Doppe! Doppe!

That was the cry of the French when Lance Armstrong was climbing the Plateau de Baille in the Summer of 2002. In fact, that has been the cry of many anti-Armstrong cycling enthusiasts for many years now. It now appears that the cry of the French is a step closer to the truth. There is a lot of noise around this issue so let's try to examine the facts as we know them.



Arguments for drug use by Armstrong

1. Traces of EPO found in his 1999 'B' urine samples;
2. The tests were conducted by a credible lab, one of very few labs that has the ability to do EPO tests and is commissioned by the IOC to run some of the Olympic tests;
3. Close association with Dr. Michele Ferrari, the European BALCO, meaning that he used Ferrari as part of his training regime and had a close relationship with him until Ferrari was taken to court;
4. The book L.A. Confidential (which has never been translated from the original French) is a chronicle by a respected English cycling journalist of the things that people who are no longer in Lance's inner circle did to hide the doping, including taking bags of needles and disposing of them;
5. In the 1999 Tour de France Amrstrong tested positive for using a corticosteroid cream which he said was to treat saddle soars;
6. In March 2005 a former assistant claims that he was fired after finding a box of steroids in Armstrong's bathroom.

Arguments against drug use by Armstrong

1. He is the most drug tested athlete of our time and if he was using EPO presumably it would show up in other tests;
2. Many French people hate him so this could easily be a case of an angry lab worker trying to frame him;
3. The French newspaper L'Equipe which revealed the results of the tests has always had an axe to grind with him;
4. His cancer therapy likely required him to take a lot of EPO so it is conceivable, but unlikely according to an oncologist I spoke to, that there would be remnants in his system;
5. The test results revealed by L'Equipe were the results of research, it is unclear if the proper protocols were followed in these tests.

I am a big believer that the simplest answer is generally the right answer. And have long maintained that the simplest answer is not that there is some conspiracy against Armstrong but that he has taken EPO or other drugs from time to time.

I doubt if anything will come of this though. The B sample is not enough, in and of itself, to convict Armstrong and it appears that all his other samples are clean.