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Lance Armstrong


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Just want to point out his most vocal defender on two boards can't even bring himself to apologize at the very least to the 65 million + people who happen to live in France.

He's suddenly gone all silent.

Ha, I'm not alone thinking this, then!

Here's a nice little - I remember some pretty fun threads and discussions :crazy:

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Something I wonder about, not just with Armstrong, but with athletes in general - if everybody's juiced, then nobody's juiced, right? More or less.

I know, personal honor and honest endeavor and all that, but...tell it to Wall Street, tell it to Main Street, tell it to everybody who knows good and goddamned well that cheating sucks and destroys your soul, but unless and until you get caught, it also puts money in your bank, prestige on your profile, and power in your aura. What's a little lost soul relative to all THAT?

Tell that, and also that very, very few cheaters who get caught actually get outright ruined by it. Those who are are more often than not plagued by dumbness more than by the cheating impulse. For everybody else, they expeirince setbacks of one degree or another, but keep going.

Cheaters, the odds are in your favor over the long haul. Definitely.

But fuck you anyway.

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Just want to point out his most vocal defender on two boards can't even bring himself to apologize at the very least to the 65 million + people who happen to live in France.

He's suddenly gone all silent.

France and its citizens can live without the apologies!

Had only contempts for his comments at the time...

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And yet... he took cycling as he found it, and all his peers certainly cheated in exactly the same way.

And tried his very best to destroy the lives and careers of all those who told the truth about he was up to. Don't think that "all of his peers" did that.

We finally completely agree on something.

Edited by Blue Train
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And yet... he took cycling as he found it, and all his peers certainly cheated in exactly the same way.

And tried his very best to destroy the lives and careers of all those who told the truth about he was up to. Don't think that "all of his peers" did that.

Yes, but that was not cheating, that was something else. Only the winner would ever have had to do that. Why be more angry about Armstrong's cheating than about that of every rider who took a podium place, or indeed of anyone who placed 50th? The answer is not in the cheating. That was already there in the sport, there are hundreds of names implicated. The teams and cycling authorities knew all about it. So yes people dislike Lance humanly, but without him some other cheat - sanctioned implicitly by the team and by the race and by the UCI - would have won. Hate Lance, yes if you like, but why not hate everyone else?

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And yet... he took cycling as he found it, and all his peers certainly cheated in exactly the same way.

And tried his very best to destroy the lives and careers of all those who told the truth about he was up to. Don't think that "all of his peers" did that.

Yes, but that was not cheating, that was something else. Only the winner would ever have had to do that. Why be more angry about Armstrong's cheating than about that of every rider who took a podium place, or indeed of anyone who placed 50th? The answer is not in the cheating. That was already there in the sport, there are hundreds of names implicated. The teams and cycling authorities knew all about it. So yes people dislike Lance humanly, but without him some other cheat - sanctioned implicitly by the team and by the race and by the UCI - would have won. Hate Lance, yes if you like, but why not hate everyone else?

If Armstrong were not so arrogant in his denials, if he didn't sue and otherwise try to ruin people who told the truth about his doping, if he had merely denied the doping and then admitted it I might be OK with that as an admission of guilt. But he didn't.

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And yet... he took cycling as he found it, and all his peers certainly cheated in exactly the same way.

And tried his very best to destroy the lives and careers of all those who told the truth about he was up to. Don't think that "all of his peers" did that.

Yes, but that was not cheating, that was something else. Only the winner would ever have had to do that. Why be more angry about Armstrong's cheating than about that of every rider who took a podium place, or indeed of anyone who placed 50th? The answer is not in the cheating. That was already there in the sport, there are hundreds of names implicated. The teams and cycling authorities knew all about it. So yes people dislike Lance humanly, but without him some other cheat - sanctioned implicitly by the team and by the race and by the UCI - would have won. Hate Lance, yes if you like, but why not hate everyone else?

If Armstrong were not so arrogant in his denials, if he didn't sue and otherwise try to ruin people who told the truth about his doping, if he had merely denied the doping and then admitted it I might be OK with that as an admission of guilt. But he didn't.

Let's not forget that he sued a UK newspaper for libel for hinting he was doping -- and won! That takes real chutzpah when you know you are lying -- and again puts him in a category quite different from his peers.

You can better believe they are going to ask for some higher court to overturn that judgement and ask for costs etc., and probably get them.

Some folks are saying that Lance is not actually in legal jeopardy in the US for this reason or that. I'm not so sure about that. But I do think he probably perjured himself in the UK libel case and that may cause him serious problems in the future. Couldn't happen to a nicer dirtbag. (Not that I don't think the UK libel law is a shambles that deserves to be completely uprooted, but that is a different post for a different day.)

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... Couldn't happen to a nicer dirtbag. (Not that I don't think the UK libel law is a shambles that deserves to be completely uprooted, but that is a different post for a different day.)

Agreed.

Anecdote re. dirtbag: My sister works for a large magazine publisher in NYC. A few years ago, one of the magazines (I didn't ask which one, so don't know) decided to run a feature on LANCE. They could not find a single employee who wanted to work on the story, due to LANCE's extensive history of / reputation for assholicity. (I presume some arms were twisted in order to write the story.)

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In the autumn of 1993, Greg LeMond and his wife, Kathy, were sitting at home in the suburbs of Minneapolis, when they received a visit from Linda Mooneyham, the three-times Tour de France winner has recalled. Her 21-year-old son, Lance Armstrong, had just become the world champion and she had travelled from her home in Texas for advice.

"What does he do now?" she asked. "What does he do with his money?"

"Well, let him find an agent – a good one with an attorney," LeMond replied. "And one word of advice – just be his mom."

They sat on the porch for a while and then moved inside to the kitchen. Linda had something else on her mind: "How do I make him less of an asshole. He doesn't care about anyone."

"Well," LeMond replied. "I can't help you there."

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Perhaps it's the "blindness" that comes with proximity, but I do still have lots of respect for Greg (whom I raced against and lost to weekend after weekend). At the time, little was known of the challenges of his youth. To my mind he carries just about the perfect amount of arrogance to be a champion.

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Something I wonder about, not just with Armstrong, but with athletes in general - if everybody's juiced, then nobody's juiced, right? More or less.

I know, personal honor and honest endeavor and all that, but...tell it to Wall Street, tell it to Main Street, tell it to everybody who knows good and goddamned well that cheating sucks and destroys your soul, but unless and until you get caught, it also puts money in your bank, prestige on your profile, and power in your aura. What's a little lost soul relative to all THAT?

Tell that, and also that very, very few cheaters who get caught actually get outright ruined by it. Those who are are more often than not plagued by dumbness more than by the cheating impulse. For everybody else, they expeirince setbacks of one degree or another, but keep going.

Cheaters, the odds are in your favor over the long haul. Definitely.

But fuck you anyway.

Hey, you don't have to convince me! I've been saying for years now that an all-juiced Olympics would be loads of fun!

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Something I wonder about, not just with Armstrong, but with athletes in general - if everybody's juiced, then nobody's juiced, right? More or less.

I know, personal honor and honest endeavor and all that, but...tell it to Wall Street, tell it to Main Street, tell it to everybody who knows good and goddamned well that cheating sucks and destroys your soul, but unless and until you get caught, it also puts money in your bank, prestige on your profile, and power in your aura. What's a little lost soul relative to all THAT?

Tell that, and also that very, very few cheaters who get caught actually get outright ruined by it. Those who are are more often than not plagued by dumbness more than by the cheating impulse. For everybody else, they expeirince setbacks of one degree or another, but keep going.

Cheaters, the odds are in your favor over the long haul. Definitely.

But fuck you anyway.

Hey, you don't have to convince me! I've been saying for years now that an all-juiced Olympics would be loads of fun!

Don't worry, the Olympians were drugged to the eyeballs - at least according to a former doping doctor the BBC consulted who put doping at over 50%. Sour grapes? Maybe.

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Something I wonder about, not just with Armstrong, but with athletes in general - if everybody's juiced, then nobody's juiced, right? More or less.

I know, personal honor and honest endeavor and all that, but...tell it to Wall Street, tell it to Main Street, tell it to everybody who knows good and goddamned well that cheating sucks and destroys your soul, but unless and until you get caught, it also puts money in your bank, prestige on your profile, and power in your aura. What's a little lost soul relative to all THAT?

Tell that, and also that very, very few cheaters who get caught actually get outright ruined by it. Those who are are more often than not plagued by dumbness more than by the cheating impulse. For everybody else, they expeirince setbacks of one degree or another, but keep going.

Cheaters, the odds are in your favor over the long haul. Definitely.

But fuck you anyway.

Hey, you don't have to convince me! I've been saying for years now that an all-juiced Olympics would be loads of fun!

How could you tell the difference? As a long-time athletics fan who's been forced to become somewhat expert on doping, I'm totally convinced that the Olympics are the "major leagues", the apotheosis, the absolute pinnacle of sports doping. "Better living through chemistry"!

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But if everyone is "juiced" is it back to a competition between "athletes" and their equipment, or is it doctors competing through their "tools"? On the other hand, might it all adavcne medical science, which would be a good thing?

Your argument about every one juicing centers on the athletes all having equal access to equal drugs that produce equal effects in each person, no? I don't think that's the case in real life. And then there were still athletes that weren't juicing at all, so those were at an unfair disadvantage, though ethically and morally correct.

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But if everyone is "juiced" is it back to a competition between "athletes" and their equipment, or is it doctors competing through their "tools"? On the other hand, might it all adavcne medical science, which would be a good thing?

Your argument about every one juicing centers on the athletes all having equal access to equal drugs that produce equal effects in each person, no? I don't think that's the case in real life. And then there were still athletes that weren't juicing at all, so those were at an unfair disadvantage, though ethically and morally correct.

And some folks are better at doping...

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Yet another reason why skateboarding is better than any of the most popular sports. There's no way to cheat.

Judging by the skateboarders I've known, it isn't an entirely clean sport. On the other hand, I don't think marijuana is considered a performance enhancer... :g

Okay, curling. Is curling clean?

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