation with Bill Stapleton, Armstrong’s attorney and agent. Stapleton never disagreed that Armstrong had admitted using drugs. Rather, the purpose of the conversation was to get Frankie to convince his wife, Betsy, to make a statement critical of Walsh—to make Walsh look like a liar so Armstrong could skate once more. When Frankie relayed the request to Betsy, she told him, “Get that out of your head, Frankie. I’m not making any statement.”

Greg and Lance (from the internet)
Greg LeMond, at first, enthusiastically supported Armstrong. During the 1999 Tour, he met with Armstrong and suggested strategies to help his fellow American. But then LeMond learned from a team mechanic that Armstrong was working with the infamous Dr. Ferrari. LeMond lost his respect for Armstrong and started saying so in 2001. After an angry call from Armstrong couldn’t change LeMond, he soon heard from Armstrong’s business associates. Thom Weisel, CEO of Montgomery Securities/Thomas Weisel Partners and owner of Armstrong’s team, Terry Lee, the CEO of Bell Helmets, John Bucksbaum, the CEO of General Growth Properties, and John Burke, the CEO of Trek all called or emailed LeMond. As Walsh recounts it, LeMond got the message that his financial situation wasn’t going to be served by his speaking out about Armstrong’s doping.

If one assumes the better of Armstrong, those rich CEOs didn’t advise LeMond to lay off Armstrong in 2001 because Armstrong had first pressured them. Rather, it might be assumed, they sought to protect Armstrong for their own financial reasons. The Lance Armstrong brand, as his agent Bill Stapleton noted to Texas Monthly back in 2001, was completed with his victory in the Tour de France. “You layered in family man, hero...and everybody wanted him.” One can assume that sponsors and associates made him millions because it was also to their advantage. But if the truth of Armstrong’s cheating became the general public perception, their investment in the Lance Armstrong brand would lose value.
Greg and Lance (from the internet)
And so, cheating on the Armstrong scale involves more than just lying about drugs. It requires lies that fuel publicity campaigns and marketing strategies. Corporations from media conglomerates to sports merchandisers to junk food manufacturers to junk bond peddlers latch onto celebrities with compelling stories that capture the imagination of the consuming public. In a society that values success above virtue, it’s a way to make lots of money. But if the truth of an Armstrong comes out, it’s also the way to lose lots of money. And so, he who would tell the truth becomes the enemy of they who benefit from lies. What began as one man’s lie becomes the cause of many who cannot turn away from the illicit benefit they reap from untruth.

Lost with those lies are the dreams of the honest athlete. At every turn, he will find the money chasing the cheaters, the unfair advantage of doping compounded by the institutional opportunities afforded the winners. For him, there’s no coach compensated by a corporate sponsor, no state-of-the-art training facilities courtesy of a major university or an Olympic development program, no masseuse to work his tired muscles, and certainly, no team manager to wash his workout clothes.

And so, after the honest athlete’s aching arms throw a load into the washing machine, neither the reverberating clunk of a top loader nor the solid click of a front loader is quite the sound he once dreamt of. There is no roar of a crowd nor even the clipped question of a hurried sportswriter. The washer will swish and spin and remove the soil and smells that once sullied the synthetics while the rhythm of repetitive training gradually succumbs to the never-ending drone of public adoration for his doping competitors. The cheaters take the victories, grab the headlines, and pocket the money. And his freshly laundered workout clothes helped finance the endorsements of the champion dopers. The honest athlete must wonder if there isn’t a machine to wash the dirt from his sport and remove the heartache from not having a fair chance to compete.

“I’m sorry for people who don’t believe in miracles,” Armstrong has said. Well, no, they just don’t leave cookies and milk next to the Christmas tree wondering if they’ll get another yellow rubber bracelet. When they grew up, they found their childhood dreams snuffed by malignant lies and metastatic disregard for the importance of honest achievement.

But, hey, it’s only lying about drugs.

16 comments:

  1. Great read. You will still find, even with all you have written here, that some dingbats will still defend Mr Nasty.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think this is a pretty lame article. Armstrong only messed with people once they messed with him. I think we all would be pretty angry with people who break our confidences and try to destroy your hard earned reputation. It's perfectly natural. Revealing private conversations with a doctor, of all people, was pretty low. Totally unnecessary. And at any rate, if it's all about a few nasty things Armstrong has done to a couple of people, not just doping, then surely we have to include all the good stuff he has done - much more good stuff than most cyclists put together I'm sure you'd agree.

    As to the dope. I don't understand this point. Armstrong stopped using EPO and quite conservatively used blood transfusions, from his blood profiles, yet he was still at the top or near abouts. Listen to Landis who says there was nothing Armstrong was doing that he or anybody else wasn't doing - this Ferrari hoodini bollocks is a myth. Ask the guys in the peloton - they know he was the best. You need a much better reason for waging this wholly disproportionate bullying vendetta.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Explain to me, please, how it is "messing with those that messed with him" when LA chased Simeoni after he confessed of his own doping while working with Ferrari.

    You have no proof that LA stopped using EPO. Heck, we have no proof of EPO use until arbitration starts.

    And you fanboys crack me up - if you investigate doping, it's vendetta and that Landis says that everybody else was doing it. Open your eyes: almost everybody else in the top 10 steps has admitted or been sanctioned: Rumsas, Rasmussen, Landis, Hamilton, Basso, Moreau, Botero, Beloki, Vinokourov, Contador, Schleck,Kohl, Pantani.... Holy crap, we must be full of witches if Lance's number in this witch hunt came ~20th.

    I have no claim on the truth of this matter, but would like to hear the testimonies and if they are unsubstantial we can finally let this thing rest.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well thought out and stimulating commentary. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. at sensored cyclist...I was wondering when the LA trolls would find this site.
    But look what LA has done for cycling! Look what LA has done for cancer...er...cancer awareness!

    I say, Look what LA has done TO cycling. Look what LA has done TO cancer.

    The word fraud is now intimately associated with cycling. The next time a celebrity asks for $ to support a good cause we will all remember how we were duped by the last guy.

    ReplyDelete
  6. There seems to be a disturbing implicit claim in this article...

    As a repute to the "conclusion", Dougherty is essentially saying that Armstrong and White are bigger cheats because their genetics and physiology allowed a better response. That's a little screwed up. It's very 1930s and 40s...

    "...the retroactive testing strongly suggested that unlike Armstrong, over 90% of his competitors were not using r-EPO during the race."

    Testing negative is not evidence of non-use. Doesn't Armstrong claim that he has tested negative?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dougherty's point about physiology is a rebuttal of the faulty notion that, "because everyone was doping it, it wasn't really cheating." In other words, we don't know whether or not Lance's performance was the result of his own ability and hard work or the result of his body responding more to doping. I'm not really sure what you mean when you say "It's very 1930s and 40s."

    Regarding the negative testing, yes, it's possible that the other dopers anticipated the tests that would be employed several years later and were able to avoid a positive test on the retroactive testing as a result. However, it doesn't seem very likely. Dougherty states that this is suggestive, and indeed it is. He didn't say it was conclusive. Just because this particular piece of evidence isn't conclusive doesn't mean that we should ignore it.

    What exactly is disturbing you? Doughtery's logic doesn't seem to be the issue, so what is it?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Censoredcyclist..How can you say someone is the best when he cheated? Its well known some cyclists had better doping methods than others and some cyclists actually rode clean. If you want to defend a cheat thats your choosing but..somehow me thinks if Lance was Russian you would not be giving him such blind support!

    ReplyDelete
  9. As i said before..dingbats will still excuse him even if George Hincapie and the rest in the US postal side 'out' him. They should be thankful that the USADA are doing their job and exposing the cheats. The dingbats should be proud that this agency is working on behalf of all clean American sportsmen in the effort to clear the contry's sports of dope cheats.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Forgot to mention..who paid Dr.Ferrari a massive cheque? & was still meeting him long after he was supposed to have cut links? Houdini Or Lance? You decide.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I highly recommend this interview Jonathan Vaughters recently did with bicycling.com where, amongst other things, he discusses why certain people take more to doping than others. It's a detailed lesson in why the argument of a level playing field is wrong.

    http://www.bicycling.com/garmin-insider/featured-stories/exclusive-interview-vaughters-reveals-more-about-his-doping-and-new-?page=0,0

    ReplyDelete
  12. Vaughters has a naturally high hematocrit which would have put him at a disavantage in the days before the 50% rule, but would have made little difference after that point, so it's a moot point. He was the exception rather than the rule.

    But people should actually listen to Vaughters in general. He not only backs up everything I've been saying on doping for years, but he also makes the valid point that dopers are evil for making the choice - lets not get it out of context or proportionality. RaceRadio and the clinic boys don't seem to listen to a word Vaughter's says. Vaughters has just spent week explaining to them how to change the sport, yet they go back to pretending that demonising Armstrong has anything to do with that.

    I always particularly love the way RR himself uses the type of adhom personal attack that is the very thing that's supposed to be motivating his oppositon to Armstrong. He hates me for pointing it out, but can't help himself. Kinda funny really.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. >>Vaughters has a naturally high hematocrit which would have put him at a disavantage in the days before the 50% rule, but would have made little difference after that point, so it's a moot point.<<

      Vaughters was addressing the question of whether or not allowing doping in cycling would lead to a level playing field. It's a fact that different people respond differently to the same doping protocol; therefore some athletes will receive an artificial benefit that isn't, in the end, available to others. So no, it won't level the playing field, and yes, your point is actually the moot one.

      >>Vaughters has just spent week explaining to them how to change the sport, yet they go back to pretending that demonising Armstrong has anything to do with that.<<

      This red herring is getting boring. USADA has a responsibility to investigate all instances of cheating in sports that fall under their jurisdiction when compelling evidence is manifested. Armstrong's demonization is a consequence of his own actions, not USADA's.

      >>I always particularly love the way RR himself uses the type of adhom personal attack that is the very thing that's supposed to be motivating his oppositon to Armstrong. He hates me for pointing it out, but can't help himself. Kinda funny really.<<

      This is confusing to me. An ad hominem attack is to say that a person's argument is not valid because of some character flaw of the person making the argument. It doesn't serve as some antecedent motivation to do anything. It's merely an instance of fallacious reasoning. Perhaps you mean to say that some character flaw of Armstrong's serves as RR's motivation for attacking him. Of course, RR's motivation is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of RR's argument. With that said, I'm not sure who you're referring to as "RR" but could you point us to a specific instance of where RR says that Armstrong's reasoning is faulty because of Armstrong's character flaws? It would be helpful if your example is also relevant to anything being discussed here...thanks.



      Delete
    2. "Vaughters was addressing the question of whether or not allowing doping in cycling would lead to a level playing field. It's a fact that different people respond differently to the same doping protocol; therefore some athletes will receive an artificial benefit that isn't, in the end, available to others. So no, it won't level the playing field, and yes, your point is actually the moot one."

      He has a particular bug to bear since in his era of doping, his exceptional hematocrit value put him at a disadvantage. But he was the rarity. In later years doping was narrowed to a few points, which he himself could have gotten away with, so it's not really relevent.

      "This red herring is getting boring. USADA has a responsibility to investigate all instances of cheating in sports that fall under their jurisdiction when compelling evidence is manifested. Armstrong's demonization is a consequence of his own actions, not USADA's."

      That's a very simplistic black and white legal type view. In the real world the authorities have a lot of discretion - like the discretion to go after 2 wins or 7 - and look at the wider benefits to the sport. Few, if any, working on the clean side of the sport think the USADA was right to go after Armstrong and that should have been taken into consideration. The important thing for them is to change the the culture of the sport now and efforts have already succeeded in that, not try to do do-overs of previous eras. That's never happened before even though there is substantial evidence of winners doping going back a century. It's a very negative turn of events.

      "Perhaps you mean to say that some character flaw of Armstrong's serves as RR's motivation for attacking him. Of course, RR's motivation is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of RR's argument." etc.

      Well it goes back to him blaming Armstrong for his own failure in the sport. He admits he "gave up" trying to be a pro about 12 years ago, about the time Armstrong succeeded. It's very sad to see him turn this into a personal vendetta where he likes to use the very tactics he supposedly detests, yet, unlike Armstrong, he has nothing to counter that negative aspect of his personality.

      Delete
    3. skipping over the non sequiturs, I will just say that the value of this investigation cannot be determined until all the facts are out and we can finally know how this was pulled off, and with what help. Its not like everyone implicated is no longer a part of the sport. Many of them are a part of the "now". Also, don't you think that finding out how such a massive doping conspiracy was able to continue for so long would provide insight into the culture and how to combat it?

      Delete
  13. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete