Lance Armstrong: A Fallen Hero

By Ernesto Rodriguez Uribe 

The anti-doping agency of the United States (known by its acronym in English as USADA) issued a report on October 10, revealing one of the biggest doping scandals in world cycling.

Foto tomado por Juan Martín de la Torre

In the report of more than 1,000 pages the USADA revealed the techniques that the U.S. postal service team used, of which Lance Armstrong was a member, to provide to their cyclists banned substances. Testimonials that are in research are so revealing that President of the USADA, Travis Tygart,  is not needed to present more evidence to confirm that Armstrong and his team used “doping” for a long time.

To date, eleven members of the US Postal Service team have declared and accepted that they used banned substances to improve their performance for training and competition. One of the most important testimonies was the one who introduced Tyler Hamilton in his book The Secret Race published in September this year. The book includes in depth details on how they obtained drugs, how they stored them and how they injected them.

A drug used to improve performance is the EPO, a hormone that stimulates the formation of red blood cells and that, according to Hamilton, makes the difference between winning a Tour or be in the midst of the gang. This drug only may be discovered in the body of the athlete a few hours after having been eaten, period that they called the glow; so in order for not being discovered the only thing the he had to do was to consume it a few hours in advance so that no one realized after the training or competition.

The desire to be number one and always be among the best has made that cyclists choose these types of substances prohibited to obtain number one position. In an interview that Hamilton gave to the BBC World, he told the news agency that when he started in the sport he never imagined reaching the point of doping himself, but when it was rising and was at best teams, he realized that “doping” exists from long time ago and all the teams members used to dope.

The case of Armstrong has emerged around the world, not only because of what he represents to sports but because the techniques discovered in this research showed that human ingenuity has no limits.

According to Hamilton, Armstrong sent his gardener to travel on a motorcycle so he could carry the EPO. He also pointed out that then all became more sophisticated, they made trips to Spain so a doctor draw them blood with EPO.  Before they inject the blood on the riders during the races it was stored in cold bags, which increased the dripping blood and as a result the rider´s performance was much better during the race.

Dr. Enrique Ponce de León, medical gastroenterologist and former Director of Fundación Cardioinfantil consider that any kind of “doping” is harmful to health, especially the anabolics and steroids because they hipertrofian organs. This makes  that the bodies will have the best performance as an immediate result, but in the long run, they will produce irreparable damages in the body and sometimes  they can lead to death.

The International Cycling Union (UCI acronym in English) and the USADA have suspended Armstrong's for life and removed the titles that he won since 1998 including seven Tour de France  Titles.