Lance Armstrong and Joseph Smith

[_Aristotle Smith]

I used to be a big cycling fan, both riding and watching the sport. I'll never forget the day I was shooting the bull with the owner of the local cycling shop, who I would ride with on Saturday mornings. We were talking about one of the big upcoming professional tours. The conversation went something like this:

Him: You know that all of the pros are doped up.

Me: Really? Even with all the testing?

Him: Every. last. one. of. them.

I learned about the history of cycling and figured out that he was probably right. But, I still held out hope that Lance Armstrong was the lone clean rider. Then Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton came out and I knew that Armstrong was a doper. The only real defense against them was that they were bitter and jealous of Lance Armstrong. That and Armstrong's constant denial of "I've never tested positive" (note the phrase was always carefully worded that way, he always was sure to emphasize that he tested clean above any denials of doping).

Because Lance was a hero, people kept wanting to believe. After all, his story was a really good story, provided the doping allegations were false. I kept saying in the back of my mind that there would need to be a smoking gun to get people to wake up, there had to be some testimony that was unimpeachable. I figure that if George Hincapie testified against Lance, that would be it. Hincapie and Armstrong were always best buds and Hincapie's popularity is almost entirely due to his riding with Lance on so many Tours de France.

Well, Hincapie has spilled the beans and admitted to doping, implicating Armstrong in the whole process. As an added bonus, several other witnesses in the know have come forward, including Johnathan Vaughters and Christian Vande Velde. Neither had anything to gain by confessing and neither is enemies with Armstrong.

And then I realized that as long as Lance continues to deny this, there are going to be a small core of people unable or unwilling to acknowledge the truth. The story of the cancer survivor who wins the most grueling sporting event on the planet is just too inspirational. The story must be almost mesmerizing to those who have experienced or are experiencing cancer. In a way it is cruel to tell the truth to those who for several years have flocked to Armstrong, to his Livestrong campaign, who have proudly worn yellow bracelets, and who have been inspired by someone not only beating cancer, but thriving.

And then I realize that no matter how much you tell people about Joseph Smith, there are always going to be a core of people unable or unwilling the acknowledge the truth. It is an inspirational story, at least the sanitized version that the LDS church teaches. Miraculous visions, endurance through persecution, victory in Nauvoo, followed by martyrdom are all so inspirational. It's almost cruel to tell people about polyandry and the Book of Abraham, not to mention several dozen other facts which muddies the sanitized version they have heard and prefer to keep on believing.

[_Sethbag]

I'm having a hard time being really upset about Lance Armstrong's doping. He still won those 7 tours.

Now, if you object and say that he won them by cheating, I must point out that if you're correct that "every. last. one. of. them." was cheating, then the playing field was level, and Lance still came out on top. If cheating was really as universal as you say, then Lance and his team were just playing within the context of the sport as it existed. Had they not cheated, they would have been at a disadvantage against all the other cyclists who were.

If it's true that they were all doping, then retroactively reassigning those wins from a decade or two ago most likely means that the wins are being retroactively reassigned to another rider who was probably also doping, and still came in behind Lance. What's just about that?

If it's so well known that an entire generation of cyclists at the pro level were all doped up, then going after a specific one like Lance really does look like a witch hunt. Better to find ways to stop it from happening in the future, but rewriting history isn't going to do anyone any good. It just muddies the waters.

[_Drifting]

Details of Doping Scheme Paint Armstrong as Leader

To start what was deemed a new and better doping strategy, Lance Armstrong and two of his teammates on the United States Postal Service cycling squad flew on a private jet to Valencia, Spain, in June 2000, to have blood extracted. In a hotel room there, two doctors and the team’s manager stood by to see their plan unfold, watching the blood of their best riders drip into plastic bags.

The next month, during the Tour de France, the cyclists lay on beds with those blood bags affixed to the wall. They shivered as the cool blood re-entered their bodies. The reinfused blood would boost the riders’ oxygen-carrying capacity and improve stamina during the second of Armstrong’s seven Tour wins.

The following day, Armstrong extended his overall lead with a swift ascent of the unforgiving and seemingly unending route up Mont Ventoux.

At a race in Spain that same year, Armstrong told a teammate that he had taken testosterone, a banned substance he called “oil.” The teammate warned Armstrong that drug-testing officials were at the team hotel, prompting Armstrong to drop out of the race to avoid being caught.

In 2002, Armstrong summoned a teammate to his apartment in Girona, Spain. He told his teammate that if he wanted to continue riding for the team he would have to follow the doping program outlined by Armstrong’s doctor, a known proponent of doping.

The rider said that the conversation confirmed that “Lance called the shots on the team,” and that “what Lance said went.”

Those accounts were revealed Wednesday in hundreds of pages of eyewitness testimony from teammates, e-mail correspondence, financial records and laboratory analyses released by the United States Anti-Doping Agency — the quasi-governmental group charged with policing the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Olympic sports.

During all that time, Armstrong was a hero on two wheels, a cancer survivor who was making his mark as perhaps the most dominant cyclist in history. But the evidence put forth by the antidoping agency drew a picture of Armstrong as an infamous cheat, a defiant liar and a bully who pushed others to cheat with him so he could succeed, or be vanquished.

“The U.S.P.S. Team doping conspiracy was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices,” the agency said. “A program organized by individuals who thought they were above the rules and who still play a major and active role in sport today.”

Armstrong, who retired from cycling last year, has repeatedly denied doping. On Wednesday, his spokesman said Armstrong had no comment.

When Armstrong decided in August not to contest the agency’s charges that he doped, administered doping products and encouraged doping on his Tour-winning teams, he agreed to forgo an arbitration hearing at which the evidence against him would have been aired, possibly publicly. But that evidence, which the antidoping agency called overwhelming and proof of the most sophisticated sports doping program in history, came out anyway.

Under the World Anti-Doping Code, the antidoping agency was required to submit its evidence against Armstrong to the International Cycling Union, which has 21 days from the receipt of the case file to appeal the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Once it makes its decision, the World Anti-Doping Agency has 21 days in which to appeal.

The teammates who submitted sworn affidavits — admitting their own doping and detailing Armstrong’s involvement in it — included some of the best cyclists of Armstrong’s generation: Levi Leipheimer, Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie, one of the most respected American riders in recent history. Other teammates who came forward with information were Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Floyd Landis, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie.

Their accounts painted an eerie and complete picture of the doping on Armstrong’s teams, squads that dominated the sport of cycling for nearly a decade.

“His goal led him to depend on EPO, testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his teammates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own,” the agency said in its 202-page report.

Drug use was casual among the top riders, and some shared EPO — the banned blood booster erythropoietin — as if borrowing cups of sugar from a neighbor. In 2005, Hincapie on two occasions asked Armstrong, “Any EPO I could borrow?” and Armstrong obliged without question. In 2003, Armstrong showed up at Hincapie’s apartment in Spain and had his blood drawn for a future banned blood transfusion, Hincapie said, adding that he was aware that Armstrong used blood transfusions from 2001 to 2005.

Kristin Armstrong, Armstrong’s former wife, handed out cortisone tablets wrapped tightly in foil to the team at the 1998 world championships.

Riders were given water bottles containing EPO as if they were boxed lunches. Jonathan Vaughters said the bottles were carefully labeled for them: “Jonathan — 5x2” meant five vials of 2,000 international units each of EPO were tucked inside. Once when Vaughters was in Armstrong’s room borrowing his laptop, Armstrong injected himself with EPO and said, now “that you are doing EPO too, you can’t go write a book about it.”

Landis was asked to baby-sit the blood inside the refrigerator of Armstrong’s apartment, just to make sure the electricity did not go out and the blood did not spoil.

Zabriskie, a five-time national time-trial champion, recalled serenading Johan Bruyneel, the longtime team manager, with a song about EPO, to the tune of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.”

“EPO all in my veins; Lately things just don’t seem the same; Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why; ’Scuse me while I pass this guy.”

Tyler Hamilton, another teammate, said Armstrong squirted a mixture of testosterone and olive oil into Hamilton’s mouth after one stage of the 1999 Tour.

At the same time the drug use was nonchalant, it was also carefully orchestrated by Armstrong, team management and team staff, the antidoping agency said.

“Mr. Armstrong did not act alone,” the agency said in its report. “He acted with the help of a small army of enablers, including doping doctors, drug smugglers, and others within and outside the sport and on his team.”

Armstrong relied on the Italian doctor Michele Ferrari for training and doping plans, several riders said. Armstrong continued to use Ferrari even after he publicly claimed in 2004 — and testified under oath in an insurance claims case — that he had severed all business ties with Ferrari.

The antidoping agency noted that Armstrong had sent payments of more than $1 million to Ferrari from 1996 through 2006, based on financial documents discovered in an Italian doping investigation.

Ferrari was a master at reducing the riders’ chances of testing positive, several cyclists said, so much so that Hincapie said he was not fearful he would test positive at the 2000 Tour because of Ferrari’s tricks.

As an example of the extreme care the team would take to avoid positive tests, the doctor suggested that the riders inject EPO directly into their veins instead of under their skin, which would lessen the possibility that the drug would be picked up by tests. He pushed the use of hypoxic chambers, which he said also reduced the effectiveness of the EPO test.

Bruyneel, Armstrong’s longtime team manager, and team doctors played a key role in the doping scheme. They would often indoctrinate young riders into the doping program, the riders said.

In his affidavit, Vande Velde recalled Bruyneel took over as the team director after the 1998 season and brought in the new team doctor, Luis Garcia del Moral, who was fond of giving riders injections.

“He would run into the room and you would quickly find a needle in your arm,” Vande Velde said, adding that when he would ask questions about the treatment, del Moral “would say things like I was ‘bloated’ or ‘blocked’ and needed ‘vitamins.’ ” Vande Velde added that “whatever he injected was always described as vitamins.”

In 1999, del Moral offered Vande Velde testosterone, and Vande Velde knowingly doped for the first time, using testosterone mixed in olive oil. The cyclist then discussed the program with Bruyneel because he was nervous about it. “He said not to worry if I felt bad at first, that I would feel good at the end,” Vande Velde said.

Eventually, Armstrong confronted Vande Velde for not closely following Ferrari’s training program. Armstrong said his good standing on the team would be jeopardized, Vande Velde said. Feeling threatened, Vande Velde stepped up his drug use.

Zabriskie was also anxious about using drugs and asked Bruyneel how safe it was to use them.

He barraged him with questions: Would he be able to have children? Would it cause any physical changes? Would he grow larger ears? Bruyneel’s response: “Everyone is doing it.”

The team’s doctors came up with fake maladies so that riders could receive an exemption to use drugs like cortisone, several riders said. When Armstrong tested positive for cortisone during the 1999 Tour, Armstrong produced a backdated prescription for it, for saddle sores. Hamilton said he knew that was a lie.

Riders said they felt that they needed to dope to stay at the top of the sport and stay on the team. Armstrong was instrumental in the hiring and firing of team personnel and pressured riders to stay on a doping program, the antidoping agency said.

The evidence made clear, the agency said, that Armstrong’s drug use was extensive, and that he also was the linchpin holding the team’s doping program together. It said that is why it barred him from Olympic sports for life and stripped him of his record seven Tour victories.

“It was not enough that his teammates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping program outlined for them or be replaced,” the antidoping agency said in its report. “He was not just a part of the doping culture on his team, he enforced and reinforced it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/sport ... d=all&_r=0

[_Sethbag]

Well it certainly looks like Lance was a master of deception and sneakiness and a rampant master doper. My point remains, however, which is that if literally everyone in cycling at the time was doing it, what does that mean that Lance was also doing it? What were the captains of all the other teams doing? What about the guy who came in 2nd place? Was he doping too? Were all the guys in the top 10 each Tour also doping? Top 20? Does it matter?

What does it mean if his 7 tour wins are reassigned to someone else who was probably doing all the same crap as Lance?

This reminds me of the baseball steroids scandals of recent years. If you go far enough back in baseball, a lot of guys were taking all kinds of crap. Then you pick and choose and invalidate a couple of records and guarantee that two or three guys will never make it into the Hall of Fame, but what does it mean that a lot of guys already in the Hall were probably doing all that same crap too?

I'm not in favor of taking drugs, by the way. I'm not in favor of steroids or anything else.

[_Drifting]

Well it certainly looks like Lance was a master of deception and sneakiness and a rampant master doper. My point remains, however, which is that if literally everyone in cycling at the time was doing it, what does that mean that Lance was also doing it? What were the captains of all the other teams doing? What about the guy who came in 2nd place? Was he doping too? Were all the guys in the top 10 each Tour also doping? Top 20? Does it matter?

What does it mean if his 7 tour wins are reassigned to someone else who was probably doing all the same crap as Lance?

This reminds me of the baseball steroids scandals of recent years. If you go far enough back in baseball, a lot of guys were taking all kinds of crap. Then you pick and choose and invalidate a couple of records and guarantee that two or three guys will never make it into the Hall of Fame, but what does it mean that a lot of guys already in the Hall were probably doing all that same crap too?

I'm not in favor of taking drugs, by the way. I'm not in favor of steroids or anything else.

You seem to be saying, in mitigation that because 'all' cyclists were cheating it was a level playing field and that Lance can still therefore be classed as the best.

Lance Armstrong wins the Tour De France 7 times because he was the best cheat...

I think that's hollow.

[_Kishkumen]

I think that's hollow.

Amen.

Either doping and other tricks are officially accepted as part of the sport, or they should not be tolerated.

What sucks is that people are inspired with a false sense of awe regarding the superhuman achievements of Armstrong that are, in the end, a misrepresentation of reality.

The guy was a master doper as much as he was a master cyclist.

To pretend he was simply the latter is bogus.

[Guest]

I'm having a hard time being really upset about Lance Armstrong's doping. He still won those 7 tours.

I'm having a hard time being upset about Joseph Smith's polygamy and the Book of Abraham. He still restored the priesthood power and established God's one true church.

My point was to draw the parallels between Joseph Smith and Lance Armstrong. I guess the apologetics also work the same.

ETA: Just in case it wasn't clear, that first paragraph above is sarcasm.

[_Aristotle Smith]

One other point. I mainly wanted to draw the parallels between how people react to learning about Joseph Smith and about how they react to Lance Armstrong. I think there is a a very emotional element involved in being told your hero is not who you thought he/she was. I think this is something that we apostates easily forget. We can forget just how hard it is to process that, and that probably accounts for a large portion of the denial among TBMs. It was a call to be a bit more understanding and sympathetic.

There are more sinister parallels as well. For example, it's clear that Lance's tactic to keeping this stuff "secret" was not to engage in it himself and tell nobody. His plan was to make sure his entire team was implicated so that everyone would feel guilty and be scared to come forward. It's a great lesson in human psychology that sometimes the best secrets are the ones that are spread widely. By involving others he was also able to run a better operation. He could openly transport his drugs among his team mates. He had a built in network of people who could tell him when to drop out of races and help him steer clear of problems. Had Lance tried to do this on his own, without involving his team manager or team mates, he likely would have been busted years ago.

The parallel to Joseph Smith is polygamy. He tried to keep polygamy secret with Fanny Alger and it blew up in his face. It's hard to keep a big secret like that without involving others in the operation. By the time he got to Nauvoo he had learned his lesson. He made sure the inner circle was fully on board with polygamy. By doing this he was more easily able to procure more wives, sneak around to visit them, and keep the whole thing within the inner circle.

[_Sethbag]

I'm having a hard time being really upset about Lance Armstrong's doping. He still won those 7 tours.

I'm having a hard time being upset about Joseph Smith's polygamy and the Book of Abraham. He still restored the priesthood power and established God's one true church.

My point was to draw the parallels between Joseph Smith and Lance Armstrong. I guess the apologetics also work the same.

Let me clarify a little here. I'm not happy to find out that Lance Armstrong was a rampant cheater. I'm terribly disappointed by it.

What I'm trying to say is that if you acknowledge that the era in which Lance Armstrong and his team won the 7 tours was rife with cheating, to the point where most insiders acknowledge that "everyone" was doing it, then I'm not sure I see the point of a Lance-specific witch hunt, stripping the titles, and reassigning them to someone else who was probably just as bad a cheater as Lance was.

It would be like saying that since Joseph Smith has been shown to be a false prophet, we'll default back to obeying and following the Pope, notwithstanding the Pope is certainly just as false.

In my view, as far as the Lance Armstrong cheating thing goes, is that if everyone back then really was cheating, then either you just move on and try to eliminate future cheating, or you have to discredit the entire era of cycling.

You seem to be saying, in mitigation that because 'all' cyclists were cheating it was a level playing field and that Lance can still therefore be classed as the best.

Lance Armstrong wins the Tour De France 7 times because he was the best cheat...

I think that's hollow.

Sure it's hollow, but it's also reality. Lance cheated, his opposition cheated, and in a playing field composed mostly of cheaters, Lance's team came out on top. It may suck, and we wish it weren't so, but apparently that's the reality of it. So what is an effective remedy for crap that happened 15 years ago? To re-write history? How is re-assigning a 15-year old Tour de France title to the team that came in 2nd 15 years ago, and which was almost certainly also cheating their asses off, any less hollow?

[_Sethbag]

The parallel to Joseph Smith is polygamy. He tried to keep polygamy secret with Fanny Alger and it blew up in his face. It's hard to keep a big secret like that without involving others in the operation. By the time he got to Nauvoo he had learned his lesson. He made sure the inner circle was fully on board with polygamy. By doing this he was more easily able to procure more wives, sneak around to visit them, and keep the whole thing within the inner circle.

There's no doubt that getting Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, William Clayton, and others of his inner circle involved in their own practice of polygamy kept them firmly in the "defend Joseph in this practice at all costs" camp, which helped him get away with even more egregious shenanigans than he had done previously. There's no doubt about it. I totally see the parallel with Lance's getting his teammates involved in the cheating, which forced them to defend Lance in it at all costs.

I think the argument with Lance Armstrong is kind of weak to me because I acknowledge that the awe and respect for his team's achievements is entirely a manmade thing with no "eternal" consequences. So I'm able to say hey, he lied his ass off, cheated his ass off, and was more doped up than Lindsay Lohan at Club 54 on a Friday night, but so were his rivals, and in this context he handed them their asses. The only alternative, to me, is to just dismiss an entire era of cycling and say that pretty much everything that happened over a 20 year period or whatever should just be ignored because it was all tained. I'm not sure how useful that is.

The difference is that Joseph Smith wasn't claiming the Tour de France. He was claiming that God himself deputized him and gave him the authority to command the rest of us. If he was lying in this claim, then his legitimacy to command in God's name utterly collapses. I don't think it's a useful defense to say yeah, but the Pope wasn't true either, nor the Methodist minister in town.