<p>Great article, MommaJ! Very persuasive.</p>
<p>The house of cards has fallen.</p>
<p>so… Armstrong was doing what all the other cyclists were doing.</p>
<p>of 45 riders on the Tour de France podium from 1996-2010, at least 36 of them are proven dopers.</p>
<p>Just saw this great video:
[The</a> World According to Lance - Four Corners](<a href=“Four Corners - ABC News”>Four Corners - ABC News)</p>
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<p>Which is probably why the winner spots will remain empty.</p>
<p>Sam Lee thanks for the link to the Four Corners video … It is so sad - I really wanted to believe LA and his passionate denials.</p>
<p>^^^Me too! The video was very interesting. I really wish he would just admit it so I could at least respect him for moving clean.</p>
<p>I watched part of the video. I was shocked to hear that when he was diagnosed with cancer, he admitted to the doctor that he had used a number of performance-enhancing drugs (according to another biker and his fiancee, who were in the room). Is it likely that the drugs caused his cancer?</p>
<p>Why would you have been shocked that he used performance-enhancing drugs pre-cancer? That was never really an issue, even though he denied it. I knew for a fact that he used pre-cancer because I know people who rode with him. He was NOT the ringleader of it pre-cancer and actually got into it a lot later than most of the other riders.
I was sure he didn’t use post-cancer, though. I was wrong.</p>
<p>Armstrong is likely to be faced with having to repay, not only his winnings, but bonuses that were dependent on them.</p>
<p>^^ I’m sure that much of the money has been spent by now. But he’ll probably spend the next few years in court battling claims on whatever fortune he has left. He is wealthy, right? </p>
<p>It’s sad to see an icon fall, and to see an entire sport lose credibility.</p>
<p>Is it likely that the drugs caused his cancer? There is no definitive answer to this question. If the incidence of this particular cancer is higher in a population of similar athletes using same drugs, then maybe there is a connection. Of course, other factors should be considered and appropriate controls used. <a href=“Relation of Physical Activity to Risk of Testicular Cancer | American Journal of Epidemiology | Oxford Academic”>http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/151/1/78.full.pdf</a></p>
<p>^^ Interesting that physical activity, itself, may increase risk! You’re right of course, that no one can say for sure what the causes of an individual cancer were, but I was wondering whether these drugs were known to be carcinogenic, or cancer-promoting.</p>
<p>This is interesting:</p>
<p>[Drug</a> test catches cancer](<a href=“http://www.frogdocs.com/test-for-athlete-doping-catches-signs-of-ltesticular-cancer.html]Drug”>http://www.frogdocs.com/test-for-athlete-doping-catches-signs-of-ltesticular-cancer.html)</p>
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<p>so the Tour de France is going to pay back all the money that it made off Lance Armstrong too, right? …</p>
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<p>It wasn’t the Tour that was found to have broken the rules by illegally doping and then lying about it.</p>
<p>I hope he only has to pay back the Dallas agency bonus that was contingent on being the Tour winner, which now he is not. Unless he admits doping or tested positive, I think he’s ok with the sponsor money.</p>
<p>The only thing he has done that the others didn’t do is to keep denying it. Yes, we know all the big, bad things about him being the mastermind and strong-arming people, but we don’t know what all the leaders of the other teams were doing.</p>
<p>So here is a question – if the doping Armstrong did prior to cancer contributed to his disease in any way (caused it, accelerated it, exacerbated it) what does that do to his image as a cancer fighter (particularly since testicular cancer normally has a high survival rate)? What does the continued doping do his image as a fighter who survives by sheer physical strength? </p>
<p>I really don’t know what to think about this.</p>
<p>There is absolutely no evidence that anything he took prior to being diagnosed with cancer led to the cancer. In fact, he started using performance enhancing drugs much later then many of the other riders. None of the others got cancer. </p>
<p>I don’t know what to think, either, but I know Lance did a lot for cancer patients and so did Livestrong. Lance trained harder than anyone else and was always a great athlete in 3 sports. It’s not like he’s some couch potato who only won because of drugs. That just isn’t the case.</p>
<p>Not sure if there is another thread about this, but wondering if anyone else is watching the Lance Armstrong confessional. He just said that he thought doping was as critical to winning as having air in the tires.</p>