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Lance Armstrong?

alb52

alb52

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anyone been following his latest news? thought? feelings?
 
I've been following the story pretty closely as I am a huge cycling fan. Love watching the tour de france every year - when Lance was riding it was pretty dull as he and his team dominated most stages. I loved Floyd Landis because of his background, just a fascinating story and was very sad that he resorted to drugs to win.

I have read the 200 page report (yep - that much of a cycling nerd...) and it's pretty damning. The people speaking out have nothing to gain. Lance comes across as a bully and a cheat and that is never a good look for any company that wants to sponsor him. I am hoping (and I believe) the LiveStrong foundation is independant enough to survive and keep doing their good work without him. They had been putting distance between them and him for a while now.

As awful as it is, and despite of all the good work he has done, he will go down as the biggest cheat in sport...(too strong??)
 
We had a sports journalist here in the Netherlands that had wrote a book about Lance and who was supposed to receive a prize for it 2 days ago but he was so smart to politely refuse the prize since the book wasn't 'accurate' anymore.
Lance's cheating has affected so many people in so many ways, I can't even imagine.

I think him having to live with the consequences of his actions will be the biggest punishment one can get! As you say Karen he will forever be known as the biggest cheat despite of the good work that he has done too.
 
I love Lance. And I'm certain he wasn't doing anything that everyone else wasn't.

And what they're doing to him NOW is unforgivable. Not allowing him to run in a marathon? There's no rules about doping in marathons. They don't test anyone. So, to me, if they're going to say Lance can't participate because he may have doped in the past, they better be testing everyone who wins any of the awards.
 
The whole thing is ugly. I have a really hard time believing he duped very test he was ever given because there were a lot if them. But if he did indeed cheat, well then what did her expect when you build your whole life on lies? "Everyone else is doing it" does Not make it legal or right.

Funny though if he did dope and everyone else surely did too, he was still the best of the worst , coming in first over all those other doped up ridersLOL.
 
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I really didn't want to believe it was true but I agree with Karen that the latest evidence is quite damning. So disappointing!
 
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I think the evidence is too strong to be ignored, and in which case I am very disappointed. On the other hand, I read an op-ed (I think it was Chicago Tribune?) that states that the "gray" part of this whole issue are all the people who WERE inspired by his story and say that it DID help them and encouraged them to carry on. And I think regardless of how his story happened, people were helped.

I did mentally applaud him when he stepped down from the Livestrong Foundation to avoid tainting it with his name. I'm sure they will still receive backlash, but hopefully not so drastically.
 
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I'm just sad about the whole thing. I'm also really curious about how he could have passed all the tests. :(
 
The whole thing just makes me sad. Sport is supposed to be something to aspire to, something that the rest of us only dream to achieve. This makes me sad that the only things to aspire to are cheaters :(
 
I had also read some comments that said just because he passed the tests doesn't mean he's "clean." Not sure what it means, but I could guess it's sort of like finding trace amounts of alcohol in your system if you've been drinking. If your alcohol levels are a certain range, you can be considered drunk, that kind of thing?

Other people have been saying that while some tests found trace amounts of whatever drugs in his urine, it's either not enough to bring charges up OR he/his party insists they were meds he was taking for cancer/chemo.
 
mrshobbes said:
I had also read some comments that said just because he passed the tests doesn't mean he's "clean." Not sure what it means, but I could guess it's sort of like finding trace amounts of alcohol in your system if you've been drinking. If your alcohol levels are a certain range, you can be considered drunk, that kind of thing?

Other people have been saying that while some tests found trace amounts of whatever drugs in his urine, it's either not enough to bring charges up OR he/his party insists they were meds he was taking for cancer/chemo.
Click to expand...

I believe if they had found trace amounts of anything in his system he would have been hung out long before now. he is/was the most tested athlete in history and all the others have tested positive but not him, not even once. Very suspicious of this witch hunt.
 
I find it all pretty sad too. We lived in France when he was in the middle to end of his 'hey day' of winning all the Tours. (the Tour is a VERY big deal there and they have said he was doping forever...) We even got to see him ride in one Tour de France (or more accurately fly by us as we watched) and his racing team did a warm up event that started in the little town that we lived in and we walked down and hung out outside his bus and even got his autograph.

I don't know what to make of all the press. I have kind of followed it from afar, but when he basically chose not to contest the lawsuit, it seemed like he was almost admitting guilt. Then, I heard someone say that it was just going to take so much time, effort, and money to fight it and that was why.... It is just sad.
 
If everyone was doping (or most everyone) during those years, it wasn't just his team and him. Others were too. Doped or not, it takes incredible endurance and mental strength to finish that race. It makes me wonder how the races would have gone if all those cyclists weren't doping up. But I think doped up or not, he's still a phenomenal athlete. Heather had me laughing, but she's right--he's still the best of a bunch of doped up cyclists!

I might be talking out of my butt here, but it also seems to me that the association in charge of the testing, etc and the rules for bike racing should have known or DID know at some level but didn't do enough for *years* because hey, Lance was giving the sport a HUGE amount of publicity in the US and ironically gave it some respectability.

I'm disappointed that he apparently bullied and threatened other teammates to go along with the doping...where were the officials they could complain to then? I blame that culture on the ruling body, that he could away with it for so long, and win so many races presumably because he was doped up.

It doesn't undo the good he's done for cancer survivors. Banning him from marathons? Seriously?
 
I'm another with mixed feelings. He's sort of a "hometown hero" around here. He's done a lot of good inside and outside of his sport. I definitely feel like there was a witch hunt. That being said, I'm not convinced he never, ever dipped his foot into the doping pool. I think it's a problem in the sport and even if he did, I don't think it negates his wins, it seems as if the whole lot of them were doing it ( I'm not condoning it) It's really hard too because he has all these great qualities but he's notoriously kind of a jerk.
 
I still have my doubts about his guilt... I mean seriously... if you had just gone through chemo and crap would you really be stupid enough to inject steroid cocktails that are known to increase the likeliness of cancer??? If he had dirty tests, I'd believe the hype... but to condemn him based on the word of others with out the tests to back it up is weird... and IF he is guilty wouldn't you think the sport of cycling would have to rethink its testing process... because of all the cyclists in the world (or all the athletes even) how could ONLY Lance Armstrong have beaten the test that many times????
 
yeah that does suck... my husband and I are into cycling and my husband occasionally does races... he even has books by Lance... so hearing that he may have been doping would be kinda sad news. The man has been through a lot, and I still look up to him as a great athlete... regardless of the poor decisions he allegedly made in his past. He's innocent until proven guilty, so i'm holding my reservations.
 
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I don't really doubt that he did it - but like others have brought up here everyone else did too. That DOES NOT make it ok - however, stripping him of his Tour De France wins seems to me to be going too far. Like it's been said, he was still the best out of a big group who were likely all (or at least many) using performance enhancing drugs. More fault should go to the culture of the sport that allows behavior like this to go on.

When Barry Bonds was found to be guilty of steroid use, they did not strip him of his home run record. There is an asterisk placed next to his name in the record books stating that he used performance enhancing drugs; I think they should do something similar to Lance.
 
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