06SpiceRed

Jed19

I don't pretend to know why Tiger woods fired Williams, or that Williams was instrumental in some of his wins, like so many knowledgeable and good caddies are. In my view though, Williams forgot who the talent is. And he could not frigging keep his mouth shut. You don't try to upstage the talent, period. And Harmon and Haney? Well, sometimes stuff just don't work out well. That does not mean Tiger, Harmon or Haney are evil, just stuff happens!

I am through with this thread, as I have said all I care to say.

mprelaw

There comes a time in every man's life when it's best for him to put the past behind him, and move on.

Knowing how hard it is to take Lance at his word, but IF he has been trying to reach Greg, and Greg won't take his calls, it's sad. Despite all that Lance did. If someone has wronged me and wants to apologize, it's not up to me to judge the sincerity of that apology until after it's offered. LeMond took a very low key trip to France, and met with Fignon for hours, when Laurent was fighting cancer. They even took a ride together. Two years ago at the Tour, he and Hinault were in the car driven by Eddy yucking it up like the old friends they had once been. Fignon said some horrible things about Greg in hos autobiography. Hinault is seen by many as back-stabbing him in 1986. He let whatever grudges he had with them go.

Greg, it's time. Let it go.

Campag4life

Easy for you to say or judge another man without walking in his shoes. How could Lemond forgive the others for their indiscretions and yet not Lance?
To me its obvious. This wasn't about rivalry or saying horrible things, this is about physical threats that were levied and destroying a man's career who knew in his heart he raced clean and his perpetrator was a cheater. As I wrote above, somethings are beyond forgiveness and what Lance did to Lemond and others qualifies.

Curtis Odom 

Lemond is a hero, one of very few influential people with the balls to stand up to LA.

Campag4life

Williams only spoke up AFTER Woods dumped him. You don't understand the context. Williams deserves knight status for keeping his mouth shut witnessing all the indiscretions Woods perpetrated throughout his career. In the end it didn't matter. Williams should have gotten a medal for all he saw and keeping his mouth shut through thick and thin. His outrage was being tossed to the curb in spite of all he had to put up with. So you couldn't be more wrong. Williams was a dutiful subordinate and foot soldier to Woods and is highly regarded within the golf community while Woods emotes disdain wherever he is.

As to Harmon and Haney, you need to be schooled again. Both are the highest regarded teachers in the game. It isn't about not working out. Its about bad blood left by association with Woods. You don't know this but when Woods career continued to go south with his latest teacher Foley, Woods tried to put it back together with Harmon who he won many of his early majors with. No way. Harmon wouldn't do it and rightly so. The cast had been made. A zebra doesn't change his stripes...especially a crippled zebra with a bad back, elbow, heel and knee and neck.

Tiger has made his bed. He won't capture the major record that Jack holds. Sometimes there is poetic justice.
Myself and all my golfing friends are going to enjoy every minute of watching him struggle just like he has the last few years. He hasn't won a major in 6 years.

Campag4life

Yes and at tremendous personal cost.

mprelaw

He accepted Landis' apology for threatenning to expose his history of being abused as a child, which Greg had confided to him in the past. That was far more reprehensible than anything Lance did. Blackmail is a crime. Tortious interference with a contract isn't.

Campag4life

Sorry but you weren't there and neither was I. Apparently what Lance did was much more reprehensible. As many have stated, Lemond based upon reputation is a nice guy. It has been stated how forgiving he has been in spite of all the indiscretions noted in this thread against him. And yet Lance has not been forgiven. It says it all. I am pretty sure there that not only financial rune but also threats of physical harm were involved to bully Lemond into keeping his mouth shut. To me, to deprive a great champion or to threaten harm to him or his family is unforgivable. In fact, there are a lot of people in jail that have done less than what Lance has done to others.

mconlonx

Because he doped and got caught. They dropped the Armstrong edition bikes they were doing, got rid of the Armstrong hall of fame from Corporate HQ, and issued a terse, 4 sentence statement to formally end their relationship with him. In our Concept shop, the Armstrong wall -- probably a 16 x 16 vinyl floor to ceiling, right to left entire wall pic of him winning a Tour -- was ripped and repainted with a section of chalkboard paint for tech specials...

Oh, wait, who were you talking about...?

jyl

Lance is saying that if he had it to do over, he'd do it (dope) again . . . And that his Tour titles should be restored.. . And his ban lifted . . .The guy is completely unrepentant, so why bother listening to him not apologize?

Campag4life

Truth is, Lance has a point. In his heart of heart he did the same thing his competitors did and he won and deserves to hold on to his titles. That is why he is unrepentant. To some his position maybe tenable. I also believe he had the best doping doctor and effectively he won at the science of doping if a contest were held specific to doping in terms of maximizing performance. But there is no contest for that. In fact, his edge or supremacy with doping maybe why he won over the field. It may trump his genetic gifts and even tactical skills, both of which are legendary. This is hard to know or prove.

What took Lance down was his greed to not only beat everybody, but to dominate and be considered the greatest of all time and he would stop at nothing to achieve this goal. Financial rune and physical harm to protect his legacy is what I personally believe he should be in jail for. I believe many feel this way about him. Jail time. The other guys spoke out because they were left with nothing to lose and combined forces and didn't think Lance deserved his success for what he was doing to others and they all know he was cheating just as they were.

So he went down for being a despicable human being. My personal view is had Lance won 3 TdF's how he raced and shared some of his success with others that he raced in the peloton that made him successful versus throwing them all under the bus, he would still have iconic status. Doping in cycling have been around for decades although he took it a higher level.

JohnJ80

I guess I think that if they vacate Lance's wins, then they need to vacate all the wins by any of the other cyclists who won the TDF who were found out for doping at some point in their career too. This would probably go back to Lemond being the last cyclist to win a TDF clean.

If they don't vacate those wins, then they ought not to vacate Lance's wins either. The truth is, Lance probably won those races fair and square because all of the other competitors who had a chance at winning were almost certainly doping too. If the cycling authorities are going to be fair, that would be fair.

As for the punishment for doping, he's likely facing financial disaster and his reputation is trashed forever as well as him being banned from his life's work for life. He's an open target for civil legal action. That seems to me to be a pretty powerful punishment.

J.

beatlebee 

Excuse my ignorance, but I see that the "clean era" began and ended with Lemond?

Campag4life

I pretty much agree with all you wrote. I still think that physical threats and threat of financial rune is a jail-able offence. He should lose his millions.
What is tragic is...Lance in my opinion is the greatest cyclist of his era. 7 TdF's good? Maybe.

JohnJ80

Yes, I agree. Any threats of violence or financial ruin might even be criminal as well and should each be prosecuted individually.

I do think that in an equal playing field, either all doped or all clean, Lance would have still won his 7 TdF's. A number of cyclists who raced against him said that he was the best cyclist out there in the races he won. That's good enough testimony for me, they would know because they know if they doped (obviously) and they had to ride against him. Does he deserve punishment for that? Of course but so do all the others then and in equal measure.

Look at this article about top cyclists in TdF who have been publicly tainted by doping. If we are to apply the standard that was applied to Lance to all of them, then all of their stage wins and tour wins should be vacated. There would be a LOT more Tours with no winner listed - maybe all of them going back to Lemond.

J.

Curtis Odom 

Remember Lance's confessions were timed for when certain "Statute of Limitations" were coming into play. All calculated to preserve as much of his fortune as possible.

JohnJ80

So what? So would've anyone else including you if the roles where reversed.

Campag4life

You are conflating Curtis with Lance. Wrong parallel. Few on the planet would do their fellow teammates and rivals what Lance did them.
Great cyclist? Without a doubt. Sociopath? Yes.

JohnJ80

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

Anyone who had gotten themselves into that position would have done the same thing. Lance, or any other athlete or anyone caught doing a crime, would not fail to use the available laws to their maximum advantage knowingly. He didn't come clean because he wanted to, he did it because he had to. So, of course, he's going to do it in a way that is most advantageous. So would any of us if we were in the same situation. I don't see that as a problem. Would probably been nice to force him into a different time line, but that didn't happen and he got to choose some of the timing to his advantage. So what?

So I guess it's pretty easy to sit here and be righteous about thinking he - Armstrong - should come clean in a way that causes him maximum pain. But that's naive and foolish. Few among us would have accepted the punishment any differently if push came to shove, I'm sure. It's like when my attorney tells me when I want to go after someone "on principle." He'll push his yellow pad across the table to me and tell me to write that down so that when he sends me the invoice for his time chasing that down, he'll have that to remind me of what I wanted to be done. I'm sure Lance's attorneys told him exactly the same thing - "If you are going to go public with this, then do it according to this schedule because it's beneficial to you." And he took that advice just like pretty much every rational person in his situation would.

Is Lance a good guy? No. And he's going to take it right in the cheeks no matter what. At this point, the question of him getting away with a doping fraud is answered. He didn't, it's hurt him deeply and the hurt isn't done. He did make some moves to cover himself at some level tactically, but overall he got whacked.

He was/is a great cyclist. Sociopath? Not my area of expertise. I'll just leave it with him being a complete world class jerk.

J.

whitemax

So what's the word on Indurain? To see a guy that big go up the mountains like he did was phenomenal. Does no one talk about his doping because he was quiet and kept his mouth shut or is it felt that he rode clean?

Domane

Just who was Lemonds Doctor back in the day? Has anyone ever found out? Funny that anytime anyone does better then Lemond he accuses them of cheating and doping as if only Greg Lemond is the only one who is good enough to put out a great performance.

Armstrong's era was full of people doping, so what, our doper beat your doper get over it. The only thing everyone accomplished by the stripping of Armstrong's TDF titles is to put a big black eye on the sport as evidenced by there now being no winners for those seven years. No matter how much Greg Lemond and his fan boys want to cry, Armstrong did something that Lemond was not able to do and that was win the TDF seven years in a row.

As for the Lemond/Trek deal, if you owned the bike company and your new rider was now winning multiple TDF titles would you not want to capitalize on that and find that is time to move on from Lemond, who started attacking Armstrong and Trek. The simple answer is yes you would have dropped Lemond in a heart beat.

I have no doubt in my mind that Lemond doped in his time and just never got caught and funny how he makes such a stink today when he knows there are no remaining samples for anyone to test on him. Lets face it Lemond was in races where he was bombing out and he claims that a some iron shot fixed him. More like some dope he took fixed him to go from can't keep up to no one would keep up with Lemond. Sorry but iron shots don't have that kind of healing power.

Who was your doctor back then Greg Lemond?

Before the Lemond fan boys call me a Lance fan boy, I don't give a crap about either Lemond or Armstrong. The fact is Greg Lemond was hardly clean in his day at the top either. Who from his era is going to speak up and surely Greg Lemond will continue the façade that he never took any drugs now that it has been established that they can go back and take all your wins away even the ones past the so called statute of limitations as they did with Armstrong.

About the only thing Greg Lemond really does is run around crying about everything in his attempt to try and convince everyone he is the best cyclist to ever mount a bike when the facts are many have done things that Lemond could only ever dream of doing.

Leinster

Mig is the big question. There's no doubt that, like Lance, he was riding against proven and admitted dopers (Riis, Chiappucci, Virenque, Zulle, Pantani) and beating them. And picking up a couple of Giro titles too (so as many Grand Tours as Lance "got").

His massive lung capacity might actually have been a natural outlier, and to have got through that era without so much as an unsubstantiated rumour from a disgruntled masseur about needles or meds is JFK-assassination-levels of hush-hush around him. But you have to suspect that if Indurain was as big a jerk as Armstrong, or vice versa, a different rider might hold the record for consecutive TdF wins.

jyl

LeMond started riding professionally in the early 1980s, with Renault, then teamed up with Hinault at La Vie Claire to win his first Tour in 1986. That was before EPO was used for doping - Epogen was not even sold by Amgen until 1989, and it took awhile for athletes to start using it for performance enhancement. That started sometime in the early to mid 1990s. And wide spread blood doping came even later, after a test to detect Epogen was developed, which was in 2000.

So it is pretty clear that the Tours of the 1980s and early 1990s were won "clean" - well, there were amphetamines and so on, but they aren't anything close to Epogen (and other synthetic erthypoetin) and blood transfusions in their effectiveness.

In the early and mid 1990s, riders who were at the top of the sport suddenly found themselves being dropped like used tissues. Andy Hampsten for example. LeMond was finished by then, his body was breaking down, the shotgun pellets weren't helping. His three Tours and two World Championships were indisputably done without Epogen and, as far as anyone can know, without other doping. You better believe Lance would have uncovered evidence against LeMond if there was anything to find - he was (is?) worth $100MM and that hires lots of investigators.

Campag4life

Sad.