<img attachment="p1_lance2.jpg" align="left" class="frame" caption="Lance Armstrong">The article <a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/more/05/31/armstrong.doping.ap/index.html?cnn=yes" source="Sports Illustrated">Armstong cleared of doping charges</a> brings a sigh of relief to anyone still biting their nails over whether Lance cheated when he won his first Tour de France. The conclusion of this latest bout of shipping 7--year-old samples of Lance's urine around Europe comes not with exoneration of any wrongdoing, but of the inapplicability of the given evidence. Since it cannot be proved that the samples were not tampered with, they cannot be used as evidence. Furthermore, any results of tests done on the possibly-tainted samples cannot be released to the public. Any student of logic will fail to see how that <iq>exonerates Lance Armstrong completely with respect to alleged use of doping in the 1999 Tour de France</iq>. It does neither one nor the other. There are just a few facts to consider: <ol> The Tour de France is generally about 3500 to 4000 kilometers long. Racers cover this distance in 21 stages, averaging about 180 kilometers per day. The Tour de France is, in general, more difficult than the Giro D'Italia. This year's Giro D'Italia included a single day of cycling that covered 200km and 4500m of climbing. The Tour de France has even more mountains. Because of these inhuman tasks, biking has became notorious for doping. It is widely accepted that anyone who has a modicum of success in this sport dopes to one degree or another. Lance Armstrong raced once per year---at the Tour de France---and won seven times in a row in this grueling race. He routinely humiliated his competition and rarely looked to be in trouble at any time during his reign. Only very few riders are caught for doping. It is also generally accepted that most riders are very careful. Use of EPO---one of the most effective and natural performance enhancers---is detectable only in "overdosed" quantities. It can be used as an enhancer and cannot be detected as it is a naturally occurring hormone. Tests can simply detect whether the level is unnaturally high. </ol> Given all this, what is one to think of Lance Armstrong, who so dominated the sport for seven years? What is the likelihood that he is such a super-athlete that <i>no one</i> in seven years could even come <i>close</i> to him? You want to believe he gritted his way through, with hard work and training. It's not like he has a day job. But neither do any of the other competitors. They all train 200km per day, year round. Regardless of what kind of natural talent he has, it stands to reason that someone with a little less talent, but with a lot more drugs, would have taken away his crown. Granted, he was always blessed with a very good team. But T-Mobile and CSC fielded teams full of stars as well. It just doesn't add up. If you're unfamiliar with the sport or haven't ever watched it closely, you may be fooled into thinking that the riders are human. They're not. They ride 40-50km per hour for hours at a time, drafting off of each other to save energy, but still putting in ferocious paces for hundreds of kilometers that are just unthinkable. The climbs they do are similarly insane, rising at high percentage grades (sometimes 6%, sometimes up to 16%) for a dozen kilometers. Repeat 4 times in one day during a 160km ride. Deep sports massage, pasta dinner, some sleep, then do it again 20 more times. Americans like Lance because he's our kind of guy. He's got a booming cancer foundation, he can interview in passable French (helping fight the ugly American syndrome), he regularly humiliated the French in a sport that they love and we hardly care about and he left his boring old wife for a rock star (who since left him when she realized that he rides 200km <i>every single day</i> and not just three weeks per year). You want to believe he managed all this and did it clean. Maybe he did. Maybe he did. But these latest findings don't prove one thing one way or another.