It's Race Day... Y'all.

[Moon The Loon]

Now several years later he is being challenged on a different set of rules where apparently concrete proof is not needed.

Bollocks. The rules then were as they are now - no doping. He doped. He lead the charade. He was indeed the champion. Of cheating.

Gimme a break!

[inchman]

I do not agree with stripping the titles because, at the time, he was tested as per the international standards and found to be clear of any performance enhancing drugs or other forrms of doping. In other words he played by the rules of the game and won. Now several years later he is being challenged on a different set of rules where apparently concrete proof is not needed.

Perhaps we should find him guilty of not warning people of impending earthquakes too.

The world is falling apart for your entertainment.

This is like saying that a murderer or a sex-crime perpetrator from the 80s shouldn't be found guilty today because we didn't have DNA testing back then. The crime was committed but technology at the time was not capable of detecting it.

As I indicated in my previous post, the danger of letting him get away with this would be the encouragement it would lend to young people with dreams of fame and success in sports.

Of course, a greater danger might be the cocktail of drugs they will have to come up with to beat the current state of testing.

But, that's why they have to continue to test past samples today and today's samples in the future; to discourage people from thinking all they have to do is beat the current technology...

And, if found guilty, there really is no better discouragement against cheating than stripping them of their medals. "You will be caught and you will be disgraced" is the best mantra to discourage young people with dreams of fame and fortune in sports to partake in doping. "You will be caught, but you will still get to say you were a 7 time Tour de France winner" just doesn't have the same impact, IMO.

I am really glad they just didn't hand the stripped medals to the #2 guy, though. Because there's every indication that all of the leaders in these races were of the same ilk. Having the blank years there will also serve to remind the UCI of their own transgressions by ignorance.

It really is too bad, he was certainly capable of being a very good athlete without doping and probably got dragged into this mess because it was so rampant by virtually everyone in the sport. It still doesn't make it right, though, and hopefully we will see clean athletes in these notoriously doped up sports from now on.

It remains to be seen if Armstrong will prove his scruples and return the $4 million in prize money he won in the TdF while "under the influence".