Is nobody talking about Lance Armstrong?

Maxpower North West wrote (see)

I dislike Lance and what he has done but surely any penalty he receeves must be consistent with other drugs cheats.

Other drug cheats didnt bully, or have other riders thrown off the team, or try and pay off the UCI, or sue people who were telling the truth

Doesn't matter what he says, none of us will believe him any more. Agree with Barkles, he didn't show remorse for what he did. And that's enough to damn him in my eyes.

Theres urely has to be a difference between someone pressurised into taking drugs ( not saying thats right) and someone who organises the whole shabang, using all manner of means to force others into complying.. where are talking about much more than a drugs cheat. We are talking about a calculating ring-leader.. far far worse.

Ok so you are proposing to judge him on a new set of rules.

Personally I would ban him for life but then again I would ban David Millar for life.

Barkles wrote (see)

Theres urely has to be a difference between someone pressurised into taking drugs ( not saying thats right) and someone who organises the whole shabang, using all manner of means to force others into complying.. where are talking about much more than a drugs cheat. We are talking about a calculating ring-leader.. far far worse.

Well yes and no.   If other riders were pressurised into doping so was Lance Armstrong.   They wanted to earn the most they could, he wanted to too, they wanted to win, he wanted to win.   He just took it further - he was a better doper than most others.   He's a driven character, I agree he's a sociopath/psychopath or whatevere the correct term is.   Is it morally any worse to be better at doping than someone else - they are all dopers after all.     

Yes some of them may have had to get on the programme or look for another career - but anyone that rode in the TdF for Lance Armstrong was good enough to get a well paid position at another team.   The likes of Hincapie et al were extremely well paid star cyclists - if they didn't want to dope they didn't have to ride for USPostal/Discovery/Astana did they ?

Yes the guy is a bully - and what he has done to the likes of BetsyA, Simeoni, Landis,  et al  is disgraceful but it's debatable whether that is worth extra sporting suspension.   

I could never understood why he was so liked anyway - it's not like any of this is news.   Right from reading his first book he obviously had a steak cut chip on his shoulder, he's always obviously been a knob and I was saying on here at least 6-7 years ago that anyone that thinks he isn't doping doesn't follow the sport - but there you go.   His determination remains admirable though.  

I bet there's still people out there who wish that they were Lance Armstrong, even now!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21115720

LOL Carter.

RicF wrote (see)

I bet there's still people out there who wish that they were Lance Armstrong, even now!

Well he is still very wealthy and can still rip the legs of 99.9% of people on a bike - I'd take that - if I could get back with Sheryl Crow even better.  

In the end he is a very wealthy man who can do as he pleases for the rest of his life (except competitive riding etc) and rest assured when the dust settles there will be film or book opportunities for him. So cheating is rewarded unfortunately, and it seems that when you get caught, although you lose sponsorship and respect, all they take off you realistically are the medals.

So (playing devils advocate) why would you be an also-ran average earner/competitor when you can cheat?

EKGO wrote (see)

So (playing devils advocate) why would you be an also-ran average earner/competitor when you can cheat?

Because the odds are, (and have been, for the last 10 years or so) that you'd be caught and banned before you 'won' anything like what Armstrong did.  Despite him, Contador, Virenque (the French still hero worship him without a trace of irony), there are a lot of others who got caught and faded into obscurity.  Ricardo Ricco, anyone?  Raimondas Rumsas?

Whether riders consider that risk against the 'reward', alongside the moral dilemma of knowing they're a cheat is I guess something only they can answer.  Lance said that he didn't consider it cheating so he presumably only had to consider the risk of getting caught and as he demonstrated he was good at not being caught.

I'm listening to the Bespoke podcast about Lance and watched the interview. I am saddened by what has happened, I believed in him and the Postal team and just don't know if cycling will be the same again. I've been hooked since Stephen Roche's win and was happy to see Cav win yesterday.

Anyway had my stimultants (strong coffee) and now heading out for a run.

Yes there is the chance to be caught, always, but he is a wealthy man, and very likely after films and books etc he will still be considerably richer than for example Bradley Wiggins will ever be.

I'd like to add, that persoanlly I would like to him lose more than just respect, medals and sponsorships, but it doesn't seem to happen.

Another hypothetical one, if I was the first clean rider home in any of his TDF wins, could I not make a legal claim that his cheating (now fully admitted) had cost me my similar status and wealth?

Now caught up with the interviews.

He displayed absolutely no remorse during the interview and some of his answers which tried to place the blame elsewhere saying "I'm flawed" (or the answers he gave that could roughly translated as "cancer made me cheat", "the fans made me cheat", "the media made me cheat").

The only thing he seemed remotely sorry about was his comeback, and that's because he blames that for being the straw that broke the camel's back and made Landis go ahead with the whistleblowing.

The worst thing was listening to him saying that he wanted to help clean up cycling! After not only cheating himself but pushing clean riders out of the sport! Who does he think he is, Frank Abagnale?!  Cycling is already trying to clean itself up without help from Armstrong. We've got a clean TdF winner - Bradley Wiggins, who threw his team jersey in an airport bin rather than be associated with a team that was involved in doping. We've got a team like Sky who aren't afraid to cut ties with people previously associated with doping. We do not need Lance Armstrong to worm his way back into the sport on his quest for another fat payday from Nike.

EKGO wrote (see)

Yes there is the chance to be caught, always, but he is a wealthy man, and very likely after films and books etc he will still be considerably richer than for example Bradley Wiggins will ever be.

I'd like to add, that persoanlly I would like to him lose more than just respect, medals and sponsorships, but it doesn't seem to happen.

Another hypothetical one, if I was the first clean rider home in any of his TDF wins, could I not make a legal claim that his cheating (now fully admitted) had cost me my similar status and wealth?

I'm not sure that a legal claim like that would actually succeed, but I'd love to see them try it just so they could make Armstrong squirm even more! Maybe even a class action lawsuit of all the clean riders at the time of LA's wins. People bring more ridiculous cases than that all the time.

No sympathy at all.  He may have had a moment of genuine emotion, but he was willing to put even his family up there to garner public support.  He also lied about his prognosis (85%, not 50/50). Yuck. 

No sympathy. If anything I have even less sympathy for him now than I did before seeing the interviews, he seemed incredibly cold, calculating and dispassionate, even when talking about the people whose lives he destroyed like Emma O'Reilly and the Andreus. Considering how stage-managed the whole interview was, he should have taken some acting lessons and learned how to dredge up a few tears.

...well - at least he finally had the ball to come clean