I think you're right Zinger. Armstrong is a hero. He doped the best and was a real champ

hey i'm back ;)

So Lance was a world class triathlete with no talent before turning to cycling full time and doing drugs..... Fail

So cheating and winning for one guy is Ok but cheating and winning for someone else isn't. Fail and hypocritical.. like i said

Lemond won't subject his former tests to modern testing. If he is so confident then he'd prove it.

the people who won't be happy until lance is burned at the stake or stoned to death are just as numerous as people who say that he cheated against cheaters. Notice that they wouldn't make anyone a winner in the tours he was stripped of..... cuz everyone was dirty.

Barry Bonds was talented too... but he is a cantaloupe headed cheater.

Problem is the cycling organizations have no balls and no consistency.. they give Contador 6 month suspension but give 2+ year bans to others with similar problems. Why are Ullrich, Pantani, Riis, etc's results not stripped when they were proven to have doped throughout.

We missed u, ;)

Heck R&M missed u, :crash:

aw so nice.

really, the whole pro side of the sport bugs me.. I like watching but it is all with a grain of salt now. I have zero faith they punished all the people who deserved it and I have doubts they are catching the people now. I watch it more for the tactics than any sort of physical feat... like Nascar but with human engines. the people on top are so close that it is strategy or mistakes that make gaps.

Strawman. Lance was destined to excel as a one day classics racer, not a GC champ in the giro or the TDF.


There are degrees of cheating just like there are degrees of theft. Lance was the most extreme cheater in the sport.

He used EPO, blood transfusions, HGH, testosterone and cortisone.

He forced his teammates to dope.

He had doctors fired if they didn't facilitate doping.

He terrorized, threatened, harassed anyone who dared tell the truth. He bribed officials. And lied about it.

You are glossing over the endless ways in which he sought out to destroy anyone who would not facilitate his efforts to dope.

There is a difference between being a doper and a flat out psychopath. Lance crossed that line a long time ago.

Greg entered his 1st TDF 30 years ago. Not a single person to my knowledge has accused him of cheating. Except you, a deranged lance fanboy. What a coincidence.


You reap what you sow. Lance is a criminal who has been lucky enough to avoid criminal charges so far.

Barry Bonds was already an MVP and a 30/30 guy headed to the HOF. Lance could never dream of winning even a single TDF without doping. Greg won 3 completely clean, would have won in 85 had his team director ordered him not to, and would likely have won in 87 and 88 had he not been shot.

You can't pin Lance's psychopathic criminal behavior on cycling organizations. Lance is responsible for his own actions.

Lance didn't cheat, he tried to bribe cycling officials, and terrorized anyone and everyone who told the truth, including his own family.

If you told the truth, he called you a "*****" or "fat" and actively sought to destroy you financially (lemond), and the list goes on and on.

It's not surprising that lance's fanboys are so delusional and strange. They share many of the same sociopathic traits as lance himself.

Never was a hero to me. Neither was Pantani.

<sigh> Yet another Lance thread.

So, like....I'm to assume you don't like Lance Armstrong then.

man, I got to say, to have that much pent up anger against the guy is a little weird.

That's what I was thinking... people put so much energy into the hate that could be used else where. I'm disappointed in the people who cheated but i'm not going to freak out and have life long rage against them. I still think there is a lot of inconsistency in the hate. Landis stole millions of dollars from people defending himself but no one talks about him.

Wow, so you can tell what the entirety of a guys career potential would be by how he raced when he was 16? You really need to go work as a scout for a cycling team, because they could really use your help determining who to give contracts to. I am sure Sky or BMC would love to have your crystal ball so they could lock up all the future GC winners to long term contracts at age 18. Anybody who tries to say with a straight face that Lance had the same talent as the average century rider is an idiot. Did the guy dope? Sure. Was he an absolute a-hole about it? Absolutely. But to let your hate for the man because of those things blind you to his talent is just sad. There is simply no question that the peleton was doped to the gills for most of the years he was riding. The reason we know so much about his methods is that for the first time, we had an investigation asking guys questions under oath where they could go to jail for perjury if they lied. If we did the same thing with any other pro-tour teams, we would get the same level of detail about their programs at the time. Ask yourself this...why did all these guys stick with Lance and keep riding on his team for years if he was such an a-hole and they hated being "forced" to dope by him? Could it be because they knew that every other team was doping and they would be "forced" to dope no matter who they rode for?

This is a tired old argument and I really don't want to rehash it, but the OP was right. Pantani was a doper, Lance was a doper. To laud the talent of one, while openly despising the other is just stupid. For that matter, Eddy Merckx was a confirmed doper (using the tools available at the time)...why do we hold him in such high esteem, yet denigrate others who doped?

That's not really true. There were many bike racers who didn't juice and were competitive. You know of course why you never hear about them? Because cheaters got all the glory and money. And this is what separates LA from the one's you are talking about. Pantini wasn't out ruining the careers of people who looked at him the wrong way.

This coming from a big LA fan back in the day. Honestly I don't know anyone could root for the guy today he was such a let down.

Wouldn't Pantini doping to gain competetive edge ruin other rider's careers by default, jfmckenna? I mean, they both doped for the same reason, same reason the majority of the peloton doped.

Looking for intellectual honesty doesn't equal "rooting for" Lance. And quite frankly, we will never know whether Pantani bullied anybody to dope, because nobody is ever going to ask his teammates under penalty of jailtime for perjury whether they were doping. There were lots of very dirty and shady things that went on in the peleton for a couple of decades, and while Lance may have been the worst about his tactics, I am entirely unconvinced that the mechanics of their doping were really that much more sophisticated than what anybody else was doing. Sure, Tygart was astounded by the complexity of what was being done by Postal/Discovery, but that was because he was hearing about it firsthand from the guys own words for the first time. You can hear about how cool a new car engine is, but it won't stop you from being amazed the first time you see and drive it. That doesn't mean it is different or better than one under the hood of every other car, it is just that you have never experienced it up close and personal before. I am still not entirely convinced that the peleton is as clean as people are portraying it to be now. I think they have just changed methods and come up with new better ways to hide it. The claims by one of the former Sky riders about them popping painkillers like candy sounds like a team that sees the benefits of better riding through pharmacology, despite the protestations of the team owner.

If they were never winning or getting the glory and money, then they weren't competitive. The fact is that nearly the entire podium for all of LA's victories consisted of guys we now know to have doped. If you were in the pro peleton and wanted to be on the podium at the major stage races in those years, you doped...or you had no chance. Given the long line of various scandals and guys getting caught/admitting they doped after their careers were over, it is hard to believe there is anybody who believes the peleton was clean.

Yes that's what I am trying to say. Pantini was a cheater no doubt but hypothetically strip the dope out of the equation and Lemond is right in saying Pantani had more talent.

I don't however think anyone of them ought to be revered in any way. They are liars and cheats. Period. So yes I don't agree with Lemonds statement but he has a lot of good reasons to hate on LA.

I was never a Lemond fanboy. His statements only serve to solidify my opinion.

Ad hominem. No substance in your post.

You are insinuating that pantani MAY have been as psychotic as lance without a shred of evidence.

Conversely, many dozens of witnesses have stepped forward testifying to lance's criminal and psychotic behavior in extraordinary detail.

Open and shut case.

This is why everyone loves the internet . . . .

But Lance took it many steps further and bribed officials, had team doctors fired, coerced his teammates to dope, while saving the most effective doping procedures for himself, libeled, defamed, stalked and humiliated anyone who told the truth, lied to media endlessly, changed his lies repeatedly, asked for forgiveness while taunting everyone by posting photos on social media with his yellow jerseys, apologizing and then refusing to return his prize money, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.

There are degrees of cheating and lance went far, far beyond anyone else.

That is not what he was saying.. i wish i could find the interview but i can't. He just said that he had talent. he wasn't comparing him to anyone. he said regardless of the doping, he had talent. which could be said for the entire peloton. they all kick our ass on recovery rides without blinking.

because becoming a drug addict and then OD'ing on cocaine is much better.

I am not saying he was psychotic. I am saying that we will never know the circumstances under which Pantani, any members of his team, or any other team in the pro peleton from that era doped. The reason that there are "dozens of witnesses" against LA is not because they "stepped forward" (only a couple did that voluntarily...usually when there was money to be made in doing so). Instead, there are so many witnesses against LA because there was a federal investigation conducted looking at whether LA committed a crime. Since the athletes being questioned were not themselves targets of the investigation, they were not allowed to not testify and were under penalty of perjury if they failed to tell the truth. The criminal investigation was a sham operation specifically designed to put the riders being questioned in a position where they could go to jail if they refused to testify and could go to jail if they lied. That is why we have so much detail about the why and how of the Postal doping program. If you were able to take any pro team from that era and put it through the same level of scrutiny, you would find plenty of unsavory details that would make you see your favorite riders in a different light I am sure. Would you find out Pantani was as psychotic as LA? I have no idea. I am not saying you would. I am simply saying that we will never know because the information needed to make the comparison accurately will never come to light. You are using the presence of all these mountains of evidence as the standard for saying why LA was such a bad guy. I am just saying that the reason those mountains of evidence about the details of his doping exist is because he was investigated in a way that nobody else has ever been investigated; and you can't use the absence of similar evidence about other riders and teams as evidence they were not doping just as hard. It is simply evidence that they were never investigated as hard. We simply will never know how much farther LA went than anybody else, because no other teams or riders from his era will be put to the level of scrutiny that Postal/Discovery has gone through.

None of that is to make any argument that he should be seen sympathetically. I despise what he did and how he impacted the lives of others in so many negative ways. I am just saying that to pretend he was the only bad guy in the peleton during that era is foolish and naive.

:lol: :thumb:

Yeah the Pirate's fanboys have continental class. Lance's fanboys are hicks.

No offense but I'm not buying your argument. As I have said before, you are clearly trying to insinuate that pantani's world was potentially as nefarious as Lance's without the slightest shred of evidence to back it up. That's what you are doing but you don't really have the guts to admit it. You keep trying to skate around the issue, insinuating that pantani COULD have been a bad guy knowing full well you don't have the ammunition to back it up.

As far as the feds, lance put himself in a position to get strung up like he did. He was an open, belligerent, systematic cheater in every way conceivable. The doping was just the tip of the iceberg. He was cheating openly in front of his girlfriends and his wife.

He bribed officials. He had doctors fired. He made enemies at every turn. He forced his teammates to dope.

Psychopaths enjoy destroying people, enjoy cheating and enjoy flaunting their cheating. They don't have any remorse.

Rumors were absolutely rampant not just about lance's cheating, but his extreme belligerence and emotional volatility and instability.

HE MADE HIMSELF A TARGET. It's only logical that he would attract the attention of law enforcement. No one was as systematic a cheater as lance. He was the most aggressive by far.

You are pretending Lance is some innocent lamb 'just trying to keep up with the boys.' He knew exactly what he was doing and what the consequences were.

Lance has gotten off very lightly considering his crimes.

I find your assertion that he was singled out to be laughable. Lance dared the feds and anyone else to come after him. He got what he asked for.