Monday, March 22, 2004
More on Lance
Lance Armstrong fires back against Gwen Knapp's column from a few weeks ago. Since we discussed Knapp's column here, it's only fair to cover Armstrong's response.
The first thing to note is an error on the part of Knapp. She identified Dr. Michele Ferrari as Armstrong's trainer, while his role is better described as consultant. This is important because Ferrari has been implicated in a drugs scandal. While it is important to get every fact straight, it should still be noted that one of Armstrong's medical advisors has a strong taint. Armstrong does a bit of talking about innocent until proven guilty, which is exactly Knapp's point; Armstrong's medical advisors and Armstrong are getting the benefit of the doubt, while Bonds and oter baseball players are not.
The second point he makes is about the reliability of drug testing in cycling. He claims that he was tested 24 times last year, and that he may be the most tested athlete on the planet. But that's the heart of the problem. Despite being the most tested athlete on the planet, there is still a large segment of the French population that believes that he's simply found a way around the tests. Many people believe the same thing about the NFL (most of the people in baseball accused of steroid use because of size are too small for football). If baseball put in a more stringent testing routine, there would be a part of the population that would be willing to believe that Bonds injects clean urine into his bladder, rather than the threory that he's clean.
The interesting thing about Armstrong's response is what it didn't cover. He did not dispute that in the past 13 months 7 cyclists have died under mysterious circumstances. He didn't deny that cycling would appear to have a drug problem. This would contradict his assertion that testing isn't a joke. If he had some explanation as to why so many world-class athletes were dropping dead, I'd find his column a little more compelling.
posted by David 2:40 PM
