It's Just a Mutual Cycling Hatred

The Tour de France organizers and Lance Armstrong have had a long lasting hateful relationship.  After his 1999 tour which he won after beating cancer, the organizers got together in a French cafe, sipping wine and munching on baguettes, and began talking: "Sacre bleu! Thees American's performance in le Tour was too good! He must be doping!" "But Francois, he has not tested positive for anytheeng!" "He must have feegured out a way to fool the tests! Ahh, thees American is so clever!"

And so they redesigned the tours to put Lance at a disadvantage, and made it well known that they'd like to see someone different win the Tour. But that didn't happen for a long time. As a matter of fact, it didn't happen at all for seven years.

During that time Lance was accused of doing various doping practices to give him an edge, but the accusations were countered with the arguments that he produces very little lactic acid, his VO2 max is insanely high, and he generally just trains for the Tour de France year round while racing the smaller tours that lead up to the Tour de France, as opposed to his competitors who race year round.  Tour organizers have gnashed their teeth and whined that he was ruining the sport because there was no competition, while Lance pointed out that he was handedly kicking everybody's asses which is a great feat in itself.

But through a lack of solid evidence, or a really good legal defense team on Armstrongs' behalf, none of the accusations really stuck.  But that doesn't mean he hasn't had his share of detractors and haters.  

So it made sense that when a French anti-doping agency drug tester showed up at his house recently and requested a urine sample, Lance wanted to make sure the guy was really with the anti-doping agency.  For all Lance knew, this guy could've been with a tabloid and had vials of recombinant erythropoietin ready to dump in his blood and urine samples and take them to the press for the story of a lifetime.  And, it's not like Lance is best buddies with labs testing for drugs. One lab claimed to have retested his blood from 1999 and it tested positive for erythropoietin, but Lance threatened to sue for defamation, and the lab was kinda sorta lacking definitive evidence, and they kinda sorta quit claiming it.

The only problem I have is that Lance wanted to shower while his assistants checked the drug tester's credentials.  Bad move, Lance.  I know getting pushed around isn't a lot of fun, but he should've stayed within sight of the drug tester at all times.  That way, nobody can accuse him of taking some sort of masking agent prior to providing the samples.  He tested negative, by the way, but that won't make much of a difference to his detractors.

As far as his prospects for the Tour de France go, I expect him to get smoked by all the younger guys.  He's a good cyclist, but I think the younger guys will all edge him out.  But hey, he's not racing to win, right? He's racing to raise awareness for cancer, so I expect him to have a lot of breakaways, drop back, and not win any stages.

Dara Torres

After watching Ryan Lochte, Michael Phelps and Ian Crocker compete in the Olympics tonight, I checked the news on CNN.com and saw an article on Dara Torres. And that's when I realized that she's freaking 41 years old, had a baby less than a year before making the Olympic trials, and actually won the 50 and the 100 meters for the Olympic Trials. Impressive, I thought. 41 and she's still got it. Until I saw this picture.
And that's when I got suspicious. She's 41 years old and she smoked everyone at the Trials. And usually the USA leads overall world times in these events, so when she was smoking everyone at the Trials, she was effectively smoking all the women swimmers from all over the world. That's a lot of smoke.
But guess what? None of the other USA women swimmers look like that. Natalie Coughlin, Katie Hoff, Margret Hoelzer. They don't look that way at all. The fact that even Gary Hall, Jr who was 34 at this year's Trials only placed 4th on the 50M free in the men's, makes Torres's feat even more suspicious.
And she had a kid. All of this vaguely reminds me of another athlete who had a kid previous to going to the Games. Her name was Marion Jones and she was pretty old to be competing, but compete she did. And then she was kind of sort of implicated in BALCO and kind of sort of admitted that she hadn't been mostly clean for the games. And then she kind of sort of had to give back all the medals she won and kind of sort of had to serve jail time for illegal doping, perjury, and fraud. And then people started looking at younger pictures of Barry Bonds, and then comparing them to his ginormous head that he has now along with a ripped body that would've been the envy of a young Barry playing for the Pirates.
And then people realized that it's just kind of odd how more and more older athletes of all sports seem to be able to keep up with the younger guys, and increase their performance compared to their younger years.
So for a straightforward question: Is Dara doping?
More than likely for crying out loud. She broke an American record in the 50m just this year. And to think that all the 18-25 year olds just couldn't keep up with her is odd. She hasn't tested positive for anything despite rigorous testing, but a national teammate for the same event did pop a positive.
So what do I think? I think that Dara is doping, or at least went through a couple of cycles and started feeding her baby on formula. Afterall, she did put up Olympic qualifying times at a Master's meet which probably wouldn't be able to afford stringent drug tests, so she could've slipped by. I'm thinking that she started taking testosterone in cycles after she qualified for the Trials, or that she's taking a new type of drug that she knows there's no test for, or that she's taking in steroids and/or testosterone topically since it's slowly absorbed and quickly broken down. But I do have one last idea. She could be part man. I mean, c'mon. I wish I had arms like that! But hey, if East Germany and China could run doping programs respectively in the 70's and 90's, why can't a person do the same for just one more Olympics?