Lance Armstrong is a God

Full-on respect to Hunter. I mostly mountain bike, but I've done a handful of cyclocross races over the past couple of years. Bike riding at its most primeval, all that up-bank down-ditch madness, real heart-rate through the roof, sliding around in shite, chunder through your nose, 'what the hell am I doing this for', cold, wet Sunday morning in Hell stuff. Fucking batshit stupid, but it's great. Woohoo!

It's weird how ubiquitous cross bikes are now.

How soon do we see where the route will be next year, seeing as we have free accomodation over there it'd be silly not to go see if it's not near where we stay

um.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/sports/cycling/lance-armstrong-ends-fight-against-doping-charges-losing-his-7-tour-de-france-titles.html?hp

LOL

Haw.

jan aint gonna win squat. he'll be surpassed by ivan basso and the new french generation once lance quits..

― Jay G (jaybob79), Friday, 23 July 2004 00:13 (8 years ago)

lol, 'new french generation'

does anyone think there's any merit to the rumor that the drugs caused his cancer?

you couldn't really say 'caused it' but if he was mucking around with HGH and testosterone and the like, that stuff isn't exactly going to calm down and aggressive tumor.

Possible. High testosterone levels increase the risk of testicular cancer. Anabolics increase IGF-1, and IGF-1 increases cancer risk. Even Epo is implicated in cancer proliferation.

the World Anti-Doping Code

This is like some Marvel Comics thing

Will they also be taking away all the times he got to sleep with Sheryl Crow?

It is shameful that there is still stigma over enhancing the capabilities of the human body. However, enhancement for personal achievement is an individualist crime and must be punished accordingly.

They're going to have trouble going down the list and finding a retroactive winner who didn't dope.

They aren't going to bother trying to find a retroactive winner who didn't dope. They only wanted Lance.

http://www.rapha.cc/content/uploads/ullrich-beer12.jpg

FOUR TIME TOUR DE FRANCE WINNER

if it gets ferrari and bruyneel out of the sport, it'll have been worth it.

http://www.bicycling.com/print/67431

good interview with JV on doping stuff

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/david-walsh-on-armstrong-and-usadas-charges

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Bassons

Bassons became known during the 1998 doping Festina scandal, when the discovery of a carload of drugs being driven to the team's riders in the Tour de France led to evidence that doping was widespread in the team. In September 1998, the newspaper France Soir published statements made to the police. Two convicted riders, Armin Meier and Christophe Moreau, said that Bassons was the only rider on the team not taking drugs.[2]

Jean-Luc Gatellier said in L'Équipe:

It's true he's not one of them and he hasn't come out of the same mould. It's true that he refused to 'load the canon' (the pretty expression used by those who take EPO) these past years, it's true that Christophe Bassons doesn't belong to the family of cheats and the corrupted.[3]

Moreau's and Meier's court statement brought attention to a rider who had never acquired it through his racing. He wrote in Vélo, a French monthly, that riders who spoke out against quarterly medical checks imposed by the sports ministry after the Festina trial were hypocrites. He said: "That makes me laugh when I hear they're asking for changes to the tests. The truth, however, is that they are obliged to change their behaviour. They talk about 'two-speed cycling'[4] But me, for three years, I've been the second speed. They have ruined three years of my life as a racer and I never said anything."[5]

The interest that the Festina trial brought to him led to an invitation to write a column during the 1999 Tour for Le Parisien, a newspaper in the same corporate group as the Tour de France itself. Ian Austen wrote in Procycling:

On the whole his columns were largely innocuous if entertaining looks at life in the peloton. If anything, he sometimes went out of his way to dispel doping rumours. After the stage into Blois, which passed at record average speed, Bassons warned readers: 'Don't get any ideas about the record speed. With a wind like we had, it's normal to ride this fast.' But two columns stuck out. After Lance Armstrong showed that not only had he recovered from cancer, he'd risen to the top of the pack, Bassons wrote that his performances had 'shocked' the peloton.

Bassons said Armstrong rode up alongside on the Alpe d'Huez stage to tell him "it was a mistake to speak out the way I do and he asked why I was doing it. I told him that I'm thinking of the next generation of riders. Then he said 'Why don't you leave, then?'"[6] Armstrong confirmed the story. On the main evening news on TF1, a national television station, Armstrong said: "His accusations aren't good for cycling, for his team, for me, for anybody. If he thinks cycling works like that, he's wrong and he would be better off going home."[7][8][9][10]

The badger typically circumspect

Another French cycling celebrity, Bernard Hinault, gave his very pesonal view: "I don't f***ing care. It's his problem not mine. It's a problem that should have been solved 10 or 15 years ago and that wasn't."

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/french-cycling-reacts-armstrong-to-lose-tour-titles

it's amazing to me that anyone could like this dude, he's like barry bonds if barry bonds were actually somehow douchier, at least BB went out there and was an honest to goodness upfront asshole and not acting the role of a messiah while pulling off cartel intimidation shit behind the scenes.

haha Bernard!

what is this anyway? "I didnt do it but I am not going to fight the charges" ??

Kind of a big deal because he was trying to become the best IronMan triathlete in the world and he won't be able to compete in IronMan events anymore. Other than that, no fucks given.

Nike are standing by him but I wonder if anyone is going to try and reclaim prize money or sponsorship; then it would go to court.

Nike also stands by the sad dead sweatshop workers

Lance Armstrong, Louis Armstrong, Stretch Armstrong--all dopers.

http://www.bicycling.com/print/67431

good interview with JV on doping stuff

this was really good, thanks

http://inrng.com/2012/08/lance-armstrong-quits/

That Jonathan Vaughters interview was great. Thanks.

Nike are standing by him but I wonder if anyone is going to try and reclaim prize money or sponsorship; then it would go to court.

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed),

the inrng article says:

If USADA rules there is a doping offence, imposes a lifetime ban and says he should be stripped of his wins then this applies worldwide. It is then for the UCI, as cycling’s governing body, to await the decision and issue the formal notice stripping Armstrong of his wins which it must do to comply with the WADA Code. All prize monies must be repaid too.

They can't go after sponsorships, but whatever thousands/millions he won as prize money he has to repay. Damn.

"But I snorted it all up my nose oh wait."

I wonder what % of his income went to doping & trying to beat doping tests?

I'm surprised this hasn't been used more:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23quitstrong

There's still the SCA Promotions case

http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/12122/SCA-Promotions-will-monitor-USADA-case-against-ArmstrongUS-Postal-Service.aspx

xposts

have never followed Lance and his "sport" (a race where you get off the bike a few times to sleep, riiiight) but anything to stop singling out baseball is fine.

fuck baseball

yeah I'm fine if regular idiots stop following it and join yr club

have never followed Lance and his "sport" (a race where you get off the bike a few times to sleep, riiiight) but anything to stop singling out baseball is fine.

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Friday, August 24, 2012 10:54 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

huge lol at the idea that baseball has been "singled out" as the dopingest sport that ever doped when a) no one outside of america gives a shit and b) the peloton was doing PEDs when you were still a regularly-aged person. the notion that baseball is the locus of bad behavior is exclusively american; cycling has had a publicly bad rep w/r/t doping for at least 20 years

I speak of America, man, furrin sportz make my eyes glaze over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling

1886!

glaze over, like an idiot

x-post

a regularly-aged person

idk obviously i have no interest in cycling but.....presumably this dude was quite good as riding bicycles anyway? so that he would still have had at least some success if he didn't use drugs? it's an interesting example of unbridled venality