Yeah, Armstrong remains as fiercely loyal to Ferrari as some of you guys are to him................
Some of the national slurs hurled in this thread would never have been unchallenged, had the words "Italian" and French" been replaced by "American".
At least the French and Italians are making some moves against rampant drug abuse in sports, cycling being just one. Waiting for Verbruggen's UCI to self-regulate was a waste of time. Of course, UCI testers are more polite to the riders than policemen, with the evident outcomes.......
Hey, to hell with the future of the sport, so long as the stars and stripes are on top of the podium.........is that really what we want?
The whole Simeoni thing is a joke. Patrons have always dominated and policed the peloton in the way Armstrong did. Guys like Hinault and Van Looy would eat the lunches of riders that crossed them. There is no case to answer- and Verbruggen is an ass, for suggesting otherwise........
In this era of disinformation, we will never be told why Armstrong ducked the olympics and why he won't race the Giro. All that close season BS, about him giving the Tour a miss...........like winning a Classic, or the Giro would have enough cachet for the new sponsors.
There are those among us who loved the sport before Lemond and will do so after Armstrong. Quite what will be left of it's credibility at that point, who knows?