If you’re a cheating athlete and you confess or point the finger at others, you can get reduced suspensions for your misdeeds, something Armstrong’s camp is accusing USADA of doing for other riders who’ll testify against him. (If you refuse to talk, your suspension could be lengthened.) Armstrong’s lawyers suggest that this amounts to illegal bribery."Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty." The USADA offering athletes a who snitch a reduced sentence isn't bribery, it's coersion. It's nasty, but it's both incredibly common AND (as far as I understand) legal.
Hamilton paints a picture of a testing cover-up at the 2001 Tour de Suisse, telling CBS that Armstrong told him that he failed a drug test there. The UCI, cycling's governing body, has denied there was any such cover-up, but another former teammate, Floyd Landis, made a similar allegation last year in letters to USA Cycling as federal officials began investigating whether Armstrong was involved in a doping operation while the team was receiving sponsorship money from the Postal Service.So no matter what you believe, it's conspiracies all the way down!
Important to note that Luis García del Moral, Pepe Martí & Michele Ferrari are not ghosts from a past era, they worked in sport until today.Martí was a trainer and Ferrari and del Moral were the team doctors; if you remember, Ferrari was the doc accused by Simeoni of providing him with doping products, which then caused the famous Armstrong-Simeoni feud. del Moral was the doc that Trent Lowe went to last year or the year before that got him and Matt White fired from the now-Garmin-Sharp-Barracuda team. And all three didn't fight the charges!
Dr. Michele Ferrari, already banned for life in Italy for alleged doping offenses, consulted with the US Postal Service team and Discovery Channel teams during Armstrong's seven-year Tour de France reign, USADA stated. The Italian was accused in this case of developing a mixture of testosterone and olive oil which was administered orally to help with recovery. He is also said to have advised riders on the use of EPO, of which he once famously said "is not dangerous, only its abuse. It's as dangerous as drinking ten litres of orange juice".posted by The Michael The at 6:27 PM on July 10, 2012 [1 favorite]
Ferrari is said to have helped riders to inject the drug intravenously to avoid having the EPO be detected in the urine test, as well as having assisted in blood doping. He provided riders with detailed training plans with codes indicating when EPO should be used and at what dosage.
Armstrong, as recently as last autumn, denied any involvement with Ferrari, stating that the Italian was a friend only - despite an international investigation that reportedly found otherwise.
Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, of Valencia, Spain, was the team physician for the USPS Cycling Team from 1999 through 2003. He was accused of helping cyclists including the USPS team members to carry out performance enhancing doping including blood transfusions as well as saline infusions to prevent the doping from being detected by blood value checks. Del Moral was also accused of administering EPO, testosterone, corticosteroids and human growth hormone, all of which are banned by the WADA code.
Del Moral was famously videotaped disposing of the USPS team's medical waste at the 2000 Tour de France, which journalists searched, finding packages of Actovegin, an extract of calf's blood. The incident was investigated by the French authorities, but was eventually closed without incident.
In 2011, a visit with Del Moral led Australian Trent Lowe to be sacked from the Garmin team along with his then-director Matt White, although Lowe insisted the visit was for a normal UCI health check.
Marti served as a trainer for the USPS and Discovery Channel teams from 1999-2007, and followed Bruyneel to the Astana Cycling Team. He was given a lifetime ban for delivering doping products "including EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone (hGH) and cortisone from Valencia, Spain to locations where the riders were living in Europe including Nice, France and Girona, Spain and at training camps and cycling races", and assisting with the administration of "EPO, saline infusions for avoiding detection by drug testing and in transfusing blood to riders".
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posted by exogenous at 11:48 AM on July 10, 2012 [1 favorite]