Lance Armstrong is a God

yeah i think the floor of support is broken until he somehow earns redemption. in usa, that means some time out of the headlines, or a kardashian.

Trek have dropped him now, according to Walsh on twitter

his 2nd comeback is going to be even more insufferable, isn't it

3rd you mean.

all lance has to do to stay out of the headlines tho is just not do sports

if he lays low, he'll probably be forgotten by the american public, not vilified. ppl will remember that LA was a doper and maybe got his titles taken away but they're not gonna spit on the ground or anything

esp since livestrong inc probably won't implode---half his name is gonna be out there, vaguely beneficent, and his rep will at the very least be kept from going straight to the basement. plus the whole scandal has made joe q public dimly aware of cycling's doping history, and i'll bet that's enough to make a lot of ppl just shrug, "yeah but i guess that was just what everybody did/does". and up until this point, all the popular coverage has painted the story as Lance The Doper, not Lance The Sociopathic Control-Freak Who Was Not Just A Doper But A Ruthless Motherfucking Doper.

will say tho that i'd kinda love it if he went full Maradona, we don't really have one of those over here yet

a couple of years in the wilderness then a mea culpa with accompanying tell-all bestseller, leaving the way open for your new Governor of Texas *shudders*

"if he lays low, he'll probably be forgotten by the american public, not vilified. ppl will remember that LA was a doper and maybe got his titles taken away but they're not gonna spit on the ground or anything"

Well sure I mean he's not A-Rod, but I still think his overall reputation is not going to be very good. Mostly forgotten and connected to sordid drug scandals is a far cry from all conquering cancer vanquishing sports hero.

He seems to only want to 'do sports' because it's what he's good at so I don't know if he's going to lay low. He'll never hold high office.

his whole reputation, so much more than pretty much any other athlete, rested on him being this admirable superhero who overcame struggles that made him sympathetic etc., i think this is going to hurt the way the general public looks at him way more, than, say, all those baseball players with asterisks on their stats.

hes cooked, theres no grounds for a comeback, he doesnt do the stuff that he was famous for anymore

UCI decision on Monday, let's see how the fuckers spin it.

http://inevitablebacklash.com/media/careerplot_tourwinners.jpg

Nope, nothing suspicious here.

http://www.phys.washington.edu/users/savage/Cycling/LookingAtTheData/AIC.html

oops
http://www.phys.washington.edu/users/savage/Cycling/LookingAtTheData/figures/careerplotALLMEANS.jpg

Anquetil was also a known doper.

True. At least he was honest about it.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/39875782/

Louis Armstrong was God. Lance is just a very annoying athlete who cheated and got caught.

stretch Armstrong is god, stretchy god

Henry Armstrong still the best Armstrong athlete

That average speed plot is misleading, it really represents an increase in the average speed of the entire peleton (most of whom were taking drugs, of course). To single out Lance's contributions we can compare average speeds and times on major climbs (which will bring us to more or less the same conclusions).

It's cynical to think he relied on Livestrong as some kind of cover so he could dope at will. Tour wins or not, he still fought and beat cancer and genuinely wants to help others do the same (and he started his cancer foundation before his comeback). He was nearly invincible because, like Steve Madden wrote in that SOE piece, he was like a mafia figure in cycling for a long time and it still would have taken years to bring him down whether Livestrong was around or not. The only comparable American sports star who dominated his sport/league like that would be Michael Jordan, and nobody ever had any illusions about Jordan being a decent guy just because he was a winner. It would have been just as impossible to bring Jordan down in the 80's and 90's as it was to bring Lance down now, and Jordan didn't have to found a charity to get to that level.

(and yeah, people *could* have gone after Jordan in the 90's for his shady business dealings and gambling problems, but nobody would because he was JORDAN and even today people are reluctant to mention it)

well also Jordan's particular character flaws didn't diminish his athletic accomplishments (unless his gambling had taken a Pete Rose turn or something)

theres an old conspiracy theory that MJ's first 'retirement' (when he quit to play baseball) was a secret suspension for gambling

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/sports/how-armstrongs-wall-fell-one-rider-at-a-time.html?pagewanted=all

I'm taking too much delight in the fall of Lance Armstrong! Living in Austin for 12 years and watching him spearhead the smoking ban on bars which he would never frequent or even care about, I've hated him for years. He's an asshole and deserves all of this.

that does seem to be one of the main takeaways

like i always suspected he was a fraudulent dick but now its p well confirmed

smoking bans in bars are good tho

Yeah that's not exactly a great example of dickishness.

Regardless if business owners ought to allow their customers to smoke in their establishments, Lance Armstrong acted with such a pompous air with the whole smoking ban. It was a 'cleaning up' Austin, giving the people clean air, behind this anti-cancer/healthy lifestyle that has nothing to do with why people go to bars. There already was a smoking ban in effect that you couldn't smoke in front of business doors or in restaurants. Bars where the last places you could smoke and even some bars wouldn't allow you to smoke. Many bars in austin lost customers, dingy bars that had been around for years, the sort of places that couldn't afford to build outside patios or didn't have the space, places lance armstrong would have never gone to or cared about. And now this comes out it just stinks of hypocrisy that he supposedly was trying to clean up.

All non-smokers act with a pompous air about smoking bans, but bars live on despite people smoking outside.

I complain bitterly about bar smoking bans when they went into effect in CA, but even within the year I had to acknowledge they were effective and when I actually quit it made it easier to do so.

i must admit that when the ban went into effect it seemed ridiculous but pretty soon i 100% approved.

Yeah, spend some time overseas and you're instantly reminded of how shitty smoking bars used to be.

remember when it was imminent in ny all the smokers were talking tuff like they were gonna stay home and smoke to their hearts content, w/in like 1 month i didnt know anyone who didnt approve

basically no one likes 2nd hand smoke

xp you're right, it's almost as if the athlete who got paid to have excellent lungs and who did actually have cancer would want to be seen publicly supporting a ban on a bad habit that is terrible for you.

also fwiw being in favor of smoking bans isn't "trying to clean up hypocrisy," there's nothing hypocritical about allowing ppl to smoke in bars, what are you on about.

he's an asshole for cheating and maybe being a sociopath---getting mad at him for something that should have happened anyway is a little weird. but hey keep austin etc

Yeah I like smoke free bars. I also like the fact Lance Armstrong was caught engaging in very health damaging drug use after being a champion of healthy living, after leaving his wife who supported him through his cancer, after leaving another woman while she battled cancer.

none of that happened in a smoking bar

also dogg i hate to tell you but taking PEDs isn't exactly as "health damaging" as smoking

roids grow tumors

awkward!

anyway its not unreasonable to begrudge the manner someone goes abt doing a thing even if you approve of the thing

Doesn't really have anything to do with Lance Armstrong, but I've worked around construction workers who take similar drugs and they can be downright scary. I watch a guy stab another guy in a roid rage because he refused to let him pay for his drink, too many scary incidents of construction workers on steroids that I stopped associating with anyone from work I didn't know.

It's interesting because taking EPO probably increased Lance's chance of survival / life expectancy while he was being treated for cancer - I assume he was anyway - but did continuing on it through his career then have harmful health effects for him, or might it at some point?

i was thinking the same thing, wouldn't years of doping use (especially testosteron) make you some kind of 'junkie'. (note that many cyclists, and i assume Lance as well, are on a helluva lot of painkillers, caffein and sleeping pills as well, which are obviously addictive as well)

no

that is not "the same thing" as what I was thinking, or asked, just ftr

isnt he on drugs
― anthony, Friday, July 23, 2004 8:53 AM (8 years ago)

I'm not generally a big fan of cynicism, but rereading the start of this thread followed by antony's contribution is funny.

anthony otm

I have some things to add here but I gotta think them out a bit. I'll be back.
― Speedy (Speedy Gonzalas), Sunday, July 25, 2004

Landis, Hamilton, or Hincapie?

haha

the thing with EPO was always overdoing it and thickening the blood to the point that riders were riding rollers in their hotel rooms at night to avoid a heart attack. but blood levels revert to normal in due course after you stop taking it. i'm no expert in blood so i don't know if that could cause long-term stress on the system - we'll get our answer if '90s-00s riders start dropping like flies within a short period of each other.

can imagine the use of growth hormones and steroids would increase future cancer risk due to over-working those areas over a long period, though. cortisone certainly has had nasty effects on footballers and the like who have trouble walking after having too many painkilling shots over their careers.