Lance Armstrong

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/oct/10/la ... -case-live

At this point it is pretty well proved that Lance Armstrong was not only a doper but also a ringleader. That's not really the thing that interests me. What interests me is this quote:

Around this time we got crushed in the Milan-San Remo race and coming home from the race Lance Armstrong was very upset. As we drove home lance said, in substance, that, "this is bull shit, people are using stuff" and "we are getting killed." He said, in substance, that he did not want to get crushed any more and something needed to be done. I understood that he meant the team needed to get on EPO. [...]

Our performance began to improve. Lance started to do better. [X] did very well at the Vuelta a Espana. We all routinely acknowledged that the improvements came about through use of EPO. [...]

If all Lance Armstrong ever wanted in life was to be a winning cyclist, and he discovered that hard work was not enough as the winning cyclists were all doping, can you really blame him for becoming a doper? In other words, if competitive cycling was a contest of more than will, talent, and discipline but also involved a contest of doping, can we really castigate a cyclist and competitor for taking up the challenge? You can say he should have blown the whistle or played it straight or whatever, but the fact is everyone already knew about it and the enforcement bodies were powerless to stop it, how can anyone say at that point that Armstrong had a realistic chance to change anything. Should Armstrong have retired instead, or accepted coming in 30th in perpetuity? What are the ethics?

[StevieG]

I have been a huge fan of Armstrong throughout much of his career, so I am going to say that in my totally unbiased opinion (:razz:) he is a victim of his success, and whether guilty or not (and I don't have any illusions that he's not guilty) he should be regarded as one of the great cyclists of all time.

I also have no doubt that those cyclists who came 30th for their entire career were also dopers, but the authorities are not interested because they're nobodies.

[Cybrweez]

Baseball has the same problem.

I've never been a fan of Armstrong, so I'm biased the other way probably than Stevie. I always thought he was on this pedestal for beating cancer (which is certainly big achievement), but as his fame grew, he divorced his wife, who was there thru the cancer. Never liked that he's known as a hero for fighting for his life but not a marriage. And for Sheryl Crow...

Its a tough question tho. You have in baseball, Clemens, Bonds, A-Rod, even Pettite, are they Hall of Famers? They juiced, but so did those they played against. But many generations have advantages that previous ones didn't - like in baseball, what about laser surgery for eyes, allowing better sight to hit balls? What about video analysis to pick up how any given batter will tend to react to pitches? What about training/diet improvements? Why are drugs singled out as some massive cheating thing? I think about in tennis, the racket technology (golf too).

So why don't they just give up on the drug bans? Let it go man.

[High Lord Tolkien]

Everyone's doing it, doing it.
Picking their nose and chewing it, chewing it.

Seriously, that's his excuse?
That everyone else was doing it?
Sad.

[Cybrweez]

No, he says he didn't use any drugs. The quote is what a teammate claims Armstrong said at the time.

[dlbpharmd]

But apparently the evidence is overwhelming, and now he's been stripped of all 7 TdF titles.

[Vraith]

I will be disappointed if it turns out the "overwhelming evidence" is actually both overwhelming and evidence.
I never liked Lance's personal issues...but then, they're personal. I liked the things he supported...and that he actually did support them instead of just lip-serving.
I'll be sad if he was lying all along.
Nevertheless, I believe he is right that the whole thing is an unmitigated political bullshit witch-hunt. By which I mean: they took away his titles. Are they going to go back and spend all the time and money and bribery/blackmail/coercion for all the peeps who finished in the top 5, or 10, or 20 in all those years to prove who really won, who really was pure and deserved it?
I'll be fucking surprised.

On a more general, where do we go from here note: the lines of allowed/disallowed are strange and nonsensical in many ways. I mean, there are perfectly legal "supplements" and chemicals that can drastically alter race-time performance, yet harmless non-chemical ones that can only alter race-time performance by extreme training-time effort.
The legality is almost completely dictated by following the money not by following the sport, or athletes long-term health, or the spirit of competition.

[Cybrweez]

Anyone see interview? I didn't, about to read some takes on it.

[Cail]

Didn't see the interview, but really....Big deal.

Everyone on the Tour's been doping since its inception. We don't care that the bikes are enhanced by technology, why do we care that the riders are?

[lorin]

Within a few months he will have his own reality show just like Pete Rose, probably with the Winfrey Network.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Didn't see the interview, but really....Big deal.

Everyone on the Tour's been doping since its inception. We don't care that the bikes are enhanced by technology, why do we care that the riders are?

This is actually a pretty deep question, one that I cannot answer, other than ethical intuitions on the part of some.

[Cail]

Didn't see the interview, but really....Big deal.

Everyone on the Tour's been doping since its inception. We don't care that the bikes are enhanced by technology, why do we care that the riders are?

This is actually a pretty deep question, one that I cannot answer, other than ethical intuitions on the part of some.

I mean yeah, he lied and broke the rules, and that's bad. But everyone dopes on the Tour. You simply cannot be competitive if you don't.

But other than the lying, I don't see what the big deal is. Would it be any less exciting to watch if you knew he was doping? Is it any less impressive that one doper beat all the other dopers.....Seven times?

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Well, yes I think without the mythos it's a lot less interesting. Although I don't find it very interesting to begin with. Impressive, perhaps, but not very interesting.

[Cybrweez]

I agree about the doping being an issue part. I think the stigma of cheating has stunted discussion about benefits of steroids, HGH and the like for various purposes. And yea, other aspects of sports are so radically different, why not allow drugs? Altho, the drugs would have to be legal first, in a given country, but legal in a sport.

But Armstrong's story is much more than that he doped and lied all along. He destroyed many lives over the years. He said on Oprah he couldn't count how many people he's sued, and couldn't remember specific people, whether he had sued them or not, b/c there were just too many. Plus all the lives he ruined during his doping empire.

He was adored by millions, and at root, he's a terrible human being.

[Cail]

Oh yeah, the guy's a tool. I'm just arguing that the doping really shouldn't be a big deal.

[Harbinger]

Professional athletes have very competitive personalities. They wouldn't make it if they didn't. That's why there are some people who have the ability, but just don't make it. They are not driven.

At the professional level of competition, there are lots of people who will do anything to win. They will put anything into their bodies that will make them bigger, stronger, faster.

There are people who take 200 cc's of blood out a month before an event and pump it back in on the day of the event. It makes them turbocharged for a little while.

There will always be people doping and finding new ways to chemically enhance their performance. So unless the organizations that preside over events want to do mandatory drug tests every week of all athletes, they should just accept it.