Lance Armstrong is a God

let the rehabilitation of that great comic genius commence NOW

And Sheryl Crow. Hopefully his reign of terror will end soon.

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(see also Jesse Ventura vs Arnold Schwarzenegger)

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Sheryl Crow prior to her own ride up l'Alpe in June.

The Crow-Williams crap is unfortunate, but sounds like a hell of a lot of people are making unwarranted assumptions about him to justify the hate. Frankly, his dominance doesn´t piss me off anywhere near as much as, say, Sampras´s in tennis.

That's the thing with Lance -- he never fires the first shot in a war of words, but once that first shot is fired, he's relentless.

Although this "no more gifts" thing from yesterday may be an exception -- I still don't know wtf he's talking about.

Lance is pretty dogged if he feels that someone's against him. I guess it's what makes him the competitor that he is, but also something I find really off-putting about him.

It's particularly off-putting that he talked about "no gifts" right after openly admitting that he gave his teammate the go-ahead to try and win the stage.

"I had assumed, because he and Bush were Texans and I’d seen pictures of them laughing and joking in the Oval Office, that Armstrong was a Republican. But he says his politics are “middle to Left”. He is “against mixing up State and Church, not keen on guns, pro women’s right to choose”. And very anti war in Iraq."

Sadly, I made the same assumptions as Alistair Campbell! a mistake i'll try never to repeat...

But, whoever said above that i had negative images of Armstrong cos he came from Texas... NO NO NO. i LOVE Armstrong and the fact that he's disassociated himself from Bush makes me love him all the more...(tho not as much as yesterday's unbelievable sprint finish!).

Also, I've got relatives in Austin and have been there several times and thorougly enjoyed it, so i'm not anti-Texans in general either.

this thread was meant to be Armstrong love, people. Sorry for any confusion...

If he's not making ref. to the Basso stage win, then he must be referring to his decision to chase down Klodi at the line yesterday, that is, not give him the "gift" of breaking away for the stage win without putting up a fight at the end.

The thing is, that was no gift, that was Klodi's fuckup pure and simple. The last few km were ALL Ullrich -- he chased down Landis not once but twice, and then duped the others into thinking he was going to play cat-and-mouse for the last km, which caused everyone to ease up and gave his teammate the oppurtunity to attack. And it was a great attack -- nobody reacted in the least -- but he ran out of gas 10 seconds later, appeared to ease up with about 500 m to go, couldn't finish strong, and checked the wrong blind spot twice looking for someone trying to outsprint him to the line. If Klodi had broken away and won, there's be no talk of gifts, just of great riding by the T-Mobile boys.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9910-1018310,00.html

That would be particularly tasteless in light of Pantani's death earlier in the year, even though there was no love lost between the two of them after that incident in 2000.

supposedly eddy merckx told lance, after he let pantani take a TdF stage many years ago (which pantani was reportedly offended by BTW), "gifts are for birthdays"
and it has been a syndrome with lance for a long time it's true, he is all about the G.C., and in some ways only about it. merckx and hinault are disappointed by this, the respective cannibal and badger there before him. he is not in the footsteps of lemond and indurain so much as in theirs, style-wise, but eddy and bernard don't seem to understand at all this kind of aw-shucks side, that is in fact more like greg's and miguel's outlooks.
BTW greg lemond though what an asshole, i'm bummed out by him i must say. just like for lance, he used to be a hero to me. but lance is going for that even earlier style full-bore now, and it is fucking awesome.

If Armstrong thought the drunk Germans on l'Alpe were bad, he'll have fun if he ever does the Giro in Simeoni's neighborhood.

While very, very few would have said Armstrong would become a TdF GC dominator, the guy is clearly a bizzare outlier on the physiological curve. Very very few thought he'd ever even race again if he lived.

NOW. I'm no Lance groupie. All this does not mean that he never doped, or that he's not doping. He was rumored to be an hgh user pre-cancer, from what I've heard.

what a lot of people don't realize about PEDs is that they affect different people in widely different ways.

in the case of endurance sports, EPO can only help some people slightly, and others immensely.

this is why when LA talks about how the era when he won the tours was "an even playing field", it's 100% bullshit.

If they legalize everything, I expect to see surgically-created human-animal hybrids before 2020.

as the link says, it's not necessarily that life-threatening if done *well*

the main issue with it would be that of access, and consequent unfairness when the bigger nations won the arms-race to develop the most effective chemicals, although extremely talented individuals from poorer nations will always find sponsorship

i'd foresee a breakaway 'clean' movement, and YOU, THE PEOPLE would choose which to follow, if either

that said, extend this to other sports and i begin to feel a trifle repulsed, so perhaps these are just my dismissive thoughts about athletics being projected

aimless, that would be amazing. see the human cheetah! only 7 farthings a view! for a fortnight only!

this is why when LA talks about how the era when he won the tours was "an even playing field", it's 100% bullshit.

bingo, but on the spectrum of "reprehensible things Lance Armstrong said during the Oprah interview" I don't think it places that high, he really came off badly in so many ways

Imago - aside from everything else where would the money come from? What brands would want to be associated with an openly 'dirty' cycling competition?

well, that's where a 'clean' breakaway would form, with far more stringent testing

dunno, this narrative needs some work

But surely there would be more money in the 'clean' version so you would just get people spending big money to come up with ways to beat the tests/bully people into silence and win that one as there would be greater rewards.

And then it'll be won a bunch of times by some guy called Bance Harmstong do u see

maybe we shouldn't look up to sportspeople so much as paragons of human achievement or virtue, but as entertainers

idk this kinda kills me to write as I would like to believe in corinthian values, level playing-fields and the like

team sports don't bring out the cynic in me nearly so much - cycling and athletics are rigged games trying their damnedest to put on an outward show of cleanness and it's a shame because they can be extremely good fun to watch - they can carry with them the catharsis of sublime victory - but beneath it all is the drugs narrative and it puts me off

The PED testing done today, while not perfect, is incredibly more advanced than it was even say like 4 years ago... particularly in the chemical analysis regarding steroids, blood/oxygen-boosters, blood transfusions.

Hormone testing is much more sophisticated, but a lot of the masking agents are now easier to detect (FSchleck for example).

strange guy http://gawker.com/5977073/presenting-the-most-awkward-moment-from-lance-armstrongs-oprah-interview-his-failed-fat-joke

A smirk smeared across his face, Armstrong wistfully recalls how he called Besty "crazy" and "a bitch."

Then, for one horrible moment, you can and watch Lance sit back "read the room."

Time for a little comedy.

"I did call her crazy….I did. I did. I think she'd be okay with me saying this, but…I'm gonna take the liberty to say it. [When we spoke on the phone recently,] I said 'Listen, I called you ‘crazy,' I called you ‘a bitch.' I called you all these things…but I never called you ‘fat.'"

Then, Armstrong pauses for laughter.

He pauses a little longer for laughter.

He waits and waits for the laughter to come, while the camera cuts to a brilliant shot of Oprah blinking at him, her eyelids heavy under the weight of gravitas.

"'Cause…" he begins. Maybe Oprah didn't get the joke? Maybe if he explains the joke it will become funny and he and Oprah will laugh and laugh and she'll scrap the whole interview and take him to OS-TRAIL-YAAAAA instead?

"…She thought I said ‘You are a fat, crazy bitch,'" he flails, reaching out for a lifesaver. Unfortunately Oprah's soul has already left her body; she floats above the room and watches him die.

"…And I said," he repeats "‘Betsy…I never said you were fat.'"

Okay, Oprah's done. She moves on.

u_u

making a fat joke to oprah is just...alien behavior.

these are the the things that make me feel okay for disliking him all these years. douche

He called her fat and ugly for the record.

espn is really burying this story

at least on their website. 8th story down on the sidebar, below alvin gentry getting canned and tiger missing the cut.

lance armstrong on oprah: sort of like watching a play about the crucifixion?

but actor jesus reaaaally sucks

http://gawker.com/5977456/australian-library-moves-lance-armstrongs-books-to-the-fiction-section

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/21/australian-library-lance-armstrong-fiction

True Crime surely?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/21/us/actually-that-lance-armstrong-library-thing-was-real-after-all-man-this-is-confusing/index.html?hpt=us_c2

http://veloclinic.tumblr.com/post/41480107464

http://playtrue.wada-ama.org/news/statement-from-wada-president-john-fahey-in-response-to-uci-press-release-of-january-28-2013/

Sack Fat Pat

I hope everyone is aware of the mascot the World Road Championships organising comittee in tuscany chose this year. Very Appropriate

http://cycling-passion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/UCI-Road-World-Championships-Toscana-Tuscany-2013-Symbol-Pinocchio-300x300.jpg

that's perfect

yeah, that's amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOxQ6aEWNJU

^^ that is not what it looks like. Watch out for the bit where his eyes flash and his wheels catch fire...

He's back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q2QsqatfLA

Jesus H.

http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-fc/drums.gif

Bill Brock, Betsy Andreu and Greg & Kathy LeMond talk about doping http://new.livestream.com/ut-comm/events/2050748

(It starts at about 40:00)

So.....hey what's up?

Howard Stern welcomed comedienne April Macie back to his satellite radio show Monday morning, and Macie spilled the goods about a variety of topics, including the night that champion cyclist Lance Armstrong asked her to perform an extremely dirty sexual act on him in a hotel bathroom.

Macie said that she and a friend met Armstrong at a club in Los Angeles and then went back to his Peninsula hotel room to party with some friends. When Macie stepped into the bathroom, though, she bore witness to a very different kind of party than the one she had expected.

"I went to use the bathroom, and I went in and Lance was bent over a bathtub and she was just face deep in his a**hole...I was terrified. And then he came out and said: ‘Does your friend want in on a round too?’ and I was like: 'Of taint tickling? I’m gonna take a pass'..I think it’s hilarious that he would ask without even knowing my first name—to eat his a**hole. Like: ‘Do you want in on a round too? Of **hole eating?...I got pretty for the evening. I didn’t know he was going to ask me to eat his asshole later on.”

Macie said that the incident happened "five or six years ago," long before Armstrong was hit with the brunt of the massive drug scandal in which he was accused of using steroids to win seven consecutive Tour de France titles from 1999-2005. In January 2013, Armstrong finally admitted to the doping allegations after years of denying them.

finally, evidence that armstrong may be human

sorry

ASPEN, Colo. -- Authorities say disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong hit two parked cars after a night of partying in Aspen but agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame to avoid national attention.

agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame agreed to let his girlfriend take the blame