I have to at least give him the benefit of the doubt, he doesn't look like the average cheater (although that means nothing, I know), so he's still clean in my eyes.



ok, whenI said it I had sports like cycling in my mind. If it's a sport where the athlete has to try and get the highest score in an individual performance (like archery, gymnastics, long jump, put shot like you've mentioned, etc.), then I think that if the best score is null'd, then the second best score must take it's place.

but if it's a sport like cycling, fencing, racing, basketball, etc. where athetes are competing directly with each other, then no. It could very well happen in a 3km race, for example, that the winner won while being doped, and the second placed came second only because they overtook the third placed at the end, because the third placed had wasted his stamina trying to catch up with the winner.

why don't you give armstrong the benefit of a doubt then? maybe they're all lying? the investigators, all his former teammates (who are all willing to go to jail for false testimony), the scientists who re-tested his samples? maybe he's right and this is a witch hunt after all? sure, the odds of that being true are ridiculously marginal, but are we 100% sure? we can't be because he didn't confess...
ridiculous, you see? that's what i meant with being naive / biased. obviously i do not think you're naive in general, i didn't want to insult you. i'm just thinking, it's a naive point of view towards this particular topic / case.

contador's case is evenly improbable: a freak athlete who's able to not only compete against, but dominate the best of the world who, in addition to being the most talented cyclists, cheat with performance enhancing drugs. PLUS the freak chance of having this one-in-a-century athlete being unlucky / stupid enough to eat that one tainted steak despite being extremely careful with his food and despite every single test for meat contamination being negative...




so in formula 1 for example, if a driver gets a 10 second penalty after the race (which happens quite often), what happens then? let's say he finished 2nd. and the 3rd place finisher was 8 seconds behind him, the 4th place 12 seconds. so what happens now? 3rd place stays 3rd, 4th place 4th and the driver with the penalty? 3 1/2? how many points does he get?

and btw, all the arguments you originally mentioned are true for those other sports, too. in shot put / long jump / throwing events for example: in the final there are 12 athletes i think and only the best 8 after 3 attempts get 3 more attempts. and a lot can happen in those. so a cheater being amongst the finalists robbed 1 potential participant of 3 more tries. also, the fact that they are not directly competing against each other simultaneously doesn't mean there is no influence, especially when you focus on the mental aspect: some are motivated by an opponent's good performance, others lose hope and can't focus that well anymore.

This post was edited by fender on Oct 30 2012 10:40am

that's the difference between Armstrong's and Contador's case. There are no witneses, team mates or scientists that support the accusation's testimony; all they have is a sample that's positive for ridiculous amount of clenbuterol. And Contador dominated well before he gave positive, and it looks like he's started dominating again now that he's back in form after raping everyone in La Vuelta (if he cheated then, I doubt he'd be willing to cheat again).



I don't like the Formula 1 penalty system; I'd take away points from the racer that's penalized and that's it.

And yes, you are right about the other type of sports, but I don't think it is THAT infuential, not comparable to the other type of sports, so it would be ok to alter the positions in those cases imo. And if you consider them the same, then I rather there wouldn't be any position changes in those sports either.

yes, that's a difference. but then again, with contador they at least have a positive 1st time test. that's something they don't have for armstrong. and isn't a positive test more conclusive than a cheating witness?

but seriously, i can't quite wrap my head around you believing he's innocent. for me, most experts, fans and journalists outside of spain (there have been rather amusing articles about the spanish media is portraying him as a victim), it's so obvious - but i'm aware he's still a national hero in spain.
i just thought you'd... i don't know... would be more open to what the rest of the world sees and how ridiculously unlikely it is that he's clean.

well i guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one but i think it was a very interesting discussion...

Well, someone saying the transfusion is plausible is very rare (and unacceptable lol) here.

Ask 90% of the spaniards and they'll say "it's because the french can't stand we are always succesful in their events, they always start international campaigns against us because they are sick of us dominating so many sports". There is indeed some truth to this (french media always bashes/inuslts/ridiculizes on our athletes, spanish tennis players are always booed in Roland Garros, etc), but many, many, many people here are convinced this is a conspiracy planned by the butt-hurt french media.

This was indeed an interesting discussion, when carried out in a civilized manner I usually find more interesting discussions like these, where both sides disagree.

This post was edited by zarkadon on Oct 30 2012 01:01pm

well, despite the obvious facts, that would make sense if it was only the french (or maybe even italian) media.
but english, german, dutch, swiss and scandinavian media being influenced by the french to join in a campaign against spanish cyclists? seems a little paranoid, don't you think?

at least for germany i can say there is no interest in discrediting a cyclist just because he's spanish. cycling isn't a big thing here. the only somewhat successful cyclist we ever had was a cheater and is mostly hated for it in germany...

anyway, yeah - obviously it's more interesting when both sides disagree, otherwise you'll run out of interesting arguments pretty quickly... except some guys who obviously can entertain themselves by hating a 3rd party for hours, but well, that's a different kind of "discussion"...

This post was edited by fender on Oct 30 2012 04:31pm

exactly, always tested negative....the only reason he gave up the fight about it was because he simply got tired of the harassment over the speculation

http://cyclinginvestigation.usada.org/

read it if you're interested in facts. or just stay ignorant... your choice.

yeah, that's why I'm saying the whole international campaign theory is a bit too crazy for me

cycling was a relevant sport here (well, Tour+Giro+Vuelta basically) until the late 90s and early 00's, many spanish cyclists started testing positive and everyone started shunning the sport

now with Contador this sport's popularity has risen again over the past 5 years, although with the rise of tennis, formula 1, etc, it's not as big as it was before.

Is that a bad thing cuz I have two! More weight for me to carry around.