Lance Armstrong Is Back Competing, Does SwimRun Event with Olympic Triathlon Champ Simon Whitfield
by LetsRun.com
September 25, 2018
Lance Armstrong is back formally competing. This time he was competing with an Olympic champion rather than against one.
Armstrong teamed up with 2000 Olympic triathlon champ Simon Whitfield from Canada to compete as a team in the San Juan Islands SwimRun event Sunday on the Orcas Islands in Washington, where Whitfield and Armstrong finished 3rd out of 21 male teams (41 overall teams) in 6:09:20, over 30 minutes behind the winners, John Steves and Matt Hurley.
The Swimrun was a team event where participants may use flotation devices and even fins, but must stay together the entire way. The San Juan event featured 18 miles of trail running with 2.5 miles of swimming broken up over 25 different sections — 13 runs and 12 swims.
Armstrong and Whitfield’s team was named “Shower, Shampoo, Blow Dry and Run,” a reference to Armstrong and Whitfield’s 2012 Twitter spat, where Armstrong referred to the Olympic triathlon as “a shampoo, blow dry, and 10k foot race.”
Armstrong is banned for life from competitive cycling events for doping, but only had a four-year ban for most non-cycling events. As USADA spokesman Ryan Madden told USA Today, as of August 24, 2016, (four years after his “lifetime” ban was announced), “[Armstrong] can compete in a sanctioned event at a national or regional level in a sport other than cycling that does not qualify him… to compete in a national championship or international event.”
During his formal four-year ban, Armstrong was prevented from running the Chicago Marathon and participating in a master’s swim competition, but did compete in some non-sanctioned events. He is now free to compete in most sanctioned non-cycling events.
Results at bottom.
LRC freelance ad-salesman Lars Finanger is one of the organizers of the SwimRun event. We nearly fell out of our chairs when we asked him how it went and he said Lance Armstrong competed.
Warmup swim/run at Cascade Lake on Orcas Island for @lancearmstrong and @simonwhitfield in preparation for their @swimrunusa race tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing more of what this gorgeous part of the country has in store for us tomorrow!! ???♂️?♂️ pic.twitter.com/fUCDSi5oBN
— Liz Kreutz (@LizKreutz) September 23, 2018
Results