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Lance Armstrong… love him or hate him. .. …
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PoggyFree Member
Wow, only posted after seeing doc, thinking…
I wonder what responses would pop up! Certainly a mixed bag!
My fav bit of doc, was Lance in kids cancer hospital, you could really see him for who he is, it meant the world to him being around those children, put a lot of things into perspective I felt.
Thanks for everyone’s posts, am impressed!
PoggyFree Memberglasgowdan…
we all have different opinions & views, I still feel he’s done more for cycling than any other individual.
Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition
Latest Singletrack VideosFresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...grtdkadFull MemberInteresting thread.
I am currently re-reading It’s Not About the Bike and will start my own six-week course of radiotherapy on Monday next week.
While the context has changed (certainly for me) I reckon he’s a fairly tarnished man in a very tarnished sport. Still awesome on a bike in a field full of equivalent cheats – but he’s had the cancer shit to deal with too…
aracerFree MemberMy fav bit of doc, was Lance in kids cancer hospital, you could really see him for who he is
What, he was even a manipulative shit in a kids cancer hospital?
grtdkad – good luck with the radiotherapy, I really hope that goes well, but other better fiction is also available.
epicycloFull MemberMeanwhile…
On Thursday February 13, 2014, Samuel Johnson completed his mission…
He’s broken the world record for longest distance travelled on a unicycle, raised over $1.5m and the whole way round strove to remind every young Mum in the land to be Breast Aware.
StoatsbrotherFree MemberPoggy. Really??? Which planet are you on?
He’s tarnished the whole sport to an enormous extent. By being the “best” ever he became the “worst” ever.
atlazFree Memberwe all have different opinions & views, I still feel he’s done more for cycling than any other individual.
Please explain that comment. I just can’t quite get my head around it
lemonysamFree MemberPlease explain that comment. I just can’t quite get my head around it
I suspect it means that the poster didn’t really watch road cycling until an anglophone was winning therefore cycling as a sport only became important when Lance Armstrong started winning.
PigfaceFree MemberHi is a cheat, a liar, a bully and a lot of other things he is also a scapegoat.
ooOOooFree MemberHe made people cycle at ridiculous cadences, even when they weren’t on EPO.
JunkyardFree MemberHe was the figure head and chief of it – the Don of drugs so to speak – rather than a scapegoat. TBH Its part of the LA bullshit/mythology machine to try and rehabilitate him as the victim in all this and it stinks as well as being factually incorrect – he
He could hardly have been more involved or dedicated to cheating and crushing those who dared to speak out about him – now they were scapegoats and paid a high price for it. He was never the victim.
PigfaceFree MemberJunkyard who is talking about rehabilitating him and he is no victim but I dont understand why he has been treated differently to Hamilton and all the other drug cheats.
You flatter him by calling him the Don of Drugs, he was the guy winning, there were people supplying him, team managers making it happen, sponsors turning a blind eye, the people who ran the sport were colluding with it. He has been made the bogeyman and if you get rid of him then the whole problem will go away, in a nice neat Lance shaped package. No it wont IMO pandoras box is open and the sport will never be clean.
Please dont involve me in one of your cut and paste assaults I am busy 😉
JunkyardFree MemberPlease dont involve me in one of your cut and paste assaults I am busy
ITs WAY TOO LATE FOR REASONABLE BEHAVIOUR NOW >>>THIS IS WAR 😛
I dont agree at,all of that is LA propaganda BS to make him appear like a victim- he is not and never could be.
I dont disagree that other perps got away with less and, in many cases, should have got more severe punishments. However it is not that surprising that the leader gets the most attentions/severest punishment.franksinatraFull MemberPlease dont involve me in one of your cut and paste assaults I am busy
Okay, I won’t.
franksinatraFull Memberand the level playing field argument demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the whole Armstrong affair and is almost as naive as the whole ‘Cancer Fighter’ defense.
grannygrinderFree MemberI don’t know but i am curious to find out who funded the doc?
OP says its from a different perspective and all i can envisage it being is LA making himself look a little bit better and ‘everybody else’ a little bit worse.
For a long time he was a legend to me, now he’s just another lying, cheating ars*hole ;(atlazFree MemberI don’t know but i am curious to find out who funded the doc?
It was originally a documentary about the comeback which got a bit knackered around editing when the whole “rumours of doping” thing became “actual doping with actual evidence”. Hasty re-edit and some extra footage and hey presto, a new documentary.
CountZeroFull Memberthe wanderer – Member
I don’t think any one who is competitive at a world level is a nice person. Every action is calculated to increase their chances to win.You never met Jason McRoy. Possibly one of the nicest blokes you could possibly hope to meet. And a world-class mountain biker.
Tracey Moseley is too.
I was out drinking in Vail with the British team for a week in 1994, including Rob ‘Caveman’ Warner, and everyone was loads of fun, although Warner could overdo the ‘laddish’ behaviour a bit, but that’s Warner. 😉
Which is where I met JMC; despite being busy in the Specialized team area, when I asked him a question about his tyres, he dragged me over to his bike and spent quite some time talking about it, as if we were long-time friends.
I’d never met him before. Lovely bloke, and much missed. 🙁
Missy Giove was really nice, too, she signed my SuperVee 3000 in Vail, and remembered me when we met again at the Bike Show a while later, was really nice and pleasant to talk to, nothing arrogant or arsey about her at all.
Shame about her later drug, (non-cycling related) issues.
Maybe it’s because mountain biking has a different background and ethos to road riding, but we’re still talking about athletes competing at a world level, and there’s never seemed to be the doping going on like there has been in road.grantwayFree MemberDon’t know him so cannot personally hate him.
But I do not have any time for any Sporting Cheats, and if caught they should never compete ever again.JunkyardFree Memberplenty of doping it was just not performance enhancing…..allegedly
Its true many top stars are hard nosed, single issue massively motivated etc but it is clearly not true to say they all are. Its hard to think of many who were at LA levels as well and i dont think it is the norm.
Usain Bolt, Mo Farah and many others.
atlazFree MemberMaybe it’s because mountain biking has a different background and ethos to road riding, but we’re still talking about athletes competing at a world level, and there’s never seemed to be the doping going on like there has been in road.
To be blunt though, MTB isn’t at the level of World Tour road cycling in terms of profile. Win the Tour or become World Champ in road cycling and you’ll be a household name, win it all in MTB and you’re a big name in MTB but not likely to be known to the bloke in the street. The money and the fame are at a different level, as, honestly, is the level of fitness required day in and day out to just hang onto the group, let alone be at the front.
JunkyardFree Memberyes but when they swap over they make great riders as they have such good handling 😉
the very best MTBers could probably swap over
boriselbrusFree MemberPoggy. Really??? Which planet are you on?
He’s tarnished the whole sport to an enormous extent. By being the “best” ever he became the “worst” ever.
This. When out riding through the less desirable parts of town I get kids yelling “druggie” at me.
When talking at work about Wiggins and Froome in the last couple of years the first thing that comes up is “but they are all on drugs aren’t they!”
It’s because of LA that Wiggins and his kids have to endure this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/26045209LA was the most famous cyclist in the English speaking world. Since he admitted his lies, every other cyclist has been tarnished by him and you still think he has done a lot for cycling? I suggest no-one has ever done more damage to cycling.
oldgitFree MemberBig fan here, pretty well guessed he was cheating from the off. Being told that ‘they’re all on this or that’ back in the seventies probably numbed me as to what they were up to.
Personally I have trouble separating one cheat from another, a cheats a cheat. There’s never been a cheat that want’s to cheat to be a bit good at their sport….they cheat to win don’t they? I wonder how many of the cheats we love would have sold their team mates up the river for TdF victory?
I also sorry to say don’t find myself interested in Lance outside of the cycling.aracerFree MemberMaybe because he’s different from Hamilton and all the other drugs cheats. One immediately obvious analogy is that in a court of law you get a discount for a guilty plea and parole is dependent on showing remorse, both things LA has never done.
You flatter him by calling him the Don of Drugs, he was the guy winning, there were people supplying him, team managers making it happen, sponsors turning a blind eye, the people who ran the sport were colluding with it.
Mostly all done at LA’s behest – he was deeply involved in the supply, choosing the team managers (and the other riders) deceiving the sponsors, ensuring the collusion of the administrators.
He has been made the bogeyman and if you get rid of him then the whole problem will go away, in a nice neat Lance shaped package. No it wont IMO pandoras box is open and the sport will never be clean.
Except without him it might just have emerged cleaner after the low point of ’98 (you might want to look that one up, as I presume your knowledge of the TdF doesn’t extend back that far). It might not have been clean without him, but it would probably have been a huge amount cleaner.
Please dont involve me in one of your cut and paste assaults I am busy
😈
muppetWranglerFree MemberIn all three of the big American cases of Armstrong, Landis and Hamilton they only fessed up once they had tried every other lie available and had nowhere left to run. The Landis defence fund? Tyler’s stillborn twin excuse? All liars until the lies ran out. I can only think of one drug user that fessed up pretty much straight away and then set about demonstrating his remorse and that is Millar.
PigfaceFree MemberOh aracer you little rascal, your assumption that he did it all himself doesn’t stack up, if he was directing the whole circus of cheating how would he ever have time to ride.
As old git says I have no interest in Lance away from cycling but the way you react to anyone who does not shout burn him is a bit sad.
He is a nasty cheating bully but in the end he raced a bicycle whooped do in the whole scheme of things it isn’t important. 😆
piemonsterFull MemberI wonder how many of the cheats we love
Umm, that would be none. Why would I love them?
atlazFree MemberI can only think of one drug user that fessed up pretty much straight away and then set about demonstrating his remorse and that is Millar.
Millar is a decent example but without the arrest in France he’d never have come clean by his own account. That said, I’m quite disappointed by Garmin’s approach to dopers in their team and Millar is part of that management structure. By all means have transparency within the team but why not come clean properly when found out rather than a press release saying “He doped, we knew, he’s sorry, deal with it” like they did with Hesjedal.
atlazFree MemberPantani is an odd one. Doped to the gills (yes, he doped so much he developed gills) but rode with panache and met a tragic end so is somehow above criticism for some. Mind you given nobody seems to give a shit about Vino’s doping and payments to Ferrari, maybe I’m expecting a bit more for some rational criticism of an Italian who passed away a while ago.
aracerFree MemberOh aracer you little rascal, your assumption that he did it all himself doesn’t stack up, if he was directing the whole circus of cheating how would he ever have time to ride.
You do realise even pro bike riders don’t ride their bikes 16 hours a day, and have plenty of time to do other stuff? It’s well documented that he was deeply involved at all levels. The teams he rode on were built around him, rather than him being a hired gun.
As old git says I have no interest in Lance away from cycling but the way you react to anyone who does not shout burn him is a bit sad.
Getting upset that not everybody is as prepared as you are to ignore what a horrible person he clearly is? I’m not sure why you think I have any interest in him beyond cycling, or what that has to do with anything.
He is a nasty cheating bully but in the end he raced a bicycle whooped do in the whole scheme of things it isn’t important.
In the grand scheme of things, banning him for life from racing a bicycle isn’t important.
PigfaceFree Memberor what that has to do with anything.
Because dear heart you seem to get very vexed by the horrible Texan.
grtdkadFull MemberHe may be a bit of a twunt, but he certainly wasn’t the drugs kingpin in cycling and certainly shouldn’t be given a lifetime ban while others are given a slap on the wrist with an off season suspension
The history of doping cases in cycling (going back to the 1890s) is an eye opener …
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling
nostocFree MemberHe is a bit of a twunt who made a vast fortune from fraud and cheating, much of which he still has. I’m not that bothered if he is allowed to ride in some obscure races somewhere or not.
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