Wiggo

wotsthat

chewmylegoff wrote: »

my view is that, in reality there is little point in fighting charges in any part of the US legal system, as they have no real concept of innocent until proven guilty, you are guilty until proven innocent, and even then a determination that you are innocent is merely a matter of inconvenience; they will find something else to find you guilty of instead. it has its positives and negatives. the positive being that most guilty people end up being found guilty. the negative being the collateral damage i.e. a lot of innocent people end up also being found guilty - but they seem happy with that level of risk.

In the US it seems as if people are more likely to face multiple charges than here especially related to financial crimes. It's a way to manipulate the system. If someone turns up charged with 20 counts of this, 15 counts of that and 8 counts of the other a jury has got to be thinking that, given the volume of charges, the defendant's guilty of something.

StevieJ

wotsthat wrote: »

In the US it seems as if people are more likely to face multiple charges than here especially related to financial crimes. It's a way to manipulate the system. If someone turns up charged with 20 counts of this, 15 counts of that and 8 counts of the other a jury has got to be thinking that, given the volume of charges, the defendant's guilty of something.

The other side of the coin is, if the cases are complicated and they can prove one to be definitely incorrect, I guess, it may cast doubt on the rest in the eyes of the jury.

Wookster

StevieJ wrote: »

The big question is, why are the US so keen to get their most successful RETIRED riders, as the judge notably opined?

I think they operate on the Guilty until proven innocent in the US.

Generali

Wookster wrote: »

Lance has just announced he won't be fighting any of the charges.

Guess that is a tacit admission of guilt.

He claims that he's rejecting the process not admitting guilt. I can see his point: USADA control the process and guarantee the outcome.

chewmylegoff

Generali wrote: »

He claims that he's rejecting the process not admitting guilt. I can see his point: USADA control the process and guarantee the outcome.

Otherwise known as the Radovan Karodic / Saddam Hussain defence.

I think he should have gone with the more successful Chewbacca defence.

Generali

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Otherwise known as the Radovan Karodic / Saddam Hussain defence.

I think he should have gone with the more successful Chewbacca defence.

Or the lesser known but rather good Waterslide Argument (as successfully deployed against Mrs Generali this afternoon in a discussion about navigation):

Wookster

Generali wrote: »

He claims that he's rejecting the process not admitting guilt. I can see his point: USADA control the process and guarantee the outcome.

Well he's never failed a test, whilst that remains the case where do you draw the line? Would the same apply to the 16 year old Chinese swimmer who smashed the butterfly (iirc) world record?

JonnyBravo

Generali wrote: »

He's still one of the greats for me and this doesn't tarnish his achievements at all in my eyes. He was a doper riding against other dopers, it's fair enough. The only problem I have with his career is the focus on the Tour de France: wins in the Giro and Vuelta and also taking some of the classics would have been better. It's why I rate Merkx as the better rider.

Must admit I'm surprised by this.
It changes everything in my eyes.
Even if just one bloke was clean and he came last he's the winner. Of course we'll never really know when the problem ran so deep back then.
But even if all were doping back then it's still not "fair". Who's to say Lance and co simply didn't have better drugs rather than being simply superior athletes.
Too many questions to which we'll never know all the answers.
Changes everything.
Just another cheat.

Generali

Wookster wrote: »

Well he's never failed a test, whilst that remains the case where do you draw the line? Would the same apply to the 16 year old Chinese swimmer who smashed the butterfly (iirc) world record?

That's not entirely true.

One of Lance Armstrong's B samples (the second sample that is taken just in case the first sample tests positive) was tested for L'Equipe, a French sports newspaper, once a reliable test had been developed for EPO.

EPO was quite unusual in that it was banned despite no test being available and the UCI (the FIFA of cycling) said that they would hold samples in storage to be tested at some point in the future.

Lance's sample was tested and came up positive for EPO.

In addition, former team mates, a doctor and his ex-missus have all said that he has claimed to use steroids, blood doping and EPO.


Furthermore he seems to have been able to produce power output over long periods in mountain stages that are beyond theoretical maxima.

He doesn't have blood on his hands but there are a lot of people out there that claim to have seen him fire the fatal shot.

JonnyBravo wrote: »

Must admit I'm surprised by this.
It changes everything in my eyes.
Even if just one bloke was clean and he came last he's the winner. Of course we'll never really know when the problem ran so deep back then.
But even if all were doping back then it's still not "fair". Who's to say Lance and co simply didn't have better drugs rather than being simply superior athletes.
Too many questions to which we'll never know all the answers.
Changes everything.
Just another cheat.

What is clean exactly? Ok, there are some drugs that are banned because it's unfair but what about the facilities that are available to some but not others? If you ever find yourself in Canberra check out the Australian Institute of Sport and then tell me that an athlete or gymnast from Syria, Venezuela or Mozambique has a fair shake against an Aussie competitor.

At the time Lance Armstrong was riding, pretty much everyone was doping. If the playing field is level I have no problem. Tommy Simpson, Fausto 'La Bomba' Coppi and Jacques Anquetil were all self-confessed dopers. Merkx condemned doping but tested positive regularly.

Running sprinters are routinely doping IMO; if they weren't how could they be running faster than the East Germans in the 1980s?

Soccer players too: those guys are hardly tested. No blood passports for them yet the midfielders are running almost twice as far as they used to in a game a couple of decades ago. The difference isn't just eating pasta with chicken and keeping off the booze. Hell, if someone told me that by taking EPO I could increase my salary 10x and become truly excellent at what I do then I'd be signing on the dotted line and most people would if they are honest with themselves.

Anecdotally, I believe that Kiwi (and probably other) rugby players aged 16-18 are told to take a year away from the sport and get to the gym with someone who can 'advise them' on what supplements that are not available over the counter should be used to help them bulk up prior to starting a professional career and being tested regularly.

Wookster

Generali wrote: »

Hell, if someone told me that by taking EPO I could increase my salary 10x and become truly excellent at what I do then I'd be signing on the dotted line and most people would if they are honest with themselves.

Have you seen Limitless?

I want some of that!