Prosecutors close Lance Armstrong inquiry with no charges

[scotty]

Yeah. A final and conclusive answer would be great. That's not actually going to happen, is it?

Have faith man

[scotty]

My guess is that one of two scenarios will take place.

 

Armstrong attorneys :

 

Scen. A: "What will it cost to make this go away ?"

 

Scen.B."We suggest you stop this manhunt or else you could be facing legal implications for defamation of character and other damages"

Scene A probably but here's a hint, record the conversation where LA or his lawyers makes the offer.

Scene B surely if positive that cannot occur.

[Wyatt Earp]

Scene A probably but here's a hint, record the conversation where LA or his lawyers makes the offer.

Scene B surely if positive that cannot occur.

Positive or not, the athlete has to prove it, not WADA, so he has to give a good explanation of how the stuff "did not" enter his body.

[scotty]

Positive or not, the athlete has to prove it, not WADA, so he has to give a good explanation of how the stuff "did not" enter his body.

Except for the bum cream and the 99 test in question (UCI will be hugely embarrassed as they cleared him of wrong doing) i'm not aware of any other test that was tested as suspect.

 

But judging by the enormous amount of other evidence its a guilty verdict then. Any other outcome, even an insufficient evidence one would be proof that WADA/USADA were bribed.

[Wyatt Earp]

proof that WADA/USADA were bribed.

Scotty, for you an I it's a sport, a sport we love, for these guys it's a bushiness, imagine someone like Trump sitting at the helm, these businessmen are ruthless.

[Tumbleweed]

Except for the bum cream and the 99 test in question (UCI will be hugely embarrassed as they cleared him of wrong doing) i'm not aware of any other test that was tested as suspect.

 

But judging by the enormous amount of other evidence its a guilty verdict then. Any other outcome, even an insufficient evidence one would be proof that WADA/USADA were bribed.

 

The '99 retests had nothing to do with proving his guilt, but were used to test a new testing procedure. There were anonymously tested.

[Lucky Luke.]

Yeah. A final and conclusive answer would be great. That's not actually going to happen, is it?

 

Nope, I would have to say not. Whoever decided to end the investigation controls what happens to the testimony and other evidence.

 

On whether the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles would provide all evidence gathered, Mrozek added: "No, not necessarily. This comes down to certain rules, and laws and policies at the United States Department of justice. And if they want to request information from us we'll take a look at the request and see what, if anything, we can do to help them out."

 

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/usada-may-struggle-to-study-all-evidence-in-lance-armstrong-investigation

[scotty]

The '99 retests had nothing to do with proving his guilt, but were used to test a new testing procedure. There were anonymously tested.

 

So these guys (UCI) got it wrong when they claimed it was improper when in fact it was proper, just a different test procedure.

 

In October 2005, in response to calls from the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for an independent investigation, the UCI appointed Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman to investigate the handling of urine tests by the French national anti-doping laboratory, LNDD. Vrijman was head of the Dutch anti-doping agency for ten years; since then he has worked as a defense attorney defending high-profile athletes against doping charges.^[90] Vrijman's report cleared Armstrong because of improper handling and testing.^[92][93]The report said tests on urine samples were conducted improperly and fell so short of scientific standards that it was "completely irresponsible" to suggest they "constitute evidence of anything."^[

 

The outcome was accepted by IOC and Dick :Pound was bitch slapped for calling it a farce

 

The WADA rejected these conclusions stating "The Vrijman report is so lacking in professionalism and objectivity that it borders on farcical.".^[95] The IOC Ethics Commission subsequently censured Dick Pound, the President of WADA and a member of the IOC, for his statements in the media that suggested wrongdoing by Armstrong.

Edited February 8, 2012 by scotty

[SwissVan]

The '99 retests had nothing to do with proving his guilt, but were used to test a new testing procedure. There were anonymously tested.

 

LOL yeah and they picked the texans samples randomly by accident..... hehehe

and then they found out who the "anonymous" samples belonged to.... harharhar

[TNT1]

LOL yeah and they picked the texans samples randomly by accident..... hehehe

and then they found out who the "anonymous" samples belonged to.... harharhar

 

Yeah. Contador's meat defence is more plausable.

[Tumbleweed]

So these guys (UCI) got it wrong when they claimed it was improper when in fact it was proper, just a different test procedure.

 

In October 2005, in response to calls from the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for an independent investigation, the UCI appointed Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman to investigate the handling of urine tests by the French national anti-doping laboratory, LNDD. Vrijman was head of the Dutch anti-doping agency for ten years; since then he has worked as a defense attorney defending high-profile athletes against doping charges.^[90] Vrijman's report cleared Armstrong because of improper handling and testing.^[92][93]The report said tests on urine samples were conducted improperly and fell so short of scientific standards that it was "completely irresponsible" to suggest they "constitute evidence of anything."^[

 

The outcome was accepted by IOC and Dick :Pound was bitch slapped for calling it a farce

 

The WADA rejected these conclusions stating "The Vrijman report is so lacking in professionalism and objectivity that it borders on farcical.".^[95] The IOC Ethics Commission subsequently censured Dick Pound, the President of WADA and a member of the IOC, for his statements in the media that suggested wrongdoing by Armstrong.

 

Yeah, Pound had his own agenda, and was at war with the UCI.

 

LOL yeah and they picked the texans samples randomly by accident..... hehehe

and then they found out who the "anonymous" samples belonged to.... harharhar

 

No one would've known who he was until a pesky French journo used a fancy bit of footwork to match the test manifests to the rider's name. I seem to recall - I actually read an 2005 copy of ProCycling just the other day about it (will look it up when I get home) - that the samples were identified because of irregular values that couldn't be proved by the testing procedures back in 1999. The lab didn't know whose samples they were. The suggestion that they did is almost as implausible as LA's suggestion that the EPO was added at a later point. What would the lab, which LA once lauded, stand to gain from proving Lance's guilt when the results couldn't be used to prove guilt in terms of procedure? Those results don't convince me that Lance doped, but they do add to an overwhelming body of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that he was juiced to the gills.

[nickc]

he UCI had those documents, and an investigative journalist, Damien Ressiot from l'Equipe, went to the UCI and said, "Can I have copies of Lance Armstrong's doping control forms from the '99 Tour?" Now, the UCI had to go to Lance Armstrong and ask his permission, which he gave them. Now, Lance Armstrong gave permission to the UCI to give these doping control forms to Damien Ressiot. Damien Ressiot took those forms, which have the athlete's name, obviously, and the sample number, so he matched the sample number with the results from the laboratory that had the sample number and the percentage of isoforms. And in that way he linked the percentage of isoforms with the number, the athlete's name, and in that way identified them as Lance Armstrong.

 

AS: Right. So the lab is carrying out these tests blindly, and you showed me this statistical study of the odds of them tampering and successfully framing Armstrong, and it was 1 in 300.

 

MA: There was only two conceivable ways that synthetic EPO could've gotten into those samples. One, is that Lance Armstrong used EPO during the '99 Tour, and we've since found out that there were teammates from US Postal in that '99 Tour that have since admitted using EPO while riding for US Postal in that Tour.

 

The other way it could've got in the urine was if, as Lance Armstrong seems to believe, the laboratory spiked those samples. Now, that's an extraordinary claim, and there's never ever been any evidence the laboratory has ever spiked an athlete's sample, even during the Cold War, where you would've thought there was a real political motive to frame an athlete from a different country. There's never been any suggestion that it happened.

 

However, Lance Armstrong made that claim. Now, it's very easy to go back and assess the possibility of that scenario. We know the laboratory could not have known which samples belonged to Lance Armstrong. And we also know from the results, how many of Lance Armstrong's samples had EPO in them, and when during the race it occurred. Now the odds of the laboratory randomly selecting Lance Armstrong's samples out of those 87 samples, and let's just do it conservatively, just 6 times, 6 times they got his samples correct out of 87 possible tubes, the odds of that occurring are at least 1 in 300.

 

So we come back to the original scenario. Either Lance Armstrong used EPO during the Tour, or the laboratory spiked his samples, and we know the probabilty of that happening was at least 1 in 300.

[Tumbleweed]

http://cyclismas.com...right-decision/

 

…but…

 

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/story/2012-02-08/Brennan-Lance-Armstrong-case-rolls-on-as-it-should/53016026/1

[TNT1]

http://cyclismas.com...right-decision/

 

…but…

 

http://www.usatoday....ould/53016026/1

 

"That evidence must now be considered," Howman said. "The federal government was never investigating doping. A lot of people seem to have gotten that wrong. Now that the U.S. Attorney has stopped doing his job, all that evidence should be handed over to anti-doping authorities to pursue it. There should be no impediment to it being shared. There is no pending trial where it's going to be used, so there's no reason for it not to be shared."

[GrumpyOldGuy]

I have to say, I see some similarities here between the LA case and Pantani.

 

Pantani was also at some stage under judicial investigation for drug abuse, but suddenly one day the investigating magistrate abandoned the investigation and closed the case, he was recorded as saying "the climate of the investigation had changed and was becoming very difficult, (meaning someone with political clout was hindering the investigation, and its widely thought to have been Silvio Berlusconi) so under those conditions he decided to leave on his own accord.

 

The case was never resumed and just petered out.

[Tumbleweed]

In the US, the judicial system, like its electoral system, is all about process rather than outcome.