True enough. But beyond Bruyneel, the team itself is better, in that two blatantly dodgy bastards from the ex USSR arenât leading it, and I think it has in place a genuine anti-doping program along the lines of Garmin.
Not that I particular enjoy defending Astana, but I see no reason for the ASO to block them considering some of the other teams participating.
I certainly think itâs harder for them to justify it now.
Iâd have huge reservations about any team with Bruyneel and just donât believe in Astana. But theyâve copied CSCâs anti-doping program and itâs hard to justify excluding them in spite of what everyone suspects.
I hope they donât return but Iâd be very surprised if they were left out in the cold.
Armstrong confirmed return at press conference today. Remarkable story really. Will be interesting to see how politics in Astana work out. If he is coming back now I canât see him taking many risks as regards doping.
Armstrong to return with Astana
Armstrong confirms return to the saddle
Lance Armstrong will make his much-anticipated return to professional cycling with Kazakhstanâs Astana team.
The Swiss-based team is run by Armstrongâs friend and former sporting director Johan Bruyneel, who helped the American win all his seven Tours.
The 37-year-old Texan will race in Australia in January but was cautious about aiming for an eighth Tour win.
âI will try to be as prepared as possible. I donât know that that equals victory,â he said in New York.
âI have a fair bit of confidence, but not that kind of confidence. I donât know, honestly. Iâve been off the bike three years. Iâll be nearly 38 years old, so I honestly donât know.â
Armstrong also suggested he might be tempted to race in the 2010 season as well.
âI donât want to box myself in here,â he said. âItâs open-ended. I see one season but I wouldnât want to rule out a second season. I will take it season by season.â
Armstrong, a survivor of testicular cancer, will start the six-day Tour Down Under race around South Australia, centring on Adelaide, on 20 January and is also planning a global summit to raise cancer awareness in Paris after next yearâs Tour.
âI look forward to 2009, I look forward to racing again,â said Armstrong. "I cannot guarantee an eighth Tour victory, but I can guarantee you the âLive Strongâ message will touch all aspects of our society.
âItâs not very often someone gets a chance to spend three or fours years away from something, step back, and then say to themselves, 'I sort of miss that, Iâd like to go back and do that again.â
The Kazakh-financed Astana team suffered two high-profile doping scandals in 2007 and were barred from this yearâs Tour de France despite a substantial overhaul in team management.
Kazakh rider Alexandre Vinokourov, the old Astana team leader, tested positive for blood doping after winning a time-trial stage of the 2007 Tour, and was subsequently sacked and banned for a year.
Armstrong return ânot great for cyclingâ - Boardman
Bruyneel had suggested that he would find it almost impossible not to include a fit-again Armstrong in his team.
Nikolai Proskurin, the deputy president of Kazakhstanâs cycling federation, said that Armstrong would share the leadership of Astana with current leader, Alberto Contador.
Contador, 2007 Tour de France winner and only the fifth rider in history to win all of cyclingâs three major Tours when he won the Tour of Spain, had previously already hinted the Americanâs presence could cause conflict.
But the Spaniard said suggestions he would leave Astana were âtoo prematureâ.
âI am going to calmly talk to the team and depending on how it goes, we will see what we do.â
And Armstrong said he was looking forward to racing with the Spaniard.
âAlberto is the best rider on the planet right now,â he said. âWe have to understand that, have to respect that. Iâm not sure I can ride that fast right now. I hope it works out.â
Proskurin said: "Currently thereâs certain tension in the team but I hope we are capable of keeping the situation under control.
âArmstrong will not be the only star, he will be one of the teamâs leaders. I believe Armstrong will become a new sporting brand for Kazakhstan. Heâs a great sportsman and courageous man.â
One rider who believes there could be problems for the Astana team is the Republic of Irelandâs 1987 Tour winner Stephen Roche.
âI could see (Contador) walking away. Heâs finally getting credibility and now next year everybody will be talking about Armstrong. Itâs going to be very difficult,â Roche told BBC Radio 5 Live.
The 49-year-old, whose racing career spanned 13 years, was also asked whether Armstrong had a chance of winning the Tour. âI donât think so,â he replied.
Bruyneel said he was honoured and looking forward to working with Armstrong again, 10 years after being asked to direct the riderâs US Postal Service team.
Bradley Wiggins on Armstrongâs return
âWhat we saw from 1999 to 2005 was arguably the most exciting time in professional cycling and I know Lance will bring the same level of charisma, passion and influence to the team, sport and global cancer community,â he said.
Armstrong nearly lost his life to cancer before battling back to win his first Tour in 1999.
International Cycling Union president Pat McQuaid told BBC Radio 5 Live he did not think Armstrongâs âprimary motivationâ was to win the Tour.
McQuaid said: "I think he has done as much as he can with his cancer foundation in terms of knowledge of it in the US and now he wants to globalise the foundation using the sport of cycling.
âWinning the Tour is secondary but I think he has every intention of trying to do it.â
Surely Armstrong joining Astana ensures he loses his credibility what with their proven doping history?
Yeah no doubt heâll be cautious enough but the desire to reassociate himself with Bruyneel says it all in my eyes.
Looks like Contador wonât be hanging around to ride with him. New team with big budget or who has the cash to attract him?
There are rumours that Ullrich will be coming out of retirement to race alongside Armstrong with Astana. If Ullrich is returning wouldnât like it to be with Astana. Below is from Astana site. Hard to know what is spin and what is fact.
"Mr. Armstrong also announced his commitment to changing the culture of drug testing in professional sports through his teamâs retention of Dr. Don Catlin, a leading expert in identifying and detecting the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports. Dr. Catlin will design the most comprehensive program ever implemented for a professional athlete. The goal of the program will be to change current thinking about testing and make it possible for athletes to prove they are racing clean rather than trying to prove they did not cheat. All of Lanceâs blood work and testing will be posted online at www.livestrong.com.
âLance has been very specific about his desire for the complete transparency and availability of his results,â said Dr. Catlin. âThe program we have developed for him will be thorough, rigorous and leave no room for speculation.â
Am finding it quite hard to make up my mind whether I am pleased that he is coming back or not. I suppose if he is doping then it can only be a backward step for cycling. If however we see more evidence next year of a greatly cleaner tour compared to the 1990-2007 era then it will be fantastic.
Astana are bent as fuck. Hope Contador goes to CSC to stir things up. But they are equally bent IMHO. There can only be one leader in a team with Lance in it and that is Lance. I am discouraged with these developments. Bad for the sport, I just hope Lance gets caught in some Borat type expose in which he is filmed taking a transfusion of monkey blood or something.
Agreed on that Balbec, I donât think thereâs any middle ground about it. Cycling was nearly destroyed by the Ullrich/Armstrong era - compelling though it may have been for some viewers.
All the progress since will be wiped out with all the hype around Lance again. Too many people glossing over a very unsavoury past and nothing he does this time around will change what he did last time.
Pat McQuaid was on Newstalkâs Off The Ball Show tonight and was truely pathetic. Interviewer was excellent and kept pushing McQuaid on evidence that Armstrong doped but McQuaid shot everything down with feeble excuses and talk of looking forwards and not backwards. I knew he was a poor administrator but I didnât know he was this poor. Very strong words from Kimmage below. Think he is overly harsh on the ASO myself. While I would love Astana not to be invited I donât think they could realistically not invite them. Apart from that his words are compelling.
"My reactionâŚthe enthusiasm that I had built up about the sport in the last couple of years has been all but completely wiped out in the last couple of hours.
Letâs turn the clock back to Armstrongâs last apparition in the sport. The Tour de France 2005. Heâs standing on the podium. And he makes this big impassioned speech. Which is basically saying âThe last thing Iâll say to the people who donât believe in cycling, the cynics, the sceptics: Iâm sorry for you. Iâm sorry you canât dream big. Iâm sorry you donât believe in miracles.â That was 2005, his last ride in the the Tour de France. And the people flanking him on that podium were Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich. And a month after that race ended the French newspaper LâEquipe reported that in his first winning Tour de France, in 1999, Armstrong had tested positive for EPO. Six separate samples taken during that race revealed positive tests for EPO.
This return, he wants us to believe that itâs all about saving the world from cancer. Thatâs complete bullshit. Itâs about revenge Itâs about ego. Itâs about Lance Armstrong. I think heâs trying to rewrite his exit from the sport. Heâs sat back and heâs watched the last two years and he cannot stand the idea that there are clean cyclists now that will overtake his legacy and buy the memory of all the crap that he put the sport through.
When I heard it being mooted first that he was coming back, I thought well thatâs fine, because the first thing ASO are going to say is âsorry Lance, weâve seen your results from the 1999 tests , youâre not coming back.â I expected a similar statement from Pat McQuaid. Whatâs happened instead is that Christian Prudhomme has said âyes, you can come back, no problem.â And Pat McQiad has said âI really admire this man, heâs a tremendous ambassador for cycling.â What weâre getting here is the corporate dollars and the money thatâs going to accompany this guy back into the game. The money thatâs going to bring for Nike, one of the big sponsors of the Tour. And for the UCI, who have been experiencing some serious problems in the last couple of years.
Much as you want to say the sport has changed, as quickly as they can change their own opinions â McQuaid, who says one thing in private and quite the opposite in public, and Prudhomme â if they can change so quickly then Iâm sorry, itâs really very, very difficult to have any optimism with regard to Armstrong and the way the sport was moving forward. For me, if he comes back next year, the sport takes two steps back.
I spent the whole Tour this year with Slipstream, the Garmin team. That wasnât by accident. I chose that team deliberately, because of what they were saying about the sport and the message they were putting out. But also the fact that so many of that team had raced with Armstrong during his best years and knew exactly what he got up to. And the stuff that I learnt on that Tour about him and what he was really like was absolutely shocking, really shocking.
Whatâs going to happen now is he comes back and everybodyâs going to wave their hands in the air and give him a big clap. And all the guys who really know what heâs about are going to feel so utterly and totally depressed. And Iâm talking about Jonathan Vuaghthers, who raced with Armstrong that first winning Tour and who doped. And if you look at that Tour, Armstrongâs first win, there were seven Americans on that team. Frankie Andreu has said he used EPO. Tyler Hamilton has been done for [blood doping]. George Hincapie was exposed as a doper by Emma OâReilly, the team soigneur. Christian Vand Velde and Jonathan Vaughters ⌠both are members of Slipstream and would promote the notion that this was not a clean team by any means. When you look at that and what Armstrongâs done and how heâs seemingly got away with it, it just makes his come back very hard to stomach.
Astanaâs the absolute perfect team for him. Heâd be renewing his old acquaintance with Bruyneel, who wanted to hire Basso last year. Will he be renewing his old acquaintance with Ferrari, the famous doctor? Will Bruyneel be taking pictures of the questioning journalists and pinning them on the side of his bus?
When Armstrong talks about transparency, this is the greatest laugh. When he talks about embracing this new transparency ⌠Iâm really looking forward to that. Iâm really looking forward to my first interview request with him and seeing how that comes back. Because that would really make it interesting.
This guy, any other way but his bullying and intimidation wrapped up in this great cloak, the great cancer martyr ⌠this is what he hides behind all the time. The great man who conquered cancer. Well he is the cancer in this sport. And for two years this sport has been in remission. And now the cancerâs back."
Hard hitting words.
Agree with you on the ASO thing - think their hands are tied a bit. Not an awful lot they can do. Banning Astana for a year was a big move but theyâve no definitive reason to ban them for any longer, just their suspicions.
Heard that interview with McQuaid and he was particularly weak on the EPO thing. He kept saying shit like âthey [the blood samples] were only retained for research purposesâ as though that has any impact on the rights and wrongs of EPO being found in Armstrongâs blood.
Thereâs some passion in that Kimmage article whether you agree with it or not. Great read.
[quote=âlarryduffâ]
Bradley Wiggins on Armstrongâs return
âWhat we saw from 1999 to 2005 was arguably the most exciting time in professional cycling and I know Lance will bring the same level of charisma, passion and influence to the team, sport and global cancer community,â he said.
."[/quote]
VERY disappointed with this quote above. Fucking Wiggins, Iâd have thought heâd have more of a spine than that.
Love that from Kimmage. Fucking great stuff. As much as Iâm proud that Kelly and Roche are Irish, I think Iâm even more proud that Paul Kimmage is Irish. The manâs a hero.
Heard all the McQuaid interview there tonight. Superb stuff to listen to. McQuaid was really on the backfoot all the way through. He got Conconi and Ferrari mixed up with the âorange juiceâ quote. It was Ferrari who made it. I wonder would he have come on at all if he knew he was going to be questioned like that?
That last paragraph of Kimmages is top drawer. Nail on the head say no more. Respect.
Iâd say he wonât be going on again in a hurry. I presume he thought heâd get an easy ride like he usually gets on RT who are so proud to have an Irishman at the head of a big sport like cycling.
Great offer from the AFLD. Will put Armstrong in a very awkward situation now? Decline and whatever remaining credibility he had will be gone. Accept and previous positives will surely be confirmed.
FRENCH OFFER ARMSTRONG A RE-TEST OF HIS 1999 TOUR SAMPLES
Wednesday 1st October 2008 - By Cycling Weekly
The French Anti-Doping Authority (AFLD) has offered Lance Armstrong a chance to retest his urine samples from the 1999 Tour - which, according to French newspaper LâEquipe allegedly contained traces of EPO.
âMr. Armstrong is a great champion,â AFLD boss Pierre Bordry told French newspaper LâEquipe on Wednesday, âEverybody can understand how someone like him would want to come back to the Tour again."
"I would like that comeback to be in the best possible conditions, so I would suggest that we do a complete analysis of the six urine samples taken in the 1999 Tour.That would perhaps give him the chance to affirm he never cheated during his brilliant career.â
LâEquipe alleged back in 2005 that the 1999 samples, taken during the first of Armstrongâs seven Tours victories, contained traces of EPO. Armstrong has always categorically denied all allegations of doping.
Bordry added that the Paris laboratory which had carried out the testing had confirmed to him that Armstrongâs samples had been conserved in the correct conditions, and that if Armstrong wished the new tests would be carried out in the presence of an expert nominated by the Texan.
He even said that if necessary the tests could be carried out in another WADA-accredited laboratory, not the one in Paris which produced the alleged positives.
Following the French offer, the ball is now in Armstrongâs court, although there was no immediate reaction from the American and his staff.
The Powers to be do not want the return of Mister Armstrong.
Cop out by Armstrong for me.
Armstrong responds to testing times
By Cyclingnews staff
âBetter make that sevenâ, says Armstrong in 2005
Photo : Sirotti
Lance Armstrong has responded to a proposal by the French Anti-Doping Authority (AFLD) that it re-test urine samples taken from him during the 1999 Tour de France. Designed to âenable the cyclist Lance Armstrong to dispel any unfounded rumours,â the testing is a flashback to 2005, when allegations about the Americanâs samples were made by French sports daily, LâEquipe.
On that occasion, the paper reported that âRecent analysis of samples dating from the Americanâs first Tour de France victory demonstrate that Lance Armstrong had already consumed doping products.â Armstrong was quick to respond on that occasion, saying, "Yet again, a European newspaper has reported that I have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. [Todayâs] LâEquipe, a French sports daily, is reporting that my 1999 samples were positive. Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and [the] article is nothing short of tabloid journalism.
âThe paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself. They state: 'There will therefore be no counter-exam nor regulatory prosecutions, in a strict sense, since defendantâs rights cannot be respected. 'I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs.â
Armstrong cited the end result three years ago as evidence of why the case should not be revisited now. The seven-time Tour champion made a point of reiterating the reasons for his absolution in the matter and the contrary conduct of then-WADA president, Dick Pound. He began by saying that, "Today, Mr. Pierre Bordry, the new head of the French anti-doping agency, proposed that they retest samples from the 1999 Tour de France. Unfortunately, Mr. Bordry is new to these issues and his proposal is based on a fundamental failure to understand the facts.
"In 2005, some research was conducted on urine samples left over from the 1998 and 1999 Tours de France. That research was the subject of an independent investigation, and the conclusions of the investigation were that the 1998 and 1999 Tour de France samples have not been maintained properly, have been compromised in many ways, and even three years ago could not be tested to provide any meaningful results. There is simply nothing that I can agree to that would provide any relevant evidence about 1999.
Just days after Armstrong had announced his return to professional cycling, Dick Pound weighed into the debate over the merits of the Americanâs comeback. And as expected, it wasnât complimentary. The outspoken Canadian told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that he wasnât convinced it was a clean return, saying, âWith his comeback not all doping accusations go away.â
Therefore, as expected, Armstrong saved his greatest criticism for the man who had most to say about the seven-time Tour champion during his career - from the viewpoint of possible doping, at least. "In addition, the Independent Investigation concluded that the French laboratory, the French Ministry of Sport, and Dick Pound, the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, all behaved improperly with respect to the 1999 Tour de France samples. The Independent Investigation concluded that both Mr. Pound and the French laboratory engaged in improper conduct that violated a number of regulations and laws. After the report of the Independent Investigator was issued, Mr. Poundâs conduct was submitted to the IOC Ethics Commission and the IOC Ethics Commission censured Mr. Pound.
Click here to read the full story.
Iâd say Pat MacQuaid is delighted. He might even get his photo taken with him and all.
Betty Andreau wife of Frankie on Newstalk now.