CrankyOne

Nothing earth shattering though perhaps interesting for some.

Lance in Purgatory: The After-Life - Esquire

roadwarrior

Yeah....REAL bike racing is personal. Very personal.

And he won those races.

And Floyd's Stage 17 ride in the '06 Tour is still one of the greatest I have ever seen.

dstrong 

Was that really 8 years ago? I remember standing in the break area at work watching that.

Sailor73 

Just finished up Wheelmen yesterday so it's interesting to read this article today. This is the first piece in Lance's blueprint for getting back in the spotlight.

roadwarrior

Juliet Macur's book "Cycle of Lies" is also a good read.

The end of "Slaying the Badger" last night was also pretty interesting...

Slackerprince

Drinking more and playing golf...
Purgatory is hellish.
I still like the book, The Secret Race. I read it in a weekend.
Slogging through Big George's book now. Yawn.

S

nun

The paragraph that questions the motives of the people who spoke out about US Postal doping is really jarring.
Landis just broke when he was rebuffed by Armstrong...so much for loyalty, and the continuing criticism
of Betsy Andreu is pretty pathetic.

The final section where he's being paid to spend time with those Wall St. guys at a cycling camp is sort of sad.
If he had come forward with the rest of his team mates when given the chance by USADA maybe there would be a way back
for him into the world of cycling. It's not so much the doping, its the manner of the doping and the deceit and as
the leader he is blamed for all of that. Riders like Hincapie might not ever be involved with professional cycling
again, but they'll be able to sell bikes and jerseys and have the admiration and respect of most people in cycling.
I just don't think people like Armstrong and that's his biggest problem......until the scale of the bribery of UCI etc
comes out.

This video is really interesting and Lemond, Betsy Andreu and the USADA General Council get into some fantastic detail. I wonder if manslaughter or even greater
charges could be brought against many of the doctors and team managers who organized the doping regimes of the 1990s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLVOCV5Nlms

canam73

Does anyone know more about the final USADA deal? Seems like there must be more to that story.

I have the surface story correct, in later 2012 Lance was told what would happen to him and given one last chance to work with USADA for a probably reduced penalty, but stuck to his story, was banned, and then by 1/2013 was on Oprah admitting to most of what he was suspended for with no change to his status.

While it could be that dumb, it just seems like some major component is missing from that story.

chewa

I thought he was Voldemort? (He who cannot be named)?

I can forgive the doping (read David Millars book - Riding through the Dark - and you understand the pressure these guys were under), but he ruined other peoples lives (those he crushed when they suggested he wsn't clean)

Tyler's book reveals a very dark side to him.

I remember watching those day after day superb rides in mountain stages. I also remember thinking "What is he on?"

roadwarrior

What everybody else was on. He was just better at it. Like a lot of other things.

And he made a lot of people a lot of money...

asgelle

And the lie lives on.

canam73

Ooh, what's the truth? Where you like there or something? Or do you know a guy who knows?

asgelle

At this point, to be unaware of the evidence takes willful ignorance.

canam73

I'm trying to get better about that.

So let me in on the secret, other than what he admitted to, what was he on? Top secret government stuff?

Hypno Toad

Before Lance, the Tour de France and professional cycling was clean of any "enhancing drugs"...

Tom Simpson's death on Mont Ventoux: "Two empty tubes and a half-full one of amphetamines (one of which was labelled "Tonedron") were found in the rear pocket of his jersey." Tom Simpson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

asgelle

Who said he was on anything beside what he admitted to? No one else was able to follow the same program as he was (as documented repeatedly).

canam73

You're confusing me. If the lie is that he wasn't on "what everybody else was on" but I didn't hear him admit to being on anything that other cyclists haven't cheated with, and you are saying he wasn't on anything besides what he admitted to, what am I missing?

asgelle

For example, If I use PED A from 2002 through 2004 and then switch to PED B from 2005 through 2009 while you only find out about A in 2003 and use it through 2007 before switching to B in 2008, were we on the same program? Some might say we used the same PED's, but in reality we were not at all on the same program.

canam73

Now you're getting really tricky. Lance was out of cycling from 2006-2008. Are you saying that is when he took the really good secret government drugs that nobody else had?

RISKDR1

Lance created his own reality. Everything we say and do in life sends its consequences, good or bad, into the future where they wait for us and those in our sphere of responsibility. In Lances case that sphere of responsibility was huge. I guess I could have forgiven him for the doping inasmuch as it was rampant. What I can never forgive is how he used his power to bludgeon people with less power. Many of those people were in his sphere of responsibility and he breached that responsibility in many ways. Just my humble opinion.

nun

Doping has been in cycling since the start and it's dangers are obvious from the Simpson tragedy...and that should be reason enough to do everything possible to get rid of it. If a cyclist is doping on their own then I feel it's a lower level offense than team management coercing riders to dope. If the doping results in death one might be classed as suicide and the other as manslaughter. The rash of cyclists that died in the early 1990s could have been criminal if they were encouraged to overdose on EPO by team doctors and managers.

If Armstrong had come forward with the rest of US Postal he might still have those TDF victories, but I suspect he didn't because the doping is the least of the crimes. He wanted to avoid being under oath and has admitted the least possible. He could throw UCI etc under the bus, but he'd have to throw himself under the same bus too.

MinnMan

purgatory isn't under the bus?

Leinster

Supposedly, one of the funny things about the '99/'05 L'Equipe drug tests was that of all the positive retests they got from the unused B samples, almost all were Armstrong's. Only a handful of the other positives came from the rest of the samples. The peloton Lance beat in '99 may well have been more free of EPO than any Tour De France since the 80s.

nun

That might have been because of the hangover from the Festina affair.

One thing to note about Armstrong's career was that before his cancer he was good on flat stages, but not a great climber, his drug taking kept him competitive over flat stages, but did nothing for him in the mountains. Maybe it was the cancer changing his physiology and weight or just maturity, but after he came back it was his climbing ability that really changed.

canam73

Epo and transfusions didn't help him one bit in the mountains? Not one single bit?

And with whatever crap you say, how do you know?