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And how do you know he was clean? In the face of overwhelming evidence that no one was clean? The sport is/was dirty. Does that justify being dirty as well, no. I agree it's a poor rationalization and justification for bad choices. However that's what riders did and continue to do. Why? Because it works.
Because the dirty riders who have been caught have, at times, acknowledged the teammates who were clean. Let me give you the classic example from the 1980s and 1990s: Charly Mottet. TDF stage winner and finished as high as 4th overall. Clean rider according to teammates and directeurs alike. But for his refusal to dope, he would have been a multiple TDF winner. More talent than the dopers who needed chemicals to cheat him out of what Mottet actually earned. So, please, spare me the rationalizing and feeble excuse-making rooted in ignorance of the sport. Confessed dopers have absolutely no incentive to falsely claim a teammate or rival was clean. To the contrary, they have several very good incentives to claim the others were dirty, too. As we can see with these feeble rationalizations, the argument resonates with some.
He will need one in the future if the Rogaine that has kept the hair recession on his temples at bay for the last decade stops working. Fortunately, his buddy McConaughey is well-versed in all of that.
Cycling is about as dirty of a sport as one will find outside of boxing and the olympics in general.
I have a really hard time caring what happens with armstrong, the sport etc. when it was clearly dirty as heck. I'm just not into wasting my time on a sham.
Imagine if our larger society operated on this sort of indifference? Even as they were using tax dollars to fund a doping program?
No sympathy, at all! Especially now that I know that he railroaded families.
What makes Lance's lies so sinister are the millions of people he lied to and the lawsuits. To America, Cycling is a nothing sport, but Americans took pride in the fact that the best cyclist was from the USA. Secondly, I could understand that he was caught in web of lies and that he was trying to weasel his out, been there done that, but he was suing people/companies, that`s sinister. The average person would have come clean years ago. Lance took his drive, no hold's bar attitude to this lies. Fast forward to the present, now he is not driven and does not have a no hold's bar attitude, but rather he is a cheater, liar and very sinister. The only way he recovers from this if he represents cancer patients. Cancer automatically garners sympathy and help, if he takes this path is he being sinister again, i.e. using Cancer to fend off PED's drama?? My long winded point, now he cannot be trusted for anything.
mind blowing interview...wow! he really was living in a bubble...what makes him really bad is the fact that he went after people who were telling the truth...sued basically everyone who accused him...systematic doping...one of the greatest frauds in modern sport...forget about milli vanilli....and forget about the myth that he never failed a test...he failed a bunch of tests...just a devious guy.
I think the media is portraying Lance Armstrong in a much more negative light than what is needed. Cycling is one of the dirtiest sport especially in the new millennium (just look up "list of doping cases in cycling" in Wikipedia) and I've heard from multiple radio hosts, avid cycling fans and sports fans alike, that it wouldn't surprise them if >80% of the cyclists in Tour De France used some sort of performance enhancing drugs...And I don't disagree with them. Cycling 200km a day for 20+ days is NUTS!
Now let's look at it like this: if no one in the whole race was using performance enhancing drugs, then wouldn't you think that Armstrong would still be the best cyclist to emerge out of the whole group? But unfortunately PED use is pervasive in cycling, and it makes sense for the cyclists to use drugs in order to level the playing field with everyone else violating the rules. It's sad and it's scathing to the integrity of sports but that's just the reality.
Obviously not every cyclist gets tested on a regular basis for PEDs and only the elite ones like Armstrong will be the subject of most scrutiny. But when they do get tested, with the advances in science and technology, scientists are able to come up with newer and modified substances that are not on the list of banned substances that allow the cyclists to pass the test surreptitiously. And when committees like USADA includes more drugs to banned PEDs, there will be substances in altered form that will be able to bypass the tests undetected.
I'm not saying what Armstrong did is right (if in fact it's true) nor the pervasive use of PEDs in sports, which is the reality of sports today. But out of this came something good, the LIVESTRONG Foundation which raised hundreds of millions of dollars for a good cause to help cancer patients and to provide hope. Whether you think he did this for his own stardom or to sway the attention away from his doping allegations is up to you, but you can't deny that this philanthropic organization is bad for the world, or not enough to overshadow the blemish in his lustrous cycling career.
I'd be willing to guarantee that if any other cyclists used whatever PEDs that Armstrong used for his Tour De France career, he would not come remotely close to winning 7 TDF titles in his career. This allegation is much to meager in contrast to the accolades and accomplishments that he achieved in his career and I think that all this diatribe about Lance Armstrong needs to stop.
I'd agree, HAD he come forth when the charges were originally leveled against him. Had he then admitted to using the drugs and apologized, I'd give him a "pass." However, when you stand up and deny, deny, deny, deny then get everything stripped from you, then come clean? Nope. He isn't being treated harshly enough.
I believe Lance Armstrong is no different from thousands of other athletes over decades. If you were to test your favorite athlete and his/her favorite athlete-that person(s) dabble with some type of illegal practice.
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