The only sportsman (and I shouldn't even use that word about this cheating bastard coward) I truly despise. Let him stew forever.
Lance Armstrong to be charged with doping offences - Washington Post
- Thread starter Nick 0208 Ldn
- Start date
ETA: And while I'm at it, I detest Froome too.
Is it an actual race type thing that is even related to the cycling organisation, or just one of those close the freeway mass ride type things that random people do every year?What a jokeIt's a charity ride! Organized by someone who was banned for PED use to boot.
He should just turn up and have a ride with George anyway, what are they going to do? Give him two life-time bans?
Slowly creeping back to being accepted back in the public eye, it may appear.
The US of A loves a good ole fashioned story of redemption.
Lance is the man. Best tour rider of all time, and best doper too. The guy is literally #winning and #betterthanyou in everything he does.
#respect
Don't be jealous. Although I sort of pitied him when he was bumping uglies with one of the Olsen twins.
funny how a cnut that doped to win and fecked his coleagues in the ass gets support
he should be in jail
I would argue Lance doped to be competitive so that his superior natural talent wouldn't be undone by dopers gaining an unfair advantage. Lance wasn't the first doper, his actions have to be looked at partially as an attempt to achieve parity with cheaters who existed before he did.
As to his actions to protect his secret. cnuty for sure.
Still the GOAT though.
Doesn't take long to go from discourse to full out full retard around here.
I could enlighten you as to why you just made one of the most retarded and vile posts I've ever read on this entire site in the 7-8 year's I've been here. However you're a moderator. Please continue to make light of the holocaust by drawing comparisons to absurd and silly things.
with all due respect, to be called a retard by you is music for my ears
it means i'm right
keep defending dopes in a sports forum
Nuckwit.
Greatest of all time. And Nucks is right here.
Thanks SAF
But if Armstrong took it easy, then he could have set times that Froome would be nowhere near.
Aside from all the other variables, I can't help think that comparing times between the eras is a little misleading. David Millar has spoken a lot about how the sport has lost its amateur ethos and become about chasing numbers in training. A clean Froome to be as fast as a doping Armstrong doesn't appear half as suspicious when you compare with the change in Rugby Union over a similar period.
You might want to check your own posts before you get on your high horse.
This watered down version of events overlooks the reasons why people think he's an arsehole instead of just a cheat.
I struggle with Lance. He's a huge asshole and did everything you said. But tough to give him jail time unless all cheaters in the sport get it. The only redeeming quality is the amazing work he's done for cancer patients. Shouldn't be overlooked.
Had the most money, BY FAR, thrown into his doping program. Because of the comeback story that went with it = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ . Worked flawlessly until his ego destroyed him on a comeback.
Reckon Ulrich, had he had that kind of money in his doping system would of split them 7 titles with him. And actually didn't add like 3 stone every winter. And if his team didn't also have Zabel in it. US Postal was always just about Lance.
Reckon Ulrich, had he had that kind of money in his doping system would of split them 7 titles with him. And actually didn't add like 3 stone every winter. And if his team didn't also have Zabel in it. US Postal was always just about Lance.
So you're saying the entire sport was full of cheats. Great argument.
Not far off being correct to be fair.
It's quite amazing reading Tyler Hamilton's book. I always thought it would be impossible for this 'Omerta' to exist for so many years with so many people involved. And yet, it did. Everyone knew what was going on and kept it in house.
Seems like Big-Tex is doing fine, he's been doing a lot of trail running with a couple of Ultra runners lately.
I just downloaded the Rouleur article on my phone, man there's some great stuff there. The two danes who interviewed him were surprised that they were allowed to check out his house in Aspen on there own while he was grabbing a shower:
I'm obviously late responding to this, but yet another example of manufactured outrage, something that is very prevalent nowadays (see the 'fury' regarding Rojo's instagram post.) Anyway, Armstrong could make the argument that he was only trying to level the playing field; however, his bullying tactics towards other riders, particularly those who chose not to dope, and towards those who questioned him (ex. Betsy Andreu,) tend to fritter away any sympathy that one might have for him.
Manufactured outrage? I'm not nor was outraged or upset in the least. The guy, literally compared Armstrong to Adolf Hitler, who is universally recognized by anyone with a clue as one of, if not the most evil man in recorded history.
What Armstrong did was assholish to be sure. The guy is clearly a dick. However, drawing an analogy between a guy who;
A) Cheated in a sport that has been full of cheaters from the get go.
B) Was a bully with his money and image to protect his secret.
Is slightly different from a guy who
A) Wrote a book about exterminating and enslaving hundreds of millions of people.
B) Launched a war which directly caused the deaths of ~60 million people
C) Ethnically cleansed over 14 million.
I'm sorry. You don't need to be outraged to see that someone has lost touch with reality, and has also committed the Hitler fallacy, thereby rendering their entire argument moot.
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I'm sorry princess. The entire sport is full of cheats. I'd be willing to bet that not a single guy in the era before Lance has won the race clean. Not ONE SINGLE guy. Of course I don't have evidence for this, because guys like Greg Lamonde didn't exist in an era where they froze his urine samples for nearly a decade to continue testing. However pretty much every great cyclist who has won it, has pissed hot for something, been caught for something been found, on something.
Here is the difference. The crack down on doping in sport has escalated in the last decade and a half. The level of scrutiny now, is hundreds of times higher than it was before. I've maintained this from the beginning. Anyone who didn't believe Lance was on something, was in denial. At that level, they were ALL on something. Perhaps it is your own lack of understanding, perhaps it is your naivete. I don't know, I don't really care.
As an adult, it is possible to respect an achievement, and disassociate the person from it. I like Lance as a cyclist, who is clearly the greatest of his generation and I would consider the GOAT. I also think he is a scummy person. In spite of thinking he is a scummy person, I can still appreciate what he did, in a sport whose culture has been about doping since day one when they were doing coke or hitting meth on the side of the road.
I've said the guy was not a nice person. Please refer to the reply preceding this. It is possible to not like a guy, or think they are an arsehole and still respect what they have achieved.
As I see it there are two facets to why people hate Lance and can't get over their hate.
1) He cheated.
2) He destroyed people trying to cover it up.
Regarding 1, I don't see this as a relevant issue. Cheating was systemic in the sport. The saying don't hate the player, hate the game is perfectly apt. If it wasn't Lance, it would be someone else.
Regarding 2, indefensible. He is clearly a scummy person of world class levels. This however does not diminish from the fact he beat everyone 7 times while playing the same game they were playing.
We might as well put an asterisk beside every Tour winner prior to Lance in this case. Aside from a very few winners, they have all been caught on something at some point in their careers. With the laxity and lack of sophistication in the testing methods then, it would be irresponsible to assume that people who got caught on multiple occasions, were only ever using on those specific occasions.
I'm not sure what you're even talking about. Until these replies, I'm fairly certain this is the first time we've ever interacted on this forum, and in fact I believe on virtually every subject I've noticed you post on, our opinions and posts have been inline.
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I think it's pretty clear that he was saying that someone's not being the first offender (ie. Hitler wasn't the first genocidal maniac; Armstrong wasn't the first doping cyclist,) doesn't in any way excuse them from their actions. I would have thought your 9 years of post-secondary education would enable you to see that.
I perfectly understood what he was trying to say. However, drawing an analogy between a dope cheat that enforced his will to cover up his cheating is just not comparable to someone who did what Hitler did.
The only point of comparison is that they were both ethically wrong. On the scale of wrong however, come on. Drawing any sort of equivalency between the two is the height of idiocy. I could make an absurd, and outlandish comparison, but I can't. I can't because he already made just about the most absurd and outlandish comparison possible. Drawing any sort of ethical or moral equivalency between the two is so mind mindbogglingly stupid.
Therein is why he is wrong. He could have picked any number of ways to justify his hate for Lance. The thing is, he couldn't. To justify his position, he has to draw a false analogy, and that analogy just happens to be one of the worst I've ever seen in addition to one of the most absurd. Equating Lances actions as inexcusable because of Hitler is absurd.
Frankly, I'm not even sure what he is arguing. Is it that Lance despite his greatness shouldn't be considered great because he is scummy? Is it Lance is a cheater so he doesn't deserve to be considered a great? Is it something else?
Either way you want to slice it, his argument has no validity. Lance is a great cyclist and irrefutably one of the best ever. You say "He cheated" I say, everyone cheated. So when you break that down, it is par for the course. The tour has been dirty since the beginning. That the people racing and winning the tour doped shouldn't be a revelation, it should be understood to be the status-quo.
He wants to discredit him because he just doesn't like him. So he is a hater. Just because he hates someone and justifiably so doesn't nullify the fact that he won 7 Tours. If you bring up doping, I return to the previous paragraph.
So we are left with his analogy, Hitler wasn't first either; that doesn't justify Lances actions. From a purely black and white moralistic point of view. Sure. One problem. The world is not black and white. The problem then is, who can you hang your hat on? Who wasn't a doper? Most winners have been caught for doping, for those who didn't get caught, well remember that Lance was never officially caught while competing either. Obviously lack of evidence is not evidence in this case, however it would be shocking if the guys who didn't get caught were actually clean and didn't slide by because their doping methods in their own era were more sophisticated than the testing controls. Afterall, they didn't have their samples frozen to be tested indefinitely into the future. Who knows who would come back hot if that were the case.
Lastly, I am not defending doping. I'm just relating things as they are as objectively as I can be.
This is the way I see it. Lance was the best cheating asshole in a sport full of cheaters, because he was an asshole doesn't negate the fact he was the best. Even the math is perfect.
The thing is, your post from back in November seems to suggest that Armstrong's not being the first offender somehow lessens his culpability, or provides some form of justification for his actions. Marcosdeto's post, if I am understanding it correctly, retorts that Hitler also wasn't the first to indulge in the criminal act for which he is infamous(genocide); yet that doesn't lessen or mitigate the act. Nowhere does his post suggest that Armstrong's actions were equally as bad as Hitler's.
I actually agree with you somewhat about Armstrong, in the sense that he was one of many cheaters (although I think he took on a leading role that not many others did.) What I find amusing is your instant fury at the rather benign Hitler analogy. I sense you are one of those people who is desperate to take offence at any opportunity.
Your ability to portray an entire sport as utterly shite is quite breathtaking. You really should go into PR for a major corporation, you could earn a fortune. princess.
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The argument stemmed from your rather fawning post:
Leaving aside the fact that he's not actually #betterthanme at #winning Tour de France titles for example, and the merits of respecting this arsehole/scumbag (despite his achievements), I don't think that he was "playing the same game". The attitude that led to (2) also allowed him to get a stronger team by bullying others into doping, and his influence meant he could could afford to push the boundaries more than others.
For the rest, I'm inclined to agree. Luckily, I'm of an age that means I have no emotional investment in riders in the pre-LA era - they can scrub all the records for all I care. I'm only interested in the sport going forward, and a major part of ensuring that is letting the current lot know that they will be punished retrospectively. To do this requires people to stop bullshitting, stop ducking and start co-operating. Armstrong, as yet*, has not done this, and until he does, he's part of the problem.
* I accept that his level of co-operation with the CIRC report (due for release this month) is unknown.
The idea that it was a level playing field only holds if you think they were all on the same doping regime. They weren't. They have rules to standardise the equipment cyclist use but none to standardise their doping regimes. Lance had access to more sophisticated methods of cheating than the others had at their disposal and thus had an advantage even over other cheats. Better doping doctors, the money to pay for the best techniques and the ability to share this advantage with his team mates.
His access to finance and influence also meant he was less likely to get caught cheating than other dopers and was able to attack critics who dared to suggest he wasn't clean. Other cheaters did not have the ability to reduce the risk in that way, meaning that it was an uneven playing field even in the way the doping was policed.
Plus, they weren't all doping in the first place. Some people made the morally correct decision and were robbed by Armstrong and his ilk.
His access to finance and influence also meant he was less likely to get caught cheating than other dopers and was able to attack critics who dared to suggest he wasn't clean. Other cheaters did not have the ability to reduce the risk in that way, meaning that it was an uneven playing field even in the way the doping was policed.
Plus, they weren't all doping in the first place. Some people made the morally correct decision and were robbed by Armstrong and his ilk.
Any links to that article? I'd be keen to have a read of it.
Sorry, I bought it through their app - it's well worth the money. I'm eagerly awaiting the January issue which will have part 2 in it.
good interview with him on the BBC website. He says that if it was 1995 and he had the chance to Change what he did that all he Would change was how he treated people. Nice to see an honest answer rather than 'drugs are bad, biggest mistake ever because I got caught'.
More self-justifying, faux-regret bullshit
Come now. He will have been working with a PR team for the past two years on the best approach to bring himself back to respectability and a good earning capacity.