Has Lance Fallen From Grace? - NOT in My Book!

Greetings:

I just heard the national news.  It's now official.  Lance Armstrong has been, or soon will be, stripped of his seven medals for the Tour de France.  And he will be stripped of his Olympic Medal.  Why?  He's just tired of fighting the financial might and power of the US Anti-Doping Agency, the USADA.  This is a total abuse of the power of the USADA.  They are trying to force Lance to prove his innocence rather than proving his guilt.

Even a federal judge has said  “The USADA’s conduct raises serious questions about whether its real interest in charging Armstrong is to combat doping, or if it is acting according to less noble motives.”  If a Federal Judge can say this why can't someone come out and get Lance off the hook?  This is totally insane!!

This man, this American icon, this French idol, this North Texas star, this Dallas/Plano home-town boy, didn't just suddenly become a great bike rider who popped up on the world stage.  He started before high school riding bicycles in road racing events.  He worked his buns off.  He defeated testicular cancer along the way and started a family.  

Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France not five times, which no one else had ever done before, not six times, but seven times!  Not just seven times but seven times in a row!!  No one will ever do that again!  Never!  And someone at the USADA just can't believe that a man can do that and not be on dope.  Idiots!!

And here's the deal:  Lance Armstrong never, EVER failed a drug test after any of the stages of the Tour de France.  EVER!!  Not on any of the races that he ever raced during any point of his career did he EVER fail a drug test.  No one ever accused Lance of using drugs until later in his career and even then they were totally unfounded.  The Washington Post carried a lot of print on this - check out Sally Jenkins continued rant against the USADA and her quotes from the Federal Judges against the USADA as well.  It's enough to make you sick.  

The world needs to rise up and bring the USADA to account for itself for its actions on this and other actions that is has done in the past.  The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) — which is supposed to be where athletes can appeal, only they never, ever win — that it’s hard to know where to begin. American athletes have lost 58 of 60 cases before the CAS. Would you want to go before that court?  This is insane!  

Quoting from the Washing Post article:  "Anyone who thinks an athlete has a fair shot in front of CAS should review the Alberto Contador case. Contador was found to have a minuscule, insignificant amount of clenbuterol in his urine during the 2010 Tour de France. After hearing 4,000 pages of testimony and debate, CAS acknowledged that the substance was too small to have been performance-enhancing and that its ingestion was almost certainly unintentional.  Therefore he was guilty. He received a two-year ban.  CAS’s rationale? 'There is no reason to exonerate the athlete so the ban is two years,' one member of the panel said."

Sorry, but the CAS is just totally insane.  

LiveSTRONG
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