Lance Armstrong stripped of 7 Tour De France medals

tiffanywint wrote:

I think the moral here is that the entire sport was corrupt. Everyone looks bad.

I can't rag on Lance because he was propped up and cheered on by the whole corrupt machine. As Grav suggests he does look stupid as an honorable spokesman for the profound ideals espoused by the LiveStrong foundation, and people have plenty of reason to feel let down by him, but I would humbly suggest, that once the smoke has cleared and the anger subsides, it's not just Lance that has been indicted here, it's the whole lousy sport.

I never watched cycling anyway, so for me to know that the whole sport was corrupt would have been irrelevant. All I ever have known about cycling was because of Lance Armstrong's profile.

Lance was bigger than the sport, which is why he got the lion's share of the publicity. It was about beating cancer, "living strong", dating Sheryl Crow....etc.. Same with, say, Tim Tebow. If he got caught secretly visiting whore houses, caught on camera screaming curse words at others, etc...he would lose a lot of his fan base because the expectation level is different for Tebow, just as it was for Lance.

Well GS in my neck of the woods, mainland Europe, the TDF is hard to miss as it is one of the summers big sport-events of the summer. So even if I tried really hard those weeks of Tour are hard to miss. The winning of the Tour by an American has been painfull for the French, talk about nationalistic they invented it, and they have been talking about doping for a long time.

The sports as such have been suspect for quite a while, and now it turns out that doping is essentialy the root of all cycling for quite some time. With Lance as mr. Big in the negative cycle for the moment. My question is just how can one cyclist create such a "organisation" that is so powerfull and deciding in the cyclesport without catching any suspicion but some folks wo comment on it but are put away as sore losers by fans, official organisations, other cyclists and the massmedia.

It is not just the downfall of the man Lance Armstrong but also the sport imho. Any good performance will be suspect and the big organsations are as well as they were "blind" towards what was really happening in their sport and perhaps trying to save their own lucerative cushy jobs.

saint mark wrote:

Well GS in my neck of the woods, mainland Europe, the TDF is hard to miss as it is one of the summers big sport-events of the summer. So even if I tried really hard those weeks of Tour are hard to miss. The winning of the Tour by an American has been painfull for the French, talk about nationalistic they invented it, and they have been talking about doping for a long time.

#4 And when confronted with doping allegations a few years ago by the French media, Armstrong lied to them and about them, and tried to get Americans to believe it was simply sour grapes on the part of the French, and made them seem like sore losers. He also successfully sued media publications that reported on his doping activities. Will those newspapers (LA Times, for instance) get their money back? Will these people that Armstrong lied about get their reputations back?

I'm more on your side, it would seem, than you are. I think Armstrong should be stripped naked, tarred, feathered, and put on the first flight out of La Guardia (in the diplomatic bag) to France. He is an abject failure. An abomination. A total loser.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

Armstrong should be stripped naked, tarred, feathered, and put on the first flight out of La Guardia (in the diplomatic bag) to France. He is an abject failure. An abomination. A total loser.

Flying Extraordinary Rendition class, presumably.

I think anyone who is interested in cycling knows that the whole sport of "road" cycling, at least ,has been rotten to the core

from Bjarne Riis to the end of Armstrongs reign there is only one person who finished in the top three who has not been tainted by a drugs conviction or allegation, which is why they will never be able to reallocate those titles to anyone

wikipedia says “Fernando Escartín is a Spanish former road racing cyclist.
He won a stage and finished third overall in the 1999 Tour de France.
Of those who finished on the podium in the era in which Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France (1999-2005), Escartín is the sole rider not to be implicated in a doping scandal…”

however for everyone else in the world, who only hear about cycling once a year, when the Tour de France gets some novelty sport coverage, Lance Armstrong was "Mr Cycling", so it's only natural that the bulk of the coverage focuses on him as the arch villain

Armstrong is booked to do a "no holds barred" interview with Oprah on January 17th. Speculation is he will admit to doping. My belief is that he will admit to only what is currently known and has been proven; he'll admit to nothing more, and he'll almost certainly try to find some excuse for what he did. I cannot possibly state how revolting I find Lance Armstrong. If this man put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger I can honestly say I would not feel sorry, and would actually feel kind of glad. He lied about others, he lied to others, he dragged other people and organizations through the legal system when he knew he was lying and they were telling the truth. I have ZERO SYMPATHY for this guy and wish he would just drop dead. Just go away. There is nothing he can say that I would believe. He is not sorry...he is not remorseful....he is to his core unapologetic. The best thing he can do for his reputation is to shut up, go away, and hope that people forget him.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/will-lance-armstrong-admit-to-doping-in-oprah-show/314858-5-23.html

And for Oprah's own credibility, she better not let him skate on this issue. She better be there body-slamming him to the ground with rapid-fire questions, and not let him try to worm his way off the hook.

Nice to hear his side of the story, it is a better deal than him no answering his accusers.