Is Lance Armstrong now a toxic brand? - General running

Tricky Dicky¹

10/10/2012 at 21:50

Anyone else following the USADA submission to the UCI, WADA and The World Triathlon people? http://tinyurl.com/8bt7jrg There you can read the 200 page summary. The full report is over 1000 pages full of testimony and evidence which they state provides incontrovertible evidence that LA was a systematic drugs cheat. Of course, he disdainfully refers to this as a witchhunt and has hired the same PR team who represented Bill Clinton in that funny business with the intern with the stains on her dress that he didn't have sex with and Marion Jones, the gold medal winning Olympian who vehemently fought against her doping charges and ended up doing jail time for hey deceit. Mmm, smoke and fire could be related. Ok, anyone want to discuss it, perhaps grieve their loss of a hero?

Skinny Fetish Fan

10/10/2012 at 21:56

Gutted - I hate drugs, they have tarnished sports viewing.

Some of my favourite sports moments have subsequently been shown as fakes - Ben Johnson beating Carl Lewis in a then world record and now Lance Armstrong's look over his shoulder at Jan Ullrich before riding off up the hill is also a fake.

Plus the part of Dodgeball is now also ruined!

booktrunk

10/10/2012 at 23:05

It seems having a Hero is a bit naive

Trust and believe in yourself

Edited: 10/10/2012 at 23:05

RicF

11/10/2012 at 05:13

It was good entertainment at the time.

Tricky Dicky¹

11/10/2012 at 06:08

I read the 200 page summary last night and the depth of his organisation, intimidation and coercion is quite stunning. Any belief that he was a nice guy is absolutely shattered. He sent text messages threatening Levi Leipheimer's wife while he knew that LL was away on the TDF! Scumbag.

kittenkat

pirate

11/10/2012 at 06:37

Link?

seren nos

pirate

11/10/2012 at 07:31

booktrunk wrote (see)

It seems having a Hero is a bit naive

Trust and believe in yourself

i think you may be right there...............which in a way is also sad

Dave The Ex- Spartan pirate

pirate

11/10/2012 at 07:41

I do think some one on the BBC news desk has a sense of humour, they keep showing Hinualt showing Armstrong, Basso and Ulrich onto the TdF podium !

booktrunk

11/10/2012 at 08:00

Seren the trouble is we also build our hero's up to high, they aren't THST different to the rest of us, we all make mistakes and regret little things, but imagine how much more intense and pressurised it is for them...

Then we wonder why they take shortcuts. Just sad.

Stevie G .

11/10/2012 at 09:16

Skinny Fetish Fan wrote (see

Plus the part of Dodgeball is now also ruined!

clearly the worst part of this!

PhilPub

11/10/2012 at 09:17

Cheers for the link Tricky. It's surprisingly readable for an official document; "Lance's wife is rolling joints." ...and seeing as I'm only on p19 I'm not sure how much work I'm going to get done today!

I bought David Millar's book recently, and when I'm done I'll probably move on to Tyler Hamilton. (Via a Gore Vidal biography just to mix things up a bit - "buy one, get one half price, in Waterstones.) I'll be an expert on cycling and doping soon.

Wilkie

11/10/2012 at 09:42

Tricky Dicky¹ wrote (see)

I read the 200 page summary last night and the depth of his organisation, intimidation and coercion is quite stunning. Any belief that he was a nice guy is absolutely shattered. He sent text messages threatening Levi Leipheimer's wife while he knew that LL was away on the TDF! Scumbag.

SInce I read Bad Blood, and saw how he treated people, I knew he was a scumbag.

That he also doped doesn't really surprise me. You'd have to be super-human to beat all the other guys who were doping!

Edited: 11/10/2012 at 09:42

xine267

11/10/2012 at 11:13

Thanks for the link, I'm only about 20 pages but it's damning stuff. Suggestions in the news today that he has irrevocably damaged cycling - anyone agree?

booktrunk

11/10/2012 at 11:20

No, In 5 years 18 years olds will say Lance who?

Skinny Fetish Fan

11/10/2012 at 11:33

There's a 5live programme on Monday night about it - it's rather cleverly called something like ' Pedlars [or Pedallers] - The Lance Armstrong Story'.

As I've only heard the announcement on the radio I'm not sure which spelling they are actually using!

Doesn't make the whole story any less tragic of course.

Can't help wondering if any mountain stages in last couple of years that have been duplicates of stages from 10 years ago and how the times compare? How long for example did it take to get up Alpe D'Huez (sp?) 15 years ago and most recently - or was the last ascent of Alpe D'Huez won by Contador in which case that does not exactly help prove one way or the other!

PhilPub

11/10/2012 at 11:38

xine267 wrote (see)

Thanks for the link, I'm only about 20 pages but it's damning stuff. Suggestions in the news today that he has irrevocably damaged cycling - anyone agree?

Dunno. I hope I'm not too naive in hoping that it's clean now compared to 10-15 years ago, and that there's a genuinely different culture and attitude to doping. One of the things that sticks out for me when reading the evidence in the USADA
document (p79 and counting!) is that so many people were involved and complicit in the cover-up. Such a sheep mentality of "they're all at it, so maybe it's not such a bad thing..."

Maybe the Lance empire will crumble around him and a few people will think twice before considering acting like such a cnut themselves?

My enjoyment of reading "It's Not About the Bike" back in the day... seems an awfully long time ago now.

fat buddha

11/10/2012 at 11:53

http://newsthump.com/2012/10/11/lance-armstrong-launches-livestrong-yellow-rubber-tourniquet/

Tom77

11/10/2012 at 12:07

http://store.theonion.com/images/Product/medium/5045.jpg

(You can buy them here)

stutyr

11/10/2012 at 12:29

There was an article a few months ago (either rcuk or bikeradar?) that included some info from this years TdF from the makers of the SRM power meters fitted to many Pro's bikes. Whilst they wouldn't give away exact figures, they did say that there was a general level of Watts produced by the peloton on a flat section of the TdF, and that the Wattage amongst the top riders (e.g. top ten in GC) increased significantly during the mountain climbs. The damning thing was that the peak power produced by today's top riders was lower than the equivalent riders in the TdFs of a few years ago.

The article was vague enough to avoid any litigation, and didn't provide any reason for the discrepancy, but I suspect most readers jumped to the same conclusion.

Demon Barber

11/10/2012 at 12:29

I used to run in my Livestrong gear but I don't think I will now. Not because I don't support it's cause, but I'm just uneasy with wearing something endorsed by a drug cheat. All of Armstrong's achievements are now tarnished, all of his Tour De France titles and even his Moon Landing means nothing to me now.