Originally Posted by
CyclingBK
It was good. I’m new to cycling so my main takeaways...
Jerk of the highest order. Clip when he was young and living in Italy and annoyed at how difficult it was to communicate with people. His face said it all. He seems to know he’s a jerk. But, lot of the best athletes are total ego maniacs.
Doping was a choice he made to be competitive. Is it not correct that it was not possible to compete without EPO at that time? He contributed to the problem, of course. But seems all the top pros were in on it.
He was a prodigy at a very young age. I had thought doping “made” him but it seems like he was beating top, experienced cyclists in his teens. Had nobody been doping, seems he could have still been a star. We will never know.
Pro cycling is a crazy sport. I also caught another ESPN show about the LeMond/Hinault story. Insane. The sport seems to be a pressure cooker filled with deception and double dealing and betrayal. The physical pressure is insane and the mental side looks even worse.
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He was a prodigy at a very young age." Yes. But he wasn't a three week stage racer who could win a yellow jersey. He was a one day classics rider. The World Championships, the races in Belgium. His body took to that new drug, EPO and benefited more than most. In part, because, for such a powerful build, heart, longs, etc., he had a rather low VO2max. Before his use of EPO, the best three week riders had much higher VO2max levels naturally and recovered better after hard efforts, So, before EPO, Armstrong faired poorly after days of hard racing, but after EPO, it was a different story. IN the early years of testing for EPO, they simply measured VO2max and assumed everyone over 50% was drugging. Those at 48# naturally couldn't touch EPO. But Armstrong, at ~35%, could take a whole lot of it. It was several Tour wins before the testing got more sophisticated. By then, the US Postal/Discovery team had worked out how to get around the tests.
Doping has been going on forever in pro cycling. But until EPO, the riders were human. Doping could win you races but at a cost. When riders were racing well over 100 races a year, you could only dope for certain races or your career was going to be short. EPO changed the game.
Ben