It’s tough to decide which dumb statement to pick apart today – there’s so much choice. But in the end, it’s hard not to pick Ferrari. As cyclingnews points out, Ferrari wrote on his blog:
“Therefore Armstrong would have achieved the same level of performance without resorting to doping, also thanks to his talent which was far superior to the rivals of his era.”
So Ferrari is telling everybody that he’s a hack, that all the stuff he prescribed to Lance doesn’t work. Basically, he charged more than a million bucks for a placebo effect. You can’t make up stuff like this, can you?
Although it isn’t that far-fetched. Some experts say that four out of the five drugs Lance took were useless, only the EPO wasn’t.
gerard.cc 
January 25, 2013 at 17:02
Imagine ferrari saying:
“Listen, you can win the tour either by going to altitude or take epo and other drugs that we dont know all the sideeffects of yet. I propose you take the drugs, what do you think?”
January 25, 2013 at 17:04
Yep, of course staying at a hotel for a few weeks will cost a couple thousand bucks, the other stuff I can help you with for a million.
January 25, 2013 at 17:29
This is why EPO is banned. The unwary cyclist might be suckered into paying a huge amount of money and taking risks with their health for no increase in performance at all. Poor Lance – paying all that money for no actual gain and then being stripped of his titles later. :)
January 25, 2013 at 17:44
The real, effective product was orange juice.
January 25, 2013 at 18:44
I’d like to hear Ferrari’s theory on how you can get a “rest day bump” during a grand tour by going to altitude.
January 25, 2013 at 20:52
Cortisone is far from useless, it provides an instantaneous & miraculous cure for ITBS. The whole Lance issue could do with more accuracy and context.
January 25, 2013 at 21:22
Which makes it useless if you don’t suffer from ITBS. They’re not saying it is a drug that has no purpose, only that as a standard part of a doping package, it’s not necessarily useful.
January 26, 2013 at 06:13
Yikes. “If you don’t suffer from ITBS, then cortisone is useless [for an athlete].” Did you really mean to say that?
January 25, 2013 at 21:06
I wonder if Lance will ask for a refund for being duped?
January 25, 2013 at 22:22
definition of “expert”: a drip under pressure.
January 26, 2013 at 02:00
“some experts” doesn’t equal all experts.
Stuart Stevens said that all of the drugs he tried (HGH, EPO, testosterone, steroids) worked to more-of-less some level when he wrote about it for Outside magazine.
Also, maybe Lance wasn’t doing Clenbuterol in the off-season as well as his blood doping when he came back, which is how Contador et. al. beat him up. Maybe Ferrari was behind the times by then.
January 26, 2013 at 09:17
And “not far-fetched” doesn’t mean “definitely”.
January 26, 2013 at 02:34
There appears to be some proof that placebo’s can help performance.
So if your coach gives you sugar pills and tells you they are steroids are you doping? You had the intent but of course sugar pills are not (yet) on WADA’s list.
In theory you and your coach may fall afoul of the parts of WADA’s code that prohibits aiding and abetting. Is your coach aiding you if he knows it is just a sugar pill? Are you guilty if you just think you are guilty?
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) comes to mind.
January 26, 2013 at 08:51
The ethics of studying the performance enhancing effects of these substances prevent much in the way of concrete proof. Tough to do a blind study when the doped guys wipe the floor with the subjects getting sucrose. Ferrari’s not admitted doping BigTex so why wouldn’t he make a claim like this one? Though altitude tents are banned in Italy, hasn’t their use been a good tool to justify odd blood values by dopers in the past?
One thing’s for sure, the cheaters will always be one step ahead of the testers…all we can do is make that step shorter and shorter while catching and prosecuting the ones who are eventually caught. Changing the risk/benefit ratio to the point where only a few cheat (and are eventually nabbed, even if years later) is about the best we can hope for in the battle, no? All this is AFTER the sanctioning body folks are replaced with officials who are interested in cleaning up the sport rather than simply avoiding/managing scandals…as has been the case now and….well…forever.
January 26, 2013 at 16:18
No, Ferrari is not telling everybody that he’s a hack, because he apparently never saw any doping practice from Lance Armstrong and he never asked Ferrari for information about doping. If you read his blog post, Ferrari supposedly made his conclusion based on the methods “reported by several teammates”.
January 27, 2013 at 11:49
Hey Gerard,
Ferrari should not be the guy putting things into perspective for obvious reasons. Read the book of Hamilton and you will understand that the biggest contribution of Ferrari to “his’ athletes performance was his systematic approach: every detail should be in place. Hamilton mentioned his weight as very important and also the moments on which he was pushing himself to and over the limit on training (so not just doing that but very carefully plan on what times in his season building process he should do so). And yes there were the substances by which an athlete could do more than most.
The most significant and abject aspect is Ferrari’s approach of an athlete as a lab-rat; lacking the notion of humanity and ethics. Much the same way as a plastic surgeon gives a playmate FF cups
And in that perspective he is right: Armstrong was the best
January 28, 2013 at 10:55
hi Maarten, sorry to disappoint you but I am not sure we disagree. I don’t think there’s anything in your reply that contradicts with my statement?
Unless you are trying to say that aside from the doping stuff, Ferrari was also the best in his understanding of proper training methods. There I fear we don’t know enough, but his methods don’t seem to be cutting edge 21st century thinking. Maybe he once was the world’s foremost expert in that field, but not anymore (although certainly doping could hide that fact). And I am not sure being methodical alone warrants his price tag. But of course, if riders want to pay a guy to properly keep track of everything they do, that’s their good right.
January 29, 2013 at 23:16
Just more evidence of how rampant doping is in other sports, such as baseball, but cycling remains the media’s whipping boy and is viewed as the dirtiest sport:
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2013-01-31/news/a-rod-and-doping-a-miami-clinic-supplies-drugs-to-sports-biggest-names/full/
February 9, 2013 at 16:24
I don’t think it’s in The Scret Race, but Dan Coyle has pointed out that these “expert” doctors only got into doping because they were hacks who couldn’t cut it with a traditional practice.