Originally Posted by
MulletMan
I'm going to chime in here, but am pretty busy today, so talking points and thoughts:
1. Armstrong's request for an injunction has been refiled.
2. UCI (International cycling fed) came out today and said that they don't understand the sanctions levied against the doc/trainers yesterday. Those docs/trainers are not certified to participate in UCI events, and thus USADA giving them a lifetime ban doesn't do anything... just grandstanding.
3. Travis Tygart (head of USADA) is a complete d-bag who has a hard-on of hate for Armstrong. Essentially, when the Feds didn't have any evidence, he decided he would unilaterally go after Lance with the mounds and mounds of evidence that no one has been given access to... not UCI, not Lance, not the press. Tygart has been after Armstrong for years and is firmly in the "Lance doped" camp. There isn't anything in the world that angers him more than having failed to catch Armstrong. Lance really is the most tested athlete in the history of athletics, so he either didn't do it, or he had the best masking program in the history of mankind.
4. The injunction really gets to the heart of the matter for amateur athletes well beyond the Armstrong case. Basically, if this goes through, and mind you, Lance is being brought before a panel made up of USADA employed mediators(!) any athlete needs to be concerned that they can receive a doping ban even when testing clean. For example, let's say Michael Phelps returns to form this summer and kills it at the Olympics, beating Ryan Lochte 3 or 4 times for gold. Lochte can come out two years later and say, "Hey man, Phelps was doping his butt off... I totally saw it like 5 times and he told me how to do it. I didn't but we totally talked about it." That will now be considered evidence. Furthermore, and I truly love this part, according to USADA regs, USADA attorney can draft a statement for each witness that does not have to be based on any interview or deposition with said witness and then have the witness sign it. This can serve as testimony at the hearing AND the witness does not have to be present at the hearing for a cross examination by Armstrong's attorneys. There really is no way that he can win the hearing process. And if a man with this much influence, money and legal power is going to lose, what about general amateur athletes?
5 For those at USADA who say this is not a witch hunt, someone might need to explain why, after an allegedly 15 year conspiracy of doping and masking involving 3 teams and hundreds of riders, they are only going after one athlete.
6. The "reduced suspension" in exchange for testimony is truly concerning. Further, the story doesn't hold water since Hincapie is retiring in 6 weeks. If he was going to run, he wasn't selling out Lance (unless he's pissed about Discovery Channel running him down in the Tour a few years ago and denying him the yellow for a day). Something doesn't add up.
7. USADA just publicly reprimanded Hope Solo for testing positive for a banned diuretic that was ingested in her PMS medication. She said that she unknowingly ingested it in a prescription medication (probably true). However, the decision to publicly reprimand, without suspension, an athlete who has tested positive for a banned substance while attempting to retroactively ban an athlete and strip him of titles on the basis of zero positive tests really seems to undermine USADA's credibility to me.
8. This whole set of episodes was touched off by Floyd Landis' attempt to blackmail Armstrong and the organizers of the Tour of California to let his continental team into the race after his doping suspension was lifted in 2008. Landis, who denied doping, then admitted doping, then denied it, then admitted it and implicated Lance, will be one of the witnesses that USADA hangs their hat on.