[Other Sport] Lance Armstrong

[Lenny Rider]

This is probably like posting the Beatles have split up, but whilst in lockdown and the subsequent non appeal of the boozer I'm watched a lot of documentaries and a theatrical release, The Program, regarding the career of Lance Armstrong.

Not really being into cycling and specifically the Tour at the time, it all passed me by to a degree but having watched everything You Tube, Amazon, BBC iplayer and Netflix has to offer on the subject, I can't believe not only the brass neck and brazenness of the bloke in his denials of the allegations, but the way he treated his fellow riders and support staff throughout the scandal and afterwards.

He is IMHO the biggest cheat in the history of sport and a top three contender for Sports All Time A1 C***.

If you've got some time to kill, I strongly recommend you get on the various platforms and view what's on offer.

He's still a multi millionaire which rides a horse and cart right through the old adage that cheats never prosper.

 

[big nuts]

I’m in agreement with you. Right up there with McGleish & Griffiths in my book.

If you enjoyed the documentaries, I’d recommend this book

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Deadly-Sins-Pursuit-Armstrong/dp/1471127559

The journalist David Walsh was on to him early and it shows the brazen, ruthless nature of Armstrong and how he tries to destroys Walsh’s career.

The guy is a grade 1 **** without any question.

 

[Weststander]

He was a cheat (and a bully) in a sport full to rafters in that long era with doping cheats. Systematically orchestrated by teams and corrupt doctors.

Many German, Italian, Spanish and French. Eventually and often too late, many were caught or came clean. Household names.

To win Grand Tours in the 90’s and 00’s was quite possibly impossible without blood doping and/or performance enhancing drugs.

 

[Palacefinder General]

He was a cheat (and a bully) in a sport full to rafters in that long era with doping cheats. Systematically orchestrated by teams and corrupt doctors.

Many German, Italian, Spanish and French. Eventually and often too late, many were caught or came clean. Household names.

To win Grand Tours in the 90’s and 00’s was quite possibly impossible without blood doping and/or performance enhancing drugs.

Exactly, LA was definitely of dubious character, but it has to be seen in the context of a sport where it was prevalent, from Eddy Merckx on down. Armstrong was a very good rider, but all that’s lost in the inevitable shit storm. Would have been interesting to know how he’d have fared riding clean on an all clean tour.

 

[jeremy fisher]

I've just finished watching the documentary on the iplayer.

It's a fascinating watch.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p08s1hc4/lance

 

[blue-shifted]

Exactly, LA was definitely of dubious character, but it has to be seen in the context of a sport where it was prevalent, from Eddy Merckx on down. Armstrong was a very good rider, but all that’s lost in the inevitable shit storm. Would have been interesting to know how he’d have fared riding clean on an all clean tour.

Which is the problem with a sport riddled with cheating. Nobody will ever know

 

[BNthree]

Seems the reason is disliked within cycling isn't the doping so much but rather the petty vindictive bullying and unrepentantness he displays still. He comes across as a sociopath/psychopath in his personality.

 

[blue-shifted]

This is probably like posting the Beatles have split up, but whilst in lockdown and the subsequent non appeal of the boozer I'm watched a lot of documentaries and a theatrical release, The Program, regarding the career of Lance Armstrong.

Not really being into cycling and specifically the Tour at the time, it all passed me by to a degree but having watched everything You Tube, Amazon, BBC iplayer and Netflix has to offer on the subject, I can't believe not only the brass neck and brazenness of the bloke in his denials of the allegations, but the way he treated his fellow riders and support staff throughout the scandal and afterwards.

He is IMHO the biggest cheat in the history of sport and a top three contender for Sports All Time A1 C***.

If you've got some time to kill, I strongly recommend you get on the various platforms and view what's on offer.

He's still a multi millionaire which rides a horse and cart right through the old adage that cheats never prosper.

Could you name three ahead of him? Surely Lance is way out there on his own. I suppose there are one or two nonces

 

[Braggfan]

This is probably like posting the Beatles have split up, but whilst in lockdown and the subsequent non appeal of the boozer I'm watched a lot of documentaries and a theatrical release, The Program, regarding the career of Lance Armstrong.

Not really being into cycling and specifically the Tour at the time, it all passed me by to a degree but having watched everything You Tube, Amazon, BBC iplayer and Netflix has to offer on the subject, I can't believe not only the brass neck and brazenness of the bloke in his denials of the allegations, but the way he treated his fellow riders and support staff throughout the scandal and afterwards.

He is IMHO the biggest cheat in the history of sport and a top three contender for Sports All Time A1 C***.

If you've got some time to kill, I strongly recommend you get on the various platforms and view what's on offer.

He's still a multi millionaire which rides a horse and cart right through the old adage that cheats never prosper.

In my opinion he is completely at odds with everything sport stands for. When you compare it to notions of fair play and things like “the spirit of cricket”, it just completely alien. Lance Armstrong’s behaviour is completely unfathomable and abhorrent.

There was a time when people thought he was one of the greatest all time champions in sport, and the magnitude of that title, and the magnitude of his cheating, is why his behaviour transcends cycling and represents everything that is anti sport.

There is a sickening injustice that he still reaps the financial rewards of it all.

 

[RossyG]

Yes, Lance Armstrong is a cheat and a bully.

This is the superb book that exposed him:

https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Dani...de-the-Hidden-World-of-the-Tour-de-F/14894614

Well worth a read.

 

[Deportivo Seagull]

Exactly, LA was definitely of dubious character, but it has to be seen in the context of a sport where it was prevalent, from Eddy Merckx on down. Armstrong was a very good rider, but all that’s lost in the inevitable shit storm. Would have been interesting to know how he’d have fared riding clean on an all clean tour.

As has a ready been mentioned. He’s a grade 1 ****. He did everything in his power to destroy team mate Floyd Landis who blow the whistle. He went after anyone and everyone who got in his way. Absolute *******.

There’s a number of documentaries on Armstrong, the one I saw showed the race were he broke away on a climb and left everyone for dead. It may have been the journo mentioned previously but someone pointed out that you cannot do what he did and not be gasping for air. Armstrong did much of the break away through gritted teeth ...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[RossyG]

Which is the problem with a sport riddled with cheating. Nobody will ever know

Cycling used to be my favourite sport, but I don’t bother with it now. There’s always been suspicion of doping, going back decades, but the Armstrong affair was a huge blow. And then they announced that they’d cleaned up the sport.

I gave it the benefit of the doubt, but then you had Bradley Wiggins and co saying they had asthma and needed the medicine, and it was just farcical.

As a comic at the time said, when I was at school the asthmatic kids were the ones who were lousy at sport. They didn’t cycle 100 kilometres a day.

 

[Stat Brother]

Which is the problem with a sport riddled with cheating. Nobody will ever know

All sport is riddled with cheating.
Cycling is the only one to, albeit far too late, deal with it head on.

Less than honourable mentions for Athletics and Swimming despite their desires to still turn a blind eye.


But everyone else is still happy to disassociate and not rock the boat.

 

[Palacefinder General]

As has a ready been mentioned. He’s a grade 1 ****. He did everything in his power to destroy team mate Floyd Landis who blow the whistle. He went after anyone and everyone who got in his way. Absolute *******.

There’s a number of documentaries on Armstrong, the one I saw showed the race were he broke away on a climb and left everyone for dead. It may have been the journo mentioned previously but someone pointed out that you cannot do what he did and not be gasping for air. Armstrong did much of the break away through gritted teeth ...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The legendary David Walsh who made the comment on his relatively relaxed breathing on that climb.

 

[Lenny Rider]

Could you name three ahead of him? Surely Lance is way out there on his own. I suppose there are one or two nonces

OJ Simpson has to be there or thereabouts, for all his natural talent Mike Tyson had his demons, Floyd Mayweather certainly hasn't behaved in a manner befitting of his standing as a World Champion and going back at bit further Sonny Liston wouldn't have been most peoples choice as a next door neighbour.



Maybe we should have a Sporting C*** poll?

 

[Weststander]

Seems the reason is disliked within cycling isn't the doping so much but rather the petty vindictive bullying and unrepentantness he displays still. He comes across as a sociopath/psychopath in his personality.

Well, he is.

 

[chimneys]

I'm hooked on watching professional cycling, especially the Grand tours. Yet, still raised an eyebrow at Pogacar's extraordinary feats in the TDF, and the suspicion that the sport is still far from clean permeates this Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/sep/22/climate-of-suspicion-returns-to-tour-de-france-to-dampen-celebrations

Climate of suspicion returns to Tour de France to dampen celebrations

Joy at the completion of this year’s delayed Tour has faded with news that Nairo Quintana’s team hotel had been searched

The 2020 Tour de France was completed on Sunday despite seeming in doubt for much of the year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tue 22 Sep 2020 00.01 BST

The Tour de France peloton woke up with a hangover on Monday, not only from over-indulgence in the brasseries around the Champs Élysées, but also because of the headache caused by a growing anxiety looming over this year’s race.

The French media reported that public health officers had searched team hotel rooms in Méribel occupied by Nairo Quintana – a former Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España winner – and his Arkea Samsic team, after stage 17. The team manager, Emmanuel Hubert, confirmed the search, but would not comment. Quintana finished 17th overall in the 2020 Tour.

A preliminary inquiry over suspicions of doping was subsequently opened by the public health department in Marseille. The prosecutor Dominique Laurens cited the “discovery of many health products including drugs and especially a method that can be qualified as doping”.

Nor was everyone in France in the mood to send Tadej Pogacar birthday greetings on Monday, as the new Tour de France champion celebrated turning 22, the morning after becoming the first Slovenian to head home from Paris with a yellow jersey.

Pogacar’s victory, founded on a storming time trial performance at La Planche des Belles Filles, that topped off his strong riding in the Pyrenees and Alps, had both elements of shock and awe. The awe was based on how much time he was able to take back from a woeful Primoz Roglic and his Jumbo-Visma teammate, the former world time trial champion Tom Dumoulin, the shock on the worrying histories of some members of his management team.

Some, to borrow the phrase used by one sceptic, are, for now, keeping their hands by their sides. The main reason for that is the continuing presence of those with their own dark histories working within the engine rooms of leading teams, including Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates.

The UAE Team Emirates operation is run by Mauro Gianetti, team principal and CEO. The Swiss former professional, who spent three days in a coma in 1998 after being taken to hospital during the Tour de Romandie, has been at the heart of a series of notorious incidents over the past 25 years.

The most infamous would be the Saunier Duval scandal of 2008, when the Gianetti-managed team quit the Tour after their star rider Riccardo Riccò tested positive for a new generation EPO. Riccò was also fired, along with his teammate Leonardo Piepoli, and the sponsorship ended soon afterwards.

But neither the UCI nor ASO, the promoter of the Tour, could say they hadn’t been warned, given that the British professional David Millar, making his own comeback from a two-year doping ban, had written to both organisations expressing misgivings about Gianetti’s management, while riding for the team.

Gianetti and the Saunier Duval team manager, Matxin Fernández, later moved on to the Geox-TMC team, which included a rider called Juan José Cobo. The Spaniard had also raced for Gianetti at Saunier Duval. In 2011, to general surprise, Cobo burst through the ranks to win the Vuelta a España at the expense of Chris Froome.

It took nearly a decade for Cobo to be finally stripped of that victory, to the benefit of Froome. The four-times Tour de France winner was recovering in July 2019 from his serious crash when he heard the news that Cobo had been found guilty of “a violation of the anti-doping rules [use of a banned substance] based on irregularities found in his Athlete Biological Passport in 2009 and 2011”.

On Monday, the scepticism towards Pogacar’s success was noted, but not dwelt on, in the pages of L’Équipe, the French sports newspaper owned by ASO. Gianetti’s management career, it said, had “often been tainted by doping scandals”, while Fernández was described as “dragging several ‘casseroles’ of doping cases”.

Pogacar responded to questions by saying: “I am too young to remember that era.” He told L’Équipe: “I was 10 in 2008 and it’s strange to be talking about it because it goes against everything I believe in. I know that doping puts the health of athletes in danger, I’ve always been aware of that. We have nothing to hide today and I think that cycling, despite the climate of suspicion, has done a lot to fight doping. In truth it saddens me that people doubt my performances. My only defence is that I am happy with my conscience.”

The Tour director, Christian Prudhomme, shrugged off the scepticism. “We have carried our cross for many years,” he told Le Figaro. “In a way, it’s part of the game that some voices rise up, asking questions. I won’t be offended.”

Yet there were also signs during this Tour that the omertà, the law of silence that reached its peak during the Lance Armstrong years, may be creeping back. Direct questions on credibility and trust are now criticised by riders for “lacking respect” and even discouraged by others.

The move towards even greater restrictions on media access, essential to preserve sanitary “bubbles” during this Tour’s unique circumstances, has been welcomed by many teams and may remain, pandemic or not. Having somehow pulled off the Tour de Covid, the mentality within cycling’s bubble seems to mostly be cheer, clap and don’t ask questions.

 

[Stat Brother]

I'm hooked on watching professional cycling, especially the Grand tours. Yet, still raised an eyebrow at Pogacar's extraordinary feats in the TDF, and the suspicion that the sport is still far from clean permeates this Guardian article.

This was always going to be the case, when the UCI refused to 'life time ban' everyone.
Probably something they couldn't legally enforce anyway.

So a couple of things from that:-

- Pogacar is always going to get 'the' question, when riding for a discredited manager.
He needs to be better at dealing with that, or simply distance himself from it.

- The riders have the right to be pee'd off.
They are paying the price of other people's crimes.
They are all under the most rigorous testing in professional sport and by virtual of being there ought to have some level of 'innocent until ... '.

- One team still got investigated.
They still had a knock on the door, whether it was random or through an investigation, positive work is always being done.


I don't know if Pogacar is clean.
I don't know if cycling is clean.
I do look upon the sport through the prism of Lance.
Although I do feel it's as clean as it has been for 105 years.(genuinely not the highest bar to jump)
I do know it is cleaner than many/most other sports.


You can't have any suspicion about football, because football doesn't do adequate testing.

Something is very wrong when your battle with a difficult subject is exactly the same as Trump's battle with Covid.