Rocco wrote:Either he's the greatest racer ever to win without doping while everyone else is cheating, or he's the best cheater ever since everyone else seems to get caught.
As Gacho stated.. he already failed tests before in 2005, but he fought it like crazy / just made it confusing so everyone forgot about it
Wiki for Convenience
On August 23, 2005, L'Équipe, a major French daily sports newspaper, reported on its front page under the headline "le mensonge Armstrong" ("The Armstrong Lie") that 6 urine samples taken from the cyclist during the prologue and five stages of the 1999 Tour de France, frozen and stored since at "Laboratoire national de dépistage du dopage de Châtenay-Malabry" (LNDD), had tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO) in recent retesting conducted as part of a research project into EPO testing methods.[75][76] Armstrong immediately replied on his website, saying, "Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and tomorrow's article is nothing short of tabloid journalism. The paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself. They state: 'There will therefore be no counter-exam nor regulatory prosecutions, in a strict sense, since defendant's rights cannot be respected.' I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs."[77] In October 2008, the AFLD gave Armstrong the opportunity to have samples taken during the 1998 and 1999 Tours de France retested.[78] Armstrong immediately refused, saying, "the samples have not been maintained properly." Head of AFLD Pierre Bordry stated: "Scientifically there is no problem to analyze these samples – everything is correct" and "If the analysis is clean it would have been very good for him. But he doesn't want to do it and that's his problem."[79] However, according to the results of an investigative report by Emile Vrijman (a Dutch lawyer and the former head of the Dutch anti-doping agency, which he headed for ten years), who was appointed by the UCI to head an independent investigations into the LNDD lab’s findings, it was determined that the analysis of the urine samples were conducted improperly and that they “did not satisfy any standard for doping control testing.”[80][81] Vrijman’s report went on to state that handling and testing of the samples fell so far short of scientific standards, and that “the process that generated those results and the subsequent reports was so deficient” that it was "completely irresponsible" to suggest that the results could "constitute evidence of anything,” and cleared Armstrong of any wrongdoing.[81][82][83][84] But WADA rejected these conclusions stating "The Vrijman report is so lacking in professionalism and objectivity that it borders on farcical."