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This is where you misunderstand the facts. Livestrong donates very little to research, it supports "awareness" which is hardly something that cancer lacks.
The American healthcare system is very different to the NHS and there is (or was) a definite lack of awareness, a lack of knowledge about how to wade through the myriad health insurance forms and a huge cost to doing all that.
Livvestrong genuinely did a lot of good work in that areas (while also undoubtedly acting as a publicity machine for Lance Inc) but then most charities endorsed by celebrities have exactly the same mutual benefit effect.
Jesus H christ
Hora and lance is the cycling equivalent of Burton and taylor
They love each other ..they feel betrayed... they love ...all the time being unrequited ...how sad.
Essentially cycling should turn its back on this self obsessed narcissists....to be clear I mean Lance 😉
[b]
[/b]Plus it's hora who was always a Lance fanboy so any excuse to ignore the truth of the bulling asshole and recast him as a manipulated cancer curing hero was going to be taken.
THIS
Interesting article about Armstrongs relationship with Livestrong.
http://www.outsideonline.com/1904781/its-not-about-lab-rats
Atlaz posted the self same link while he was eating his breakfast 😉
Cancer awareness saves lives.
Haters want to belittle his charity work, we can't stop that. In my view you must seperate his premier league doping from his cancer charity.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who watched the Horizon program last night on the study of human decision making, it went into how our various cognitive bias' work, and briefly discussed how, despite ourselves, we tend to either ascribe totally positive or negative attributes to people, organisations and concepts based almost entirely on the initial input, we then skew our understanding looking for justifications to back up that initial judgement...
It seems to apply with Lance now, given his rather public fall from grace over the last few years the general input is [i]"Lance = BAD"[/i] people struggle to square the socipathic, narcissist, cheat that grabs the headlines with the charity work, the perceived vulnerability of a cancer survivor and someone who is a father, or any other positive character traits he may have...
In short people like 'black and white'... and Lance sort of jumped from one extreme to the other for many...
The reality is probably a bit more nuanced... Yes LA cheated, he cheated a lot, and bullied and lied and organised others to help him cheat, and then abandoned half of them and 'misused' his cancer survival to help add a halo effect to his image...
But it doesn't mean he is totally devoid of any positive human characteristics, He is not actually Evil incarnate...
Similarly we like to look for a single factor or influence from which all the failure or corruption of an organisation or system spreads. And Lance is an easy candidate for that role. I don't doubt he is one of the main players, if not the top of the pile, but it didn't happen in isolation, He was able to influence, corrupt plenty of others, nobody truly carry's 100% of the blame for these sort of things...
my real question/concern is, Just how much has the UCI really changed?
Mechanical doping has arrived, and some might argue that the response has been slower that expected and a bit lacking, you might hope that post-LA the governing bodies response to any suggestions of cheating would be swift and decisive but it doesn't feel like they are any better than a decade ago.
I'm sure from the inside of the sport mechanical and/or rider doping can still be justified as [i]"Levelling an already skewed playing field"[/i] which was of course part of the LA defence...
TBH Lance is now just a sideshow, a cautionary tale that comes up every summer when the Grand tours start, the real focus should be on the UCI as governing body IMO...
Lance couldn't have achieved what he did without the 'protection' of the UCI/Verbruggen/McQuaid - whether we'll ever get the point of understanding the complicity of their involvement we'll likely never know. I agree that Lance wasn't evil incarnate, but there was a time where it wasn't even possible to debate this issue as you'd face significant personal attacks from his acolytes and the 'cancer Jesus' mythology they built around him. Some of the issues also extend wider beyond UCI and the role of sports governing bodies in protecting their interests, particularly sponsors e.g. IAAF
Some of the issues also extend wider beyond UCI and the role of sports governing bodies in protecting their interests
That link opens up a graphic of all the connections LA had - everything from the US Federation through to the various management companies, offshore accounts, sponsors, partners and so on.
Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett were both in on this (whether or not they knew or cared is debateable) as well as they provide the US commentary stream; Paul Sherwen owns (owned?) a goldmine in South AFrica which LA at one point had some shares in.
This goes far far deeper than simply "Lance doped therefore Lance is bad"
Everyone else doped too but none of them managed to become global superstars. Virenque was big in France - no one outside of France except the dedicated Tour watchers knew who he was.
Pantani was big in Italy and a lot of continental Europe, but outside that no one knew who he was.
Indurain was big in Spain... you get the picture.
Lance was big all over the world. And with that exposure comes all the extra risk which requires all the extra lies which eventually spiralled out of control.
Iirc Steve Peters (sport psychology coach for sky/BC) made a point of watching the interview LA did with Oprah because he knew he'd be asked about it... even he was shocked at his horrendous personality flaws !
Sorry but there isn't shades of grey with lance and the 'i wasn't the only one' argument is pure whattaboutery ; he doped as much as he could, probably more than the others and coerced/bullied his team into the same, and played the sports organisation too; he deserves to be struck from the record and everything else as well. ***T
Lance cheated, I can forgive him that, he was a complete **** by all accounts, well so are many driven top sportsmen or women, I can firgive that, he lied about his doping and covered his tracks, well of course he would I can forgive that too. What I cant forgive is his lying to people affected by cancer.