Lance Armstrong... greatest doper there was or ever will be

Oops, should have refreshed the page after reading the article..

Or he just doesn't give a shit, because the ITU are going to continue giving him a free ride, and brand Armstrong will continue to rake in the endorsement (and prize) cash in the middle and long-distance Grand Prix triathlon events.

He got a free pass from the people who can put him in jail or take away his precious money, and he just doesn't give a fuck about cycling.

You mean the strongarm tactics didn't work?

He gave cycling 'the look'.

Always in yellow, never giving his fellow competitors attitude. A true champion.

Everyone doped. Get over it.

Everyone doped. Get over it.

Yeah, because I have such a massive issue with anyone who dopes.

Yeah, because I have such a massive issue with anyone who dopes.

Was a general response to the thread, not your post.

Odious as Armstrong is personally, there is some tragedy in his situation. The lie is just way too big for him.

How so? He is big enough to be the Foundation after all.

Because the lie is the cornerstone on which his entire life is built.

He is held to a different standard for doing something that was commonplace at the time, primarily because of the extent of his success compared to his peers. Ullrich, for example, doesn't attract the same level of vitriol. Of course, it is so much easier for his peers to admit the truth because they don't have as much to lose.

I think that is a tragic situation.

I think you're being an apologist, T-V.

I think you're being an apologist, T-V.

Sorry.

hehe

In the very Greek sense, yes.

In the Greek sense, yes.

By all evidence and accounts, he is of course an absolute dick.

But see, it's not so hard to apologise. Unless you're an arrogant delusional prick like Armstrong.

^cross-posting of dicks. Sounds a bit rude.

My issue with Armstrong, apart from the fact that he is a fucking douche of the highest order and a fraud who has consistently lied, is his bullying tactics and enforcement of omerta, against anyone who dare speak out about what was going on at the time.

Apart from that I'm sure he's a perfect role model.

See, andyp does love him!

I want to find the article again but have failed miserably but I recall reading a piece that said that in the late 90's the peloton had kind of accepted that things could not continue they way they were and that some sort of effort by the teams to get everyone off the junk at the same time might be possible; a truce of sorts.

And then Lance + USPS turn out doped to the tits and everyone said "fuck it" and things just got worse.

David Millar's book is pretty much one long article on just that topic and era.

I want to find the article again but have failed miserably but I recall reading a piece that said that in the late 90's the peloton had kind of accepted that things could not continue they way they were and that some sort of effort by the teams to get everyone off the junk at the same time might be possible; a truce of sorts.

And then Lance + USPS turn out doped to the tits and everyone said "fuck it" and things just got worse.

It is this frequently cited article isn't it?

**AS: **The other thing that struck me about these results, which I was surprised never came up before, was that if you take away those 6 positives, you have 7 remaining positives out of 81 samples. That's 8.6%. Does that say to you that at that time the peloton was relatively clean?

**MA: **Yeah, it's an interesting observation, 'cause you cast back to the '98 Tour, obviously it was a debacle. And, I've heard anecdotal or off the cuff remarks, that '99 was a new beginning. It had gotten as bad as it could possibly get, or so we would've thought, and '99 was, "Ok, let's start again, we've really got to make an effort to be clean this year."

Well, obviously, based on Lance Armstrong's results, he wasn't racing clean. But for the rest of the samples collected during the Tour, relatively speaking there wasn't a very high prevalence of EPO use in the rest of the peloton, at least in the peloton that was tested, which was your top 3 place getters, for example.

...

AS: It's interesting because when I spoke with Paul Kimmage he made a pretty big deal about that year's Tour, that it was supposed to be this Tour of redemption, and his point was that Armstrong came along and brought things back to the old ways. These results lend that belief a little bit of credence, don't they?

MA: I think there's a couple of things that strike me as well. Yes, these results are consistent with that argument. The other is that we know how Armstrong performed before the '99 Tour. '93, '94, '95, '96. And look, a couple of those races he couldn't even finish, another race I think he's an hour and a half behind. Specifically in the time trial he was dropping minutes to the other competitors.

Now compare that with '99, and it's a helluva transformation. Instead of dropping off and not being competitive, he was actually dropping the rest of the peloton off. So something dramatically changed in relation to Armstrong versus the rest of the peloton across that period of time. That's unarguable.

There's, as we've been talking about, pretty unequivocal evidence, well, it is unequivocal evidence, that he was using EPO during the '99 Tour. Now, that would go a long way to explaining that reversal in competitiveness in Armstrong v. the peloton.

David Millar's book is a crock of shit.

Pretty much.

How's that?

Does he admit to doping? Does he dob in anyone else? I've not read it yet.

Yes. No. Worth a read, but didn't really convince me that he's this saint and bastion for principle and integrity that everyone (himself, more than anyone) seems to make him out to be these days. He's made the best out of his situation. If he hadn't have been caught, he'd never have turned himself or anyone else in. Nothing in it to differentiate him from all the others that are currently doping and getting away with it.

"If he hadn't have been caught, he'd never have turned himself or anyone else in."

Yep.

How's that?

The constant self justification for doping, coupled with the tacit omerta of only naming those who had already been banned or who had admitted the truth.

The writing style and narrative is actually quite enjoyable and I secretly quite like David Millar, but I think the book is only a partial telling of the doping tale.

Update: what Sanddancer said.