Velo Vol 

Where, specifically, did he complain about being treated unjustly?

TakingMyTime

I have not and will not watch this. No matter when or where he was interviewed, at whatever age... he always sounded like and carried himself as a prick. Drugs or not, he's a prick.

thehammerdog

yes this was to have been my year. did several TT ladt year had more planned in 2o20 but....ya know.

thehammerdog

ya gotta love weedman floyd.

those were the good days of crazy....drugs for all ya'll.

topflightpro

This is sort of my perspective too. They were all doping. He was probably better at it. But he was also quite viscous to anyone who challenged him and ruined their lives.

This sums up pretty much everyone at the top of their game/profession. Pretty much all great athletes - look at Tiger or Jordan - and CEOs, billionaires, politicians are pricks,

indyfabz

You forgot to mention Brady and his coach.

GlennR

I agree.

Ogsarg

There is one problem with the "They were all doping" argument. Many of the athletes that were doping only did it because it was the only way to compete against the dopers. If a coach tells you that you're never going to have any success unless you dope and all you've ever wanted to do was be a pro cyclist, it makes for a very difficult choice. Certainly every one that makes that choice has to face the consequences, but I can understand the pressure they felt.

I have no idea how long the doping was going on or who started it, but the early dopers are the ones that really f'd things up.

SurferCyclist

I find cheating in sport abhorrent, unforgiveable. Life time bans should be given out to those caught/found guilty. The farcical 2 or 4 years bans given out to cyclists and athletes is a joke. They then return and race again? Pathetic.
This all said, Armstrong is a very interesting guy. His THEMOVE podcasts and analysis of races is excellent so I watch them. Doesn't make me like the guy but he knows his stuff on bike racing.

MidTNBrad

Time to move on. I decided not to watch it.

topflightpro

Doping in cycling has been going on for as long as the Tour has been around. It started with things like caffeine pills and other stimulants and moved on from there.

But a lot of that stuff they used to dope with is now considered legal. But it's still doping. The line between what is legal doping and illegal doping, in many cases, seems rather arbitrary.

Maelochs

I watched Part One and half of Part Two ... DVR'd the rest.

Lance is a jerk, he knows it, he is a Very good actor, he does have feelings, but mostly for his kids and a few good friends ... the lives he ruined don't bother him at all. And he outright said he was angry about some of the ways he was treated

Basically I know longer have any emotional involvement. While I wouldn't mind if some guy kicked LA in the tested first thing every morning, I won't be upset if that doesn't happen.

Eric F

The words of a pro from Lance's era..."Taking the titles away from Lance doesn't make anyone else more credible". Doping was the culture of pro cycling long before Lance got there, and it continues to be an issue. I'm way more bummed to learn that Lance was/is such an @$$hole. Great bike racer. Not a great person.

znomit

Clean Lance was not all that great on the bike.

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.

noodle soup

That's surprising to you?

noodle soup

That's horse****.

He's a total D-Bag, but he was a great athlete, long before he started doping.

jimmyodonnell

I just watched part 2, and for me it offered much more than part 1 . . . mainly, because it covers the story to present day. Everything I saw in part 1 I already knew from the Gibney film, and from the books by Albergotti / O'Connell and by Macur. In part 2, however, I really liked hearing more from Hamilton, Landis, Lance's management team, his kids and current partner Anna. Armstrong's own admissions are clearer in this film than in any of the previous platforms where I'd heard his story. The thrust of this film deals with all the fallout, how all the key players remember it / lived through it, while the previous tellings of the story deal much more with how it all went down / who was involved / who knew / who didn't / etc etc.

In the end, I really liked this film . . . I'm sure I'll watch it again and probably pick up more second time through. I also like Lance's podcasts, and hearing the analyses he and George offer on current races, and I especially like hearing what Johan has to say when he particpates.

javaruke

Narcisist ++...love the question along the lines of "does he want to be relevant again"...he had to summon the words and squash his fury to assert he is relevant.

ZHVelo

The difference between Lance and the other dopers though is that he is sociopath and narcissist. Take Jan, be it his upbringing in Eastern Germany and socialist influence, but he was a team player. He raced for the team, Lance raced for himself. Shame how his life turned out in comparison.

Paul Barnard

I really enjoyed watching Lance kick all that butt! He owned the competition. In his prime the TDF was about who would come in second.

LAJ

He is relevant.

To paraphrase the documentary. After all this time, I usually decide if I like or dislike a person. With Lance, I'm still undecided.

Eric F

Not surprising, but a bummer. It's not rare for elite athletes to be self-centered and arrogant. To learn (not just from the "30 for 30" shows) that he was such a giant @$$hole to people close to him, however, was disappointing.

dmark 

Agreed. Most significant was the death of Tom Simpson in the Tour in 1967 of heart failure and amphetamines.
Yet nothing changed; cheating was quietly tolerated.

79pmooney

"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