by Quendi 21 Replies latest social physical
Another hero turns out to have feet of clay. This time it’s Lance Armstrong. I don’t want to believe he is a liar and a cheat, but giving up his fight against the USADA and its charges of doping could lead to being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. One by one we are seeing our icons falling off their pedestals. My only question now is, “Who’s next?” More details are here:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/lance-armstrong-says-wont-fight-anti-doping-agency-024147317--spt.html
Quendi
Quendi: You may find Lance's personal statement to be interesting.
http://lancearmstrong.com/news-events/lance-armstongs-statement-of-august-23-2012
This particular one is kinda tricky. "Blood doping" can be accomplished by sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, training at high altitudes, etc. It can also be accomplished artificially. I think we will consider these :old" arguments quaint once people start gaining enhancements from genetic modifications.
I heard that the next controversy is, who do you give his vacated titles to?
The next X finishers from 1999 - 2006 were also involved in doping.
If I heard correctly, for at least one of those years you'd have to drop down to the guy who finished in 30th place before you found someone clean of drugs.
What a mess.
Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think that major league baseball is just about as rife with illegal PEDS as well.
Stripping away titles he has already won is a dubious practice anyway. Can the guy who came in second not feel a sense of awkwardness while counting that particular Tour as one of his 'championships'? It's like finding a penalty that wasn't called with the last few World Cup winners, and then unceremoniously giving the championship to the team that was beat years after the fact. It ruins the integrity of the entire competition when you know there's a chance that the results might be reversed in a few years time. Why didn't they just take blood samples shortly before the race and disqualified him then? It seems to me that they need to revamp their screening process before allowing athletes to compete.
@ leavingwt: Thanks for pointing me to Lance’s statement. I really, really want to believe him because he is definitely one of my heroes, a man who beat testicular cancer and has given hope to people around the world. His statement was lucid and to the point and if the points he makes are true, then I can only hope that WADA, UCI and other organs will not go along with any move to strip him of his Tour de France titles.
It would be very easy for me to become cynical and say everyone cheats so why not Lance Armstrong. But if I have any reason for hope it lies with the recently concluded London Olympics. Before I go further I will say I hate and loathe the Olympic Games, but these were clean with only a handful of doping problems. That doesn’t there wasn’t more cheating as cheaters often are a few steps ahead of the rules-enforcers, but I want to believe that the London results mean that fair play and honesty are coming to the fore again even in the most elite of athletic events. At the same time, the mess in major league baseball is threatening to engulf the game and we all know that professional football has a long history of substance abuse and PEDs.
As for Lance Armstrong, I want to believe him without any doubts. His statement gives me reason to do so. I only hope that my ardent desire to believe him hasn’t pulled his yellow jerseys over my eyes.
Quendi
I cant tell if he is gulty or not. He passed hundreds of drug tests and has gone through multiple investigations. At this point he is on like quintuple jeparody. So I dont blame him for stopping the fight. In the end they can take some of the records from him, but you cant take all the benifits he has.
It is a sad day.....though I suspected some form of doping from him for the past several years. At first.....I believed he was really just that good. But then when everyone around him started to fall (Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, Alberto Contador, Floyd Landis, Bjarne Riis, Alexandre Vinokourov, Tyler Hamilton etc), reason simply dictated that there is no way he could be totally clean when all the main riders around him were falling like dominos. Personally.....I think he really was better than everyone else......but when they began doping a LOT.....he had to dope a little to maintain an edge.
Just my opinion
I'd LIKE to believe he is clean too.......but with ALL of his competitors going down in flames, his close association with Dr. Ferrari, his team manager implicated and many, many teammates willing to testify against him.....it just doesn't look good for him.
Though I sadly believe that he did dope....he is still a hero. He still overcame cancer and he still beat all those other riders (it was a level playing field if they all doped). And he has still done a LOT in terms of raising $ for cancer research/victims. More than that though.....he has served as a beacon of hope for cancer patients everywhere. Consider this. If he didn't dope......and he rode well in all those tours....but never quite won because of the unlevel playing field.....he'd have pride....but nothing else. He wouldn't be nearly as famous. He'd be like Levi Liephiemer is today. Relatively unknown to those outside the cycling community. His foundation wouldn't have raised anywhere near the $ it has.....if he would even have a foundation at all......and he would have inspired far fewer people to beat this loathsome disease known as cancer.
Lance Armstrong = the dark knight
It wasn't like Lance went from being a regular Joe Fatty off the street one day that got juiced like a pincushion and the next day was winning races, but then a couple years later dropped dead from toxic poisoning.
Dude worked hard training. He passed the drug tests all along the way. It sounds to me like McCarthyism has entered sports. I certainly wouldn't trust the word of some of the people that they're presenting as eyewitnesses in the case.
I can't believe he does not have the "balls" to fight these guys. I applaude Roger Clemens to tell congress to go "f%%%k" themself.
In Rogers case, there was 90% of the major league involved and they (congress wasting tax $$$$$) wanted to lynch him!
Lance has been put thru a witch hunt!!!!
