Lance Armstrong on Chris Froome

Truth! wrote:

Even if he did dope, I doubt he had such cool doping strategies that made his doping that much better than everyone else's. Therefore, clean or not, Lance is the best cyclist of the era, hands down.

Actually, he had the best strategies. Read Tyler Hamilton's book. It was NOT a level playing field. Armstrong had the equivalent of a Ferrari for a doctor. Some of the peloton had Dr. Nick. Even Tyler was denied the good stuff.

Truth! wrote:

Even if he did dope, I doubt he had such cool doping strategies that made his doping that much better than everyone else's. Therefore, clean or not, Lance is the best cyclist of the era, hands down.

I agree...he simply was the best placed doper for seven straight years! Unheard of! The GOAT! In fact, here's my top 5 all-time HOF cycling dopers (confirmed cases only):

1. Armstrong (what can I say? Simply the best doper...ever!).

2. Pantani (last rider to win the Giro-Tour double/1998 - the best climber ever).

3. Ulrich (Bridesmaid to LA for so many yrs & Olympic Champ).

4. Riis (the best example of the "donkey to racehorse" analogy).

5. Zabel (6-time Green jersey winner & one-day stage monster).

Newfound Lance Fan! wrote:

I did not like Lance when he was lying, but he came clean.

.

The guy is a Trump-scale liar and still is. "Everyone" did not do it.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

Newfound Lance Fan! wrote:

I did not like Lance when he was lying, but he came clean.

.

The guy is a Trump-scale liar and still is. "Everyone" did not do it.

Everyone that matter back then did. ?

While there was a lot of positive initial reaction to Tyler's book, the opinion of many "in-the-know" has become more skeptical about his reliabity when time has passed. The book reviewer of Podium Cafe and the author of the trilogy A history on the use of blood transfusions in cycling wrote the following about Mr. Hamilton quite recently in another context:

There has never emerged any semi-reliable evidence that L.A. had access to products/methods not available to others. If he had, I don't know, but I am not convinced.

Wow. That didn't take long for the Lance fan boys and drug cheat apologists to come out in full force.

If you don't trust drug cheat Hamilton, try USADA.

Also, let's remember his positive EPO tests: of the 90ish tests of that year, 13 were positive, 6 thereof from Armstrong. But yeah, keep telling yourselves that everybody doped and everybody doped the same way.

Well that video was 44 min of my life I will never reclaim. Yawn. Btw, Lemond was probably the last clean winner of the TDF, and I’m not convinced that he simply didn’t have better technology which gave him an aerodynamic edge. I used to love the TDF. Haven’t watched in over a decade and probably never will again. The Masters is way more exciting.

Fukk Cycling wrote:

Btw, Lemond was probably the last clean winner of the TDF

Lol. No, for that, you have to go back a few more decades.

once and always wrote:

Then just when you start thinking maybe Armstrong isn’t such a bad person and has learned his lesson, you discover he’s still the same conniving, selfish person he always was. This became apparent after he had his girlfriend, Anna Hansen, take the blame for hitting two parked cars on December 28, 2014 in Aspen, even though he was the one behind the wheel, according to this Daily Mail story. Armstrong eventually admitted that he was the one driving after a valet at an event he attended prior told police that Armstrong was the driver. His girlfriend later said it was a joint decision between she and Armstrong for her to take responsibility for the crash so Armstrong could avoid media attention. The guy clearly doesn’t understand the concept of taking responsibility for your actions.

https://thoughtcatalog.com/justin-demarco/2015/06/19-lance-armstrong-quotes-that-are-really-annoying-in-retrospect/

Yes, he's drug-cheated in a lot of bicycle races where everybody drug cheats and broke a lot of laws to do it, slandered and intimidated and ruined lives, reputations to do it and lied about it all for years. We know he's a cheater, liar, and a narcissist.

But are you telling me he's a bad b/f and parking lot driver, too? Gasp. And bad person? IDK. He also raised what? Like a half billion dollars in money to fight cancer? Still I'm glad you and The Daily Mail follow his driving, dating life.

Keep us posted, Woodward.

Lance PR wrote:

Wow. That didn't take long for the Lance fan boys and drug cheat apologists to come out in full force.

If you don't trust drug cheat Hamilton, try USADA.

Also, let's remember his positive EPO tests: of the 90ish tests of that year, 13 were positive, 6 thereof from Armstrong. But yeah, keep telling yourselves that everybody doped and everybody doped the same way.

C'mon man! It was a dope fest back in LA's era. All the top GT contenders had access to the heavy artillery; EPO/blood transfusions & HGH, as well as the recovery stuff; T/steroids & cortisone. And there were plenty of doping doctors to go around including the two big guns in Ferrari & Fuentes. It must have been that doping was the normal preparation for a GT contender back then:

? "More importantly for Lance Armstrong, during the 7-year window when he won every Tour de France (1999-2005), 87% of the top-10 finishers (61 of 70) were confirmed dopers or suspected of doping." ?

I didn't read your article, so I apologize if this issue was addressed, but:

What is the likelihood of those who placed outside of the top 10 being dopers too?

Who cares that he doped. Im not an Armstrong fan per se, I just like watching great bike racing. And it WAS more fun back then. At least they all doped instead of just Froome.

Raising money to "fight" cancer -- yet another lie. "I thought a lot of it was actually going to these cutting-edge research mini-grants, you know, to help these promising studies that were going on," "It sort of mischaracterizes what everyone in this building does," "We're not sending money to labs to fund research, ..." "So, where does all of Livestrong's money go? And what is the mission, if not cancer research?" "...the charity's mission is to help cancer survivors, with programs ..." "What we began investing in, instead of clinical research, was an ongoing dialogue with patients, with survivors, with their families,"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/livestrong-after-lance/

roar shaq wrote:

Yes, he's drug-cheated in a lot of bicycle races where everybody drug cheats and broke a lot of laws to do it, slandered and intimidated and ruined lives, reputations to do it and lied about it all for years. We know he's a cheater, liar, and a narcissist.

But are you telling me he's a bad b/f and parking lot driver, too? Gasp. And bad person? IDK. He also raised what? Like a half billion dollars in money to fight cancer? Still I'm glad you and The Daily Mail follow his driving, dating life.

Keep us posted, Woodward.

Yes, this x100 or x1000 (how many lives did he ruin?). It's the bullying and the behind the scenes destruction of lives, and loss of income, cycling and non-cycling, that separates Lance from other TDF champions like Pantani, and Ulrich. We could start with his teammates, and how Lance, as captain of the team, pressured many to choose between doping, or effective retirement from the sport, for the sole purpose of helping, not themselves or the team, but Lance win. We could add competitors that he cheated by putting himself on the TdF podium 7 times. If it were only fellow teammates and competitors, we might be tempted to dismiss these, or put them in another "so what" category, as many of these also doped, just like Lance. But the list goes on, and on, and was not limited to fellow teammates or competitors: - Non-doping competitors like "Mr. Clean" Christophe Bassons who was effectively shunned from his team and the rest of the peloton and forced to retire early, after simply exercising his right to free speech. - Doped-competitors like Simeoni, who testified in a court against Dr. Ferrari - Former friends like Betsy Andreu, who wouldn't lie for Lance - Former employees like Emma O'Reilly and Mike Anderson. After losing everything in lawsuits, and unable to start a business in Texas, Mike Anderson had to move him and his family to New Zealand to escape Lance's reach. - Journalists like Paul Kimmage and David Walsh, and the lawsuit against the Sunday Times - His destruction even reached back in time to taint the legacy of former American cycling hero Lemond, and interfere with a line of Trek bikes with a potential estimated at $30 million, after LeMond's famous "greatest comeback or greatest fraud" comment after learning about Lance's relation with Dr. Ferrari. - He used his influence, with his big fan Nicolas Sarkozy, to reduce the funding of the French anti-doping lab, in retaliation for their EPO research which backed the famous "Armstrong Lies". And none of this mentions the LiveStrong organization which misrepresented it's mission, leaving cancer survivors and LiveStrong donators feeling cheated and defrauded. Nor does it mention the negative impact on the sport of cycling, which was staged in 1999 to make a "clean" recovery after the doping raids like Festina, only for this reputational recovery to be set back almost a decade, if not more. Who believes Froome is clean? Nor does it mention the ripple effect of the reputation of all endurance sports, like running, where fans further doubt all great performances, thinking that villagers in Kenya and Ethiopia have the access to the same level of resources that allowed Lance to dope and escape detection, or that any great athlete sponsored by Nike must also be protected by Nike lawyers. It's even a tragedy that Lance, a great actor, and believable and charismatic speaker, that with his speeches, took away great words like "the people who don't believe in cycling, the cynics, the sceptics; [I feel] sorry for you. You need to believe in these riders. I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles". Because sports need the fans to believe in the athletes.

Roughhouse Doyle wrote:

What I do care about is the fact that he tried to ruin lives when someone spoke out about his doping; Emma O'Reilly and Greg LeMond in particular.

Check out "Status of Tour de France winners since 1961":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France

Doped? Or not? I don't give a shìt about it. He rode like a real man. He would rather have died from heart attack than give up.

rekrunner wrote:

It's even a tragedy that Lance, a great actor, and believable and charismatic speaker, that with his speeches, took away great words like "the people who don't believe in cycling, the cynics, the sceptics; [I feel] sorry for you. You need to believe in these riders. I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles".

Because sports need the fans to believe in the athletes.

It's all water under the bridge now and Lance has moved on. Yes...he's said stupid stuff in front of millions and even gave anti-doping speeches along the way. ? And remember in 2006 he even went on the "Larry King" show to defend Landis of the doping allegations at the time. Then a few years later, LA and his new Radio Shack team refused to hire Landis after his ban prompting Landis to drop a dime to USADA in retaliation. So, it's been a comedy show and he's made an idiot of himself. But like I said he's moved on and last year he was a guest speaker at Colorado University dazzling the impressionable college kids with that Lance charisma & charm:

TheOhioState wrote:

Check out "Status of Tour de France winners since 1961":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France

say no to drugs wrote:

The Brits are closing ranks again, defending doping because it was one of them.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/42417297

Same hilarious stuff, including:

"Being dehydrated can increase the concentration of a drug in the system. And that could be the reason for Froome's test result, says Dr Tom Bassindale, an anti-doping scientist at Sheffield Hallam University."

I mean, really? The 22% in Paula's case were already ridiculous, but now they want to explain a 100% increase due to dehydration? On the other hand, why not, this will go to UCI which isn't exactly better than IAAF.

Yea, wheres the beef excuse!