Much Ado About Sports-- Our American Version of "The Commissar Vanishes"

I wish "the powers that be" would go after the far more serious financial finaglers of America with same dogged zeal  (or more) that they have on a number of recently tarnished sports icons, such as Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and now Lance Armstrong. In the grand scheme of things, who gives a hoot about these beleagured sports-fudgers?

If we're now retroactively erasing accomplishments and rewards, how about targeting John Paulson's and Goldman Sachs' unethically-engineered Abacus short-selling scheme -- let's claw back not just that $500,000 fine, but the whole $4 billion gain. And deem it the fraud it was. Save these minor sports scandals for later.

Geneva –  Cycling legend Lance Armstrong's fall from grace was completed Monday, when the sport's governing body stripped him of all seven Tour de France titles and banned him for life on the heels of a damning report from U.S. officials that concluded he cheated throughout his career.

The 41-year-old cancer survivor's unprecedented dominance in the grueling sport can now be stricken from the record books, though Armstrong continues to insist he never cheated.

The announcement came Monday morning, and was based on a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused Armstrong of leading a massive doping program on his teams.

The report included testimony from several former teammates who competed alongside Armstrong as he won the sport's most coveted title every year from 1999 to 2005.  Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme has said the race will have no official winners for those years.

USADA said Armstrong should be banned and stripped of his Tour titles for "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen" within his U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams. International Cycling Union President Pat McQuaid announced that the federation accepted the USADA's report on Armstrong and would not appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The USADA report said Armstrong and his teams used steroids, the blood booster EPO and blood transfusions. The report included statements from 11 former teammates who testified against Armstrong.

Armstrong denies doping, saying he passed hundreds of drug tests. But he chose not to fight USADA in one of the agency's arbitration hearings, arguing the process was biased against him. Former Armstrong team director Johan Bruyneel is also facing doping charges, but he is challenging the USADA case in arbitration.

On Sunday, Armstrong greeted about 4,300 cyclists at his Livestrong charity's fundraiser bike ride in Texas, telling the crowd he's faced a "very difficult" few weeks.

"I've been better, but I've also been worse," Armstrong, a cancer survivor, told the crowd.

While drug use allegations have followed the 41-year-old Armstrong throughout much of his career, the USADA report has badly damaged his reputation. Longtime sponsors Nike, Trek Bicycles and Anheuser-Busch have dropped him, as have other companies, and Armstrong also stepped down last week as chairman of Livestrong, the cancer awareness charity he founded 15 years ago after surviving testicular cancer which spread to his lungs and brain.

Armstrong's astonishing return from life-threatening illness to the summit of cycling offered an inspirational story that transcended the sport. However, his downfall has ended "one of the most sordid chapters in sports history," USADA said in its 200-page report published two weeks ago.
  
Armstrong has consistently argued that the USADA system was rigged against him, calling the agency's effort a "witch hunt."
  
If Armstrong's Tour victories are not reassigned there would be a hole in the record books, marking a shift from how organizers treated similar cases in the past.
  
When Alberto Contador was stripped of his 2010 Tour victory for a doping violation, organizers awarded the title to Andy Schleck. In 2006, Oscar Pereiro was awarded the victory after the doping disqualification of American rider Floyd Landis.
  
USADA also thinks the Tour titles should not be given to other riders who finished on the podium, such was the level of doping during Armstrong's era.
  
The agency said 20 of the 21 riders on the podium in the Tour from 1999 through 2005 have been "directly tied to likely doping through admissions, sanctions, public investigations" or other means. It added that of the 45 riders on the podium between 1996 and 2010, 36 were by cyclists "similarly tainted by doping."
  
The world's most famous cyclist could still face further sports sanctions and legal challenges. Armstrong could lose his 2000 Olympic time-trial bronze medal and may be targeted with civil lawsuits from ex-sponsors or even the U.S. government. (let's just leave it at that)
  
In total, 26 people -- including 15 riders -- testified that Armstrong and his teams used and trafficked banned substances and routinely used blood transfusions. Among the witnesses were loyal sidekick George Hincapie and convicted dopers Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis.
  
USADA's case also implicated Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari, depicted as the architect of doping programs, and longtime coach and team manager Bruyneel.
  
Ferrari -- who has been targeted in an Italian prosecutor's probe -- and another medical official, Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, received lifetime bans.
  
Bruyneel, team doctor Pedro Celaya and trainer Jose "Pepe" Marti opted to take their cases to arbitration with USADA. The agency could call Armstrong as a witness at those hearings.
  
Bruyneel, a Belgian former Tour de France rider, lost his job last week as manager of the RadioShack-Nissan Trek team which Armstrong helped found to ride for in the 2010 season.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

They Earn Their Money the Old Fashioned Way -- They Cheat Dept.: Cyclist Lance Armstrong

FYI: If I Did A Bag Of Lance Armstrong's Blood, Could I Bike Up A Mountain?

No surprise: performance enhancers enhance performance. But they might not give me the instant mountain-scaling boost I want.

by Colin Lecher Posted 10.12.2012

Lance Armstrong Wikimedia Commons

Hundreds of pages of fairly damning evidence came out against Lance Armstrong this week, accusing him of not only using performance enhancements but also of being "a bully" and developing "a culture of doping." It all leads to an obvious question: What about me? If I got up from my desk and injected some high-octane Armstrong juice, could I, too, win the Tour de France?

No. But if I replicated his (alleged) process, I might be able to get up a mountain I couldn't get up before.

Here's a list of some stuff Armstrong is accused of doing--call it the Armstrong Cocktail. Let's go down the list.

BLOOD DOPING

This is something of a catch-all term, says Don Catlin, a pharmacologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Most of the time, people use it to describe a blood transfusion process that can improve athletic performance. The general idea is to take blood--either from yourself (an autologous transfusion) or--if you're in mid-Tour, say--from another, compatible donor (a homologous transfusion).

You then concentrate it to separate the red blood cells, and inject it before a race. (Armstrong is accused of using the autologous method.) Either way, the extra red blood cells can increase endurance quite a bit--according to one study, improving stamina up to 34 percent.

Erythropoietin (EPO), which was also mentioned in the allegations, is another way of increasing the concentration of red blood cells in your blood. It's a naturally occurring hormone, usually given to anemic patients, that can stimulate the body to create more red blood cells.

For men, standard hematocrit (the proportion of red cells to other stuff) is about 44 to 45 percent. Most testing regulations, Catlin says, dictate that competitors will be flagged if hematocrit is above 50 percent. So: "They aim for 49 and a half percent."

How much would I improve?

Potentially, my stamina could increase 34 percent. That could make the climb up a hill a lot easier.

TESTOSTERONE

This is complicated. Conventional wisdom dictates that you won't get anywhere taking testosterone or other steroids if you aren't already training, but a few studies have come out contradicting that assessment, says Charles Yesalis, an emeritus professor of sports science at Pennsylvania State University.

But either way, it's going to be a much bigger increase for people who train regularly, or even semi-regularly, than for people who don't. Similarly, women, who produce between one-tenth and one-fifteenth the testosterone of men, will see a much bigger increase in performance, Yesalis says.

Even for the regular person, there's some variability in how you'll react to steroids--it might be a huge increase for someone, and next to nothing for someone else. But even the low end could have "a profound effect," Yesalis says. Catlin estimates that between a 5 and 15 percent improvement in cycling speed would be "expected," although, again, that could go up or down depending on how the person reacts to the dope. (We don't know exactly why, physiologically, people vary in their reactions, but Yesalis says there's going to be some increase for anyone.)

How much would I improve?

Let's take the low end: 5 percent. I'm just an average cyclist, after all. Still, that shaves quite a few hours off my completion of the 21-day Tour.

HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE (HGH)

This one's a no-go in some ways: Athletes use it, but this hormone, which makes it easier for competitors to increase muscle mass over the long term, hasn't been definitively proven to increase strength or endurance.

Although one study did find a four percent increase in sprinters' performance, what's more commonly reported that is that it decreases the recuperative time between training; that's widely, if anecdotally, reported, Yesalis says. It's tough to say how much that adds up to mathematically, but being able to train more could increase my performance, if I felt like training.

How much would I improve?

Hard to say.

CORTICOSTEROIDS (CORTISONE)

This is used as a way to mask pain caused by workouts, thereby letting a cyclist (or whoever) compete more efficiently. Generally, they're a way to reduce inflammation in people experiencing pain, but they can give athletes a boost in the same way by letting them keep going--no pain, lots of gain. Hard to quantify, but I definitely plan on using plenty.

How much would I improve?

Same as above. Inconclusive.

SALINE AND PLASMA INFUSIONS

This doesn't directly give athletes any increase in performance; it's more of a way to foil drug tests. When competitors are blood doping, sometimes they "overshoot," Catlin says: The amount of red blood cells goes over that 50 percent mark (or whatever the mark is) and they'll be sit out of competition.

So, to balance out the equation, dopers will add saline or plasma to their system, bringing the proportion back down to acceptable (but still performance-enhancing) levels.

How much would I improve?

None.

SO CAN I BIKE UP A MOUNTAIN YET?

Sure! Especially if I aim for a mountain that I can bike up already.

It's hard to say exactly how these boosts "stack," Yesalis says--that is, whether two percentage increases can be combined neatly or whether you have to factor them into a complicated curve. For the most part, these are small increases, which can make a lot of difference in a top-tier race that comes down to a second or, in longer races, the minute.

To get up that mountain, I'd need to be able to climb most of the mountain (80 or 90 percent maybe) without help. If there's a mountain that's your own personal white whale, that you're within a few more pushes toward slaying, the Armstrong Cocktail could do it.

Remember, though, that it also depends on the person. A woman would get more out of the testosterone increases than a man; some people will see more improvement from steroid use in general; a regular cyclist who continues training while doping will see more of an improvement.

Will I see a boost from this? Yes, probably. How much will it be? Not as much as Lance (allegedly) saw.

Conclusion? Probably not worth it. I am not going to transfuse my blood just yet.