Beastt:
That is the most intelligent post you have ever made.
I commend you.
No personal vendetta against LA personally. He is a metaphor for the TDF. The only man to win since 1) Marco Pantani (deseased at age 34) and 2) the 1998 Festina, TVM et al.. massive doping scandal.
Are we to believe that the sport has changed from 1998 when it was publicly, by chance, exposed as a trauma & anemia doping mess?
Not even Marco Pantani tested positive for drugs in any TDF---and he died just a few years after winning.
When you factor in the Cancer Community Survivor story, LA becomes EXEMPT from suspicion purely upon emotional grounds.
Can you imagine a better solution to the 1998 TDF than an EXEMPT Champion?
If LA has been doping all along, as many of his peers have admitted to------what a fraud that would be.
I my opinion, there is an institutional fraud. LA is but a single cog in that commercial motor.
LA did not invent the problem, but the problem comes with the job.
Beastt said:House, I'm not sure whether to commend you or pity you for trying. I spent months trying to suggest reason and logic to Flyer. It finally ended with him being the only one, on any of the 3 or 4 boards I frequent making it to my ignore list. He's still the only one. Do I hate Flyer? Hell, no! I don't even know him. But I do tend to hate what he stands for and that's the idea that anyone can be convicted or should be considered guilty based on suspicion.
Certainly there is reason to suspect Lance. There's reason to suspect every rider in pro-cycling. But I don't feel that because some dope and some have been caught that it's proper, correct or fair to automatically assume everyone is guilty or to assume anyone who hasn't been proven guilty to be guilty. They used to do that kind of thing where Kings ruled over the population. They still do in many dictatorial systems. I don't think we need to digress into that kind of system. Apparently Flyer wouldn't have a problem with it -- as long as he avoided being accused himself.
Assuming that because there is a lot of doping in cycling, that it automatically means that anyone winning and anyone riding is guilty makes about as much sense as the observation that sometimes it's the person pointing the finger who is only trying to remove suspicion from himself, and therefore, anyone displaying suspicion of another, must himself be guilty.
What Flyer has demonstrated here goes beyond a hatred of cheating and doping in particular. I don't think I've read a single post yet which supports doping and I sincerely hope I never do. What Flyer is illustrating is obssession along with what appears to be some kind of personal vendetta against Armstrong.
Is Armstrong doping? I don't know. I tend to feel he isn't. He's too high-profile to be able to blend in and stay undetected. But, there are techniques that make detection very difficult or completely impossible. So the possibility is always there. If he is, then he has more balls than brains because he could easily bow out now and hold a record that is sure to be maintained for at least 5-years, more likely decades. But instead, he's announced that he's going for seven.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion and these forums are wonderful as a tool for expressing, sharing and comparing those opinions. But when people convince themselves that their opinions, unsubstantiated by proof, are equivalent to fact, then I don't have a problem with someone attempting to point out their error. And when that fails, perhaps it's not a terrible thing to call them out and slap them down.
