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August 24, 2005
In the kingdom of the ballless, the one balled man is king.
PARIS - Faced with yet another report that he cheated his way to a Tour de France victory, Lance Armstrong responded Tuesday the same way he has since the doping whispers began during the first of his seven straight wins: "I never took performance enhancing drugs."
"Oh fuck off, you lying, whiney little toad munchers" would have been less polite, but more apt.
In a four-page article headlined "The Armstrong Lie," the French sports daily L'Equipe printed copies of documents suggesting six urine samples he provided during his first championship in 1999 tested positive for the red blood cell-booster erythropoietin, or EPO.For once, I agree with the title. I think it is lies about Armstrong. They're testing for EPO now, from a six year old sample. It's been frozen. But... EPO, either in its natural state or the synthesized version, is not stable in urine - even when frozen and stored at -20' celsius (-4'f).
And retesting? No, sorry. They can't do that either. The sample has been destroyed/contaminated/the dog ate my homework.
Its more or less an extension of the stuff they've been printing for the last seven years. I had thought they'd stopped when he retired (which they welcomed with "Never to such an extent, probably, has the departure of a champion been welcomed with such widespread relief"), but I suppose you can't underestimate the bitterness that not actaully winning their own race for the last twenty years produced.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at August 24, 2005 09:55 AM
Comments
This absolutely enfuriates me. How many times do we have to listen to this. They have tested him every single year, every time he is negative. Every year he wins, he gets accused of it.
They won't be happy until they can purify the history books of the 7 straight year Armstrong 'taint'.
As always... Flock the French!