Next thing you know they'll take steroids and other stuff like Olympic athletes ... oh wait ... never mind.

Read the post before jerking your knee, Will.

And I thought sitting on ball bearings with my testicles was just a fun thing to do. I'm an athlete, too!

@2 - I did read the post. You have no ideas the lengths people go to to get Olympic Gold.

Why should paralympic competitors be any different? They're humans, they have the same motivations and desires any human would have.

You don't win the Tour de France by wanting to win it - you win it by extreme methods. Olympic scandals are moderately common - and the Paralympics should be similar.

the olympics are gross

@4 - You win the Tour de France by losing a testicle to cancer, then come back to beat the most juiced athletes in the world by large margins, all while pretending that you aren't using large amounts of exogenous testosterone to replace the 50% drop in endogenous testosterone.

Who knew Cheryl Crow could raise natural test levels so dramatically?

@4, the post says "testing for steroids". Then you came and said "next thing you know, they'll take steroids".

That's what the fucking post is ABOUT. You fail at reading comprehension.

You have a prepared bolus of faux expertise you wish to regurgitate for us, and you're going to puke it out whether it makes any sense in the context of the post or not. That's how you roll, isn't it?

Fnarf, you are a tool and a douchebag. For examples, see every post you've ever made.

Wow. Life catches up to Southpark, though that was the special olympics, so maybe we aren't quite there yet. Der.

@8, I'll put mine up against yours anytime, sweetheart. They're not all searchlights across the sky, but I've got a thousand posts that outshine your best 40-watt effort.

What Will is doing here is akin to posting on one of Dan's Youth Pastor posts, "next thing you know, he'll turn out to be a youth pastor".

Fnarf, I heart you, but you're not reading Will's pathetic attempt at the "oops, I didn't read far enough" joke and taking him too seriously.

Will, please join the second decade of the 21st century.

Or you can both keep up with the playground hair-pulling, because it makes my day.

@11, no, I think you're misreading him. He's deadly serious; he doesn't have a funny molecule in his body. His "oh, wait...never mind" was in reference to his insider's awareness of "extreme methods" at the Paralympics, not to the quoted text.

His posts are ALWAYS about his insider's awareness. He treats Slog the same way he treats the Times and the P-I blogs, as places to attempt to accrue respect for his special knowledge, without reference to the blog community at all, because he has no conception of community. We exist only to hear him, not the other way around.

See his followup @4 for evidence. Even if I was the stupidest person on earth, "you have no ideas the lengths" would make no sense in response to Charles's post, because it SAYS what lengths, right there in the quote. But Will sees only "oh, an opportunity to pretend I know something insidery about the Paralympics".

@6: Lance Armstrong has been tested constantly throughout his career -- he is more closely scrutinized than any other cyclist in the world -- and he has never tested positive for banned substances. If he'd used anything illegal to win those seven races, authorities would not have missed it. So you're talking out of your ass.

And I object to Will in Seattle's insinuating statement that you only win the Tour de France "by extreme methods". Armstrong -- seven wins, zero evidence of doping. Those are facts. Deal with it.

@13, it's not quite as simple as that. These substances aren't just something you test for directly. A lot of it has to do with correctly managing your drug cycles; it's possible with a highly skilled doctor and carefully calibrated doping and training regimen to get a big benefit from dope without being detected. That's why they test at random times.

Another problem is that what Lance is primarily accused of using is a natural body product, not a drug. And the way they test for it is simply by ratios of two different testosterones, on the theory that the arbitrarily set limit is impossible to surpass naturally but also impossible to derive benefit from naturally. That assumption is less than proven.

Lastly, the dopers will always be miles ahead of the testers. Already many illegal substances, like HGH, are impossible to test for at all, and there are tons of fancy designer doping agents arriving that can't likewise.

As for Lance, it's true: he's never been caught. But his longtime association with a doping doctor who HAS been caught is very suspicious, to say the least.

Frankly, I don't care. There's no dope in the universe that can make riding the Tour de France easy. No matter what you're on you have to have unbelievable heart and skill. If you win, you're the best, and deserve the prize, whatever you've got in your bloodstream.

@14, every cyclist at the Tour de France games their blood ratios. Every single one. And even if they never touch a drop of a banned substance, training for a race like that is indeed extreme beyond belief. Endurance bike racing is basically a chemical equation, and is based on tweaking the body's bio-chemical functioning to the maximum. You can't just gobble dope and beat the field; a cyclist who didn't train properly but was allowed to dope to the gills wouldn't come close to even finishing the race, let alone winning it.

Notice also the non-doping techniques used by the paralympians -- breaking their toes, crushing their balls. Body chemistry through natural means. How do you test for that?

Man Fnarf, get off the internet and get a fucking life...

@16, yes, but I was objecting to what I saw as an insinuation that every winner of the Tour was breaking the rules. Maybe that's not what Will meant -- who the fuck knows what he meant? It's all in his head.

What really gets me is how much these doping scandals have tarnished pro cycling in the public's mind -- regardless of evidence, every winner is assumed to be doping -- while other sports get away with all kinds of shit because up until very recently little if any testing is done. Suspicion of Armstrong in particular really bugs me, because as far as the moral high ground goes, he knocks most pro athletes out of the goddamn park. I think he deserves more respect.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, I'd just like to say fuck Greg LeMond. Because that needs to be said more often.

@17: Yet you're taking the time to post a boring, trollish comment... I diagnose a serious irony deficiency. Get help.

@18, Armstrong is the greatest cyclist of modern times, dope or no dope. I really don't see how even his worst critics can't acknowledge that. The only guy I think is even on the podium with him is Eddy Merckx, who was from a different era, before even heart-rate monitors. Merckx was the culmination of the go-like-hell school, and he not only surpassed everyone but surpassed them by unimaginable lengths. That's not possible today; science has taken over.

I personally DO assume that all cyclists dope in one way or another, and I don't give a shit. I don't care about moral high grounds. I care about amazing performances. The guy who finishes 180th in the TdF is an amazing athlete.

Lance was a Top 30 cyclist before cancer. He loses a testicle, necessarily reducing his natural testosterone levels by roughly 50%, then comes back and magically becomes the greatest cyclist ever. Find me another cancer survivor who came back from multiple surgeries, chemo & radiation to become almost superhuman. It's absolutely impossible, especially after age 30 or so.

All the doping in other sports has educated some of us who care about performance enhancers and how to spot obvious usage. Others like to pretend that Santa still exists and the good guys always wear white hats. Maybe those yellow wristbands exert some sort of delusional force on the wearers.

Barry Bonds never failed a steroid test either*, yet he became the greatest baseball hitter ever after age 35, when most players are retiring. It's pretty well documented how that happened.

Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, but flies like the fucking Concord despite only half the wing span of other ducks? Probably not a natural duck.

*-Bonds failed a drug test, but it was for speed, not juice.

@21: What the fuck are you talking about? Armstrong has been a formidable athlete since he was a kid. He was winning major races and taking stage wins in the Tour in his early 20s, well before the cancer hit. He was champion material, and everyone knew it.

You seem to be underestimating the power of serious training. My partner started honing his training methods and using a power meter a couple of years ago, and he's improving like crazy, beating guys way younger than him -- and he's in his forties. He's reaching levels he never thought possible, and there's nothing "magical" about it.

Look, I don't know the secrets of Armstrong's soul, and neither do you. But as far as I'm concerned, he's innocent until proven guilty.

And as far as "those yellow wristbands exert[ing] some sort of delusional force" -- it's called gratitude, jerk.

"Lance Armstrong .... and he has never tested positive for banned substances."

Yes he has. Six samples tested positive. Also remember that many of the drugs he is accused of taking were not tested for while he was racing. The dopers are always ahead of the curve. Only stupid dopers get caught. And all cyclist who specialize in 3 week grand tours dope. All of them.

"The only guy I think is even on the podium with him is Eddy Merckx,"

Eddy Merckx was the greatest cyclist ever. Period. Lance was a great Tour de France rider. That is really all you can say about him. He was not a great Grand Tour guy, because he never contested the Giro or the Vuelta during his prime. Those races, however, did not suit him and he would not have won. The climbs on the Tour are not as steep. Eddie won everything. He won 3 week tours and one day classics. He could out sprint, out climb and out time trial. He did not sit behind his team for 2 and a half weeks and then use the time trials and a long climb to win. He attacked everybody, every where. Nobody has the results Eddie has and never will.

Eddie has 28 Classic wins, 9 grand Tours ( including 9 Points and Mountain classifications), 13 other stage races, 3 world titles, 17 six-day races (track), 3 European track championships,... and the list goes on.

To say that Eddie might be on the podium with Lance is just idiotic. Lance isn't fit to hold Eddies chamois pad.

@23: "Yes he has. Six samples tested positive."

When has Armstrong tested positive in a case when he was not subsequently cleared? Answer me that. Otherwise, he only "tested positive", which is why when he says he has never doped, no one can dispute him with evidence.

"Also remember that many of the drugs he is accused of taking were not tested for while he was racing."

(?!?) That is an accusation without evidence of guilt!

"Eddy Merckx was the greatest cyclist ever. Period."

Yes, Eddy Merckx was fucking amazing. And... he doped. With evidence.