Listening to his podcast today and they started discussing watches. He normally has a Daytona (black bezel) but was wearing a Richard Mille today (not seen it on Y-Tube yet) by the description. It was given to him by Robin Williams (also a cyclist) and he recalled the 2003 TdF when Williams turned up and gave engraved Submariners to the whole team and backroom staff.
Daytona
See this Instagram photo by @celebwatchspotter https://www.instagram.com/p/BWo3ooIF...n_native_share
Who cares what he wears ...
I’ve won exactly the same number of Tour de Frances’s as Lance Armstrong. True story.
Can't we give the guy a break? I tried riding a bike whilst on drugs once and if anything it was much harder. I was in a hedge within seconds.
IMHO, a large number of top riders were "juicing" 15-20 years ago and Armstrong was obviously one of them - - perhaps the best at applying it to the sport. My opinion is that on a level playing field, Lance Armstrong would have won many, if not all, of those championships.
😄😄Originally Posted by Lampoc
On a level playing field you’d have got much further.
I think the worst element on this saga is not the actual cheating, as has been said the peleton at that time was riddled with EPO and other performance enhancing drugs, it is the way he went after people who tried to go against the myth of Armstrong.
Armstrong was ruthless in his charade, ruining the lives of others to protect his success. Former teammates, support staff, competitors, reporters —anyone who threatened to expose the him was bullied, discredited, defamed and in many cases had their careers ruined.
J
This is spot on IMO.
Lance wasn't wearing the RM was he? I think George Hincappie had a white one on. Lance had on a skeleton watch, which he said was German?
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Everybody was on drugs. That’s why for those years there are no official winners.
He won fair and square, given the official and unofficial rules of the day.
What a great piece of trolling, I am afraid your input is not worthy of argument
Just watched the documentary ‘Lance’ on BBC iPlayer about him, still to this day i can’t believe he did what he did and ruined many lives around him when they came clean about his antics...
But......
On the other side he did a hell of a lot of good regarding cancer awareness, treatments, fund raising etc etc...
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No 'but' for me, he was a cheat to the core.
I'm sure others did it too, but that doesn't excuse him.
He and Maradonna share a special place of contemptuous sportsmen (with a few others) for me - Once a cheat, always a cheat.
M
Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
Not excusing this pair but where does it stop? How many footballers take a dive, for example?
He's scum - it's not the drugtaking - it's that he used his millions to harass and attack the journalists who tried to exposure him - a very nasty character.
100% scum.
Yes - And he's never shown any sign of genuine remorse (likewise with Maradonna, hence my abiding dislike for him, although his 'crime' was on a different scale to Armstrong's).
On the subject of footballers taking a dive, I'd make that a red card offence (pretty easy now with VAR), personally.
M
Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
Oh don’t get me wrong, I despise him for what he did in the world of cycling and I still remember watching him chase down the Italian rider and thinking why has he done that?
I got the opinion after watching that documentary he still thinks he was hard done by...
But I will say his cancer awareness foundation was and is of huge importance over the last 20 years...
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I would not put Maradona into the same bracket as Armstrong. He did not go into that game planning to handball, it was a decision taken and executed in a moment. He admitted it afterwards. It is true that he showed no remorse but if you review the brutal treatment he received throughout his career, game after game after game, with scant protection from referees, I am inclined to forgive him for thinking all is fair in love and war (and football).
The BBC website piece about Steve Hodge and Maradona is worth reading—Hodge got the Argentine’s shirt at the end of the game and has been inundated with offers for it. Hodge has zero resentment over the handball. He says that most if not all footballers try to seek any advantage they can get, and for Argentina the stakes in that game were sky high.
By contrast, Armstrong cheated in a planned and repeated manner and tried to destroy those who aimed to expose him. His is a completely different case.
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I would have thought it would have been an excellent commercial opportunity for him for companies to pay him not to wear, endorse or associate himself with their products..
The disgusting little man went into every game intending to cheat in some way, because it was part of his game. Not necessarily a historic Hand of God goal against an international rival, but even that was just a function of his approach to the game of football. However I agree with your main point, Armstrong's cheating was much more cynical and blatant.
I must confess though that I sometimes dope with sherbet lemons before a hilly stretch of road on a long ride.
Maradona also had more +ve drug tests than Armstrong.
I find it difficult to believe that any professional sportsperson operating in the upper echelons is clean. Doping provides such a performance boost it is pretty much impossible to beat someone on the sauce. That goes for every sport.
Armstrong shouldn't get any more of a hard time than someone like Mo Farah or Paula Radcliffe, who like Armstrong haven't failed tests but have enough crap in their background to suggest, on the balance of probability, they doped.
He does get a harder time - mostly because the majority of people agree he's a bit of an ass.
It is true to say that Armstrong was a talented cyclist
It is now proven that Armstrong developed, mandated (for EVERY one of his team members) and oversaw the most comprehensive team doping system devised, made by what was known to be the most knoweldgable doping doctor in the system.
It is true to say that other individuals and teams were also doping.
But is is impossible to separate Armstrong from his doping system, and although he finished first in so many events, judging how much was him and how much was his own doping and that of his team-mates is impossible.
But one can say that the boost he got from dpoing is most likely to be significantly greater than anyone else's, because the system he developed has been proven to be so comprehensive, and no other team has (before or since) been even accused of so complete a system of cheating.
D
So you think the only problem is that he was a better cheater? Ha!
As others have stated, the more troublesome aspect is the people whose lives he messed up to avoid getting caught.
From my non cycling following point of view . I think the issue with the Tour de France and other multi day cycling events is the sheer rigour on the body. It seems more or less impossible to complete at a supreme level without performance enhancing and I suspect this has been from the very beginning when cash got involved. Cocaine , amphetamines amd then the more sophisticated nasties such growth hormone and thence to EPO. By the time you get to Eddie Merckx these guys were extremely fit but would have been performing enhancing in a time when it was tolerated.
Lance was a freak of an athlete according to his peers but even he had to dope to compete whilst crossing the timeframe from active toleration to public outcry
The question is does any cyclist need to dope at all? If we agree no then we must either accept a far slower tour or maybe just scrap it as an outdated overly risky event, my money is we continue to look the other way pretending it’s not happening
Armstrong was an extraordinary cheat in a sport where drug taking was being condoned, for some at least, however he knew precisely what he was doing and was happy to misrepresent himself to his competitors and the general public, whilst denying others the successes they might have achieved and attacking anyone who correctly challenged his innocence. He's lived years as an icon of sport and that experience can never be taken away or rightfully passed to those who truly deserved it. I'm all for rehabilitation and lessons learned etc but he deserves ZERO praise for his drug enhanced achievements now and in the future.
I feel so sorry for all those clean athletes who have been denied their, potentially, 'once in a lifetime' achievements by cheats who should be despised for their selfishness.
I find CAS' reaction to Russia's continued unwillingness to cooperate in full so disappointing for sport as a whole, it sends the wrong message entirely, especially given the state sponsored cheating involved.
Last edited by deepreddave; 21st December 2020 at 17:39.
Name a professional athlete you'd bet your house was clean.
There aren't any.
Cadel Evans.
Though he did meet Ferrari when he was mtb'ing
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I'd like to believe in Cadel. I was at the 2011 tour and followed him to victory.
Bu the fact is, he won the Tour de France. To believe there was a clean field that year is implausible, to believe a clean rider could beat dopers is impossible. Occam's Razor, innit.
I'm not saying he did dope, I am saying I would not bet anything on him being clean. He rode for Telekom FFS.
Highly recommend reading Paul Kimmage’s book Rough Ride. Insightful read regarding the pressure of doping within professional cycling to be even remotely competitive. Follows his journey from promising cyclist, to taking part in the TDF, turning his back on the sport and his transition in to journalism and ultimately butting heads with Armstrong exposing the depths of doping within the peloton.
The documentary is also a very good watch.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jZRVJjD3ZWI
Last edited by RLE; 23rd December 2020 at 10:43.
The fact that LA cheated isn't why most people don't like him; it's the way he went about it and the collateral damage that he caused that makes him unpopular ...
There's loads, unless your statement is based on the unfounded premise that every athlete is a drug cheat. I don't subscribe to that as it's a nonsensical position. Hundreds of medals have been reallocated so everyone subsequently upgraded has suffered as a result. There's plenty of higher profile examples but Michael Bingham, Martyn Rooney, Robert Tobin and Andrew Steele spring to mind; they were denied a bronze at the Beijing Olympics by a Russian quartet containing one member who subsequently tested positive for steroids. They got their medals 9 years late. Even Bolt lost a gold because a relay team member tested positive, with the Trinidad and Tobago quartet being denied their gold medal day at the time as a result.
Last edited by deepreddave; 21st December 2020 at 20:26.
This. It’s just lazy to claim that nobody’s clean, and it undermines the integrity of sport.
Ask Darren Campbell whether everyone cheats (and what he thinks of Dwain Chambers).
Bit harsh surely. Top-flight sports at that level is ultra brutal. A lot of them where at it, they turned on him because of who he was. It was the only way to bring him down, the journos were just as culpable.
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There were almost no clean pros in road cycling <2010.
Armstrong was / is pure box office.
The double standards of people who lap up David Millar, Jonathan vaughters, alberto contador and all the others who were caught or came clean makes me laugh.
The doping programs don't make you a winner overnight, the amount of dedication required to make it is absolutely frightening.
Michel Ferrari is a pantomime villain, literally, and visually. It's pure drama, and I love it all.
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I couldn't agree more.
I group up supporting Lance and was quite upset when I found out he was cheating. But such is life they were all at it, it was like an arms race.
I really liked the documentary Lance, I learned a lot from it and still think the charity work far outweighs any wrong doing. Life is about nuance, he's definitely not scum as some people have said.
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His podcasts are enjoyable, if you like the sport.
Johann Brunel's insight is excellent.
It's clear that they are both very much hooked into the sport still as they get a lot of inside scoops before any of the other podcasts.
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It's a common trait in those with narcissistic personality disorder to paint an image of a saint through fundraising or becoming some kind of holier-than-thou member of the community, church, worker in the caring professions (doctors, therapists) in order to present an image of perfection and have a defense against all the very substantial misdeads and dysfunction they also get involved in. Ergo sum, his charity work was never with good intentions, it was to further the 'mask' of integrity as part of the overall charade. Despicable human being.
This. I hate the way the reformed are sometimes held up as examples of courage/strength.
The real heroes for me are those who have the backbone and character to do the right thing in the first place.
I wonder how long it will be before we discover that Ethiopia and Kenya were not actually way better than all other humans on earth at distance running after all.
If no one cheats, the winner is the best team+leader package.
If one or more cheat, the winner is the most efficiently enhanced.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I really don’t follow that logic. Although using PEDs will provide a fairly set percentage increase, which has been seen across most strength and endurance sports - it does not follow, at all, that those using more have the most benefit.
Lance was without doubt a gifted cyclist.
Otherwise we would only see the best physical shape athletes/boxers winning every contest - they don’t!
Exactly. Only one person won the TdF 7 times in a row. That surely suggests something to you Omegamanic?
Merckx has more Grand Tour victories than anyone else. Why is he the God of cycling and LA the anti-Christ? Merckx even provided the introduction to Ferrari.
It’s really not worth getting into a debate over it. It’s a nonsense, and like I said earlier, every trick, including a character assassination and media hatchet job was carried out against Lance at the time - maybe to take the spotlight off the sport and others using PEDs, but it’s obvious others have faired reasonably well despite their acknowledged involvement.
Any way, like most of these types of debates, it gets far to tiring and I’m out - enjoy your views and think what you like. It’s a time a year I’d rather not get involved in spats.
All the best.
It's just a matter of time...
Exactly. Everyone has their own favourite villain but they’re all cheats at the end of the day.
The idea that popping Lance was to take the spotlight off the sport is somewhat risible. If anything, it served to make the entire planet aware that cycling was awash with PEDs. Festina was big news but Lance ended up on Oprah!
Anyway, maybe a debate for January when we are all even more bored.
Merry Xmas all
I'd prefer for him to be discussed and understood.
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