Lance Armstrong “won” 7 consecutive Tour De France titles.
Although he was busted for performance enhancing drugs, many still claim he was the best ever as it was a level playing field (facts show 87% of top 21 riders all doped).
I personally think he is one of the best cyclists ever. I believe if no steroids were used by any cyclist, he would still win. But thats my opinion.
Do you think he is a legend or disgrace?
I dont really care about him as a cyclist. As a human being he is terrible. He went out of his way to destroy peoples lives. Lies to hide the truth is one thing. But to destroy people vindictively is disgusting. Even a true American hero like Greg Lemond lost his business because of Lances attacks.
Also I cannot respect the man who still has 10’s of millions of dollars and never tried to make things right with the people he screwed over.
But then compared to today’s politicians, bankers, wall street types, ceo’s he seems almost like a saint lol.
I agree he did do some bad things
But didn’t he also help raise $500 million for cancer survivors?
I think he has some good in him, as well as bad
The idea that it was a level playing field because everyone used EPO is not true. EPO had vastly differing effects on every person.
This is mainly because there has been shown to be an inverse relationship between V02 max and gross economy of a cyclist.
This means that a pro who has a low V02 max but a very good economy will benefit from EPO or blood doping massively as they can improve their weak area a lot, while their economy is already very good.
Whereas a cyclist who has a low economy and a high V02 max will hardly benefit from doping as they are close to the ceiling of their V02 and cannot raise it much more, while their economy remains low which stops them from seeing large improvements in performance from doping.
Spent my time disliking him but I’m over it. He didn’t kill anyone and in terms of ranking he’s pretty low down my list of bad people so can only provoke so much ire. It wasn’t his doping that I disliked it was his treatment of other riders and their families. His treatment of journalists didn’t annoy me so much as journos generally fall into the camp of people who love throwing dirt at people.
Also, for the money he was making, I bet the vast majority of people who hate him would have attempted the same, they’d just not have been as good at being as much of a badass as he was.
I’ll throw my hands up here and freely admit that I’d have doped for millions of dollars especially when everyone else was doing it too something I feel I can admit now I’m a bit more mature so not sure why I disliked Lance so much before.
Also open to Lance coming back into the public view again. Stay repentant and share it all, hold nothing back. Let us learn everything.
No respect for the guy whatsoever. Not based on the doping (like you say, most were at it in that era), but the way he bullied, destroyed lives, and generally just how he conducted himself. If you read Tyler Hamilton’s “The Secret Race” book (brilliant book by the way), I’m pretty sure you’d have a different opinion of Lance.
@janerney makes a good point about not everyone responding the same to doping as well. Plus, Lance was taking it to another level than most with the blood transfusions etc…
No problem at all with him, enjoy listening to him. Yes he was an a55hole at the time but the hypocrisy around him is ridiculous. He came into cycling when the system was messed up, he treated people really badly but hey not everyone is a nice guy!
His rule violation for his life ban reads like the police report of common drug pusher:
Use, possession, trafficking, administration, assisting, encouraging, aiding, abetting, covering up or any other type of complicity involving one or more ADRV.
Not someone I’d share a drink with.
I’m not sure you can call that era a level playing field as (believe it or not) not everyone was doping. Even among those that were, very few were doing it to the extremes that Armstrong was. Add in the fact that he tried to destroy people’s reputations and the needle on my Respect-O-Meter is hovering somewhere below zero.
The ends don’t justify the means. If I rob a bank and kill the bank teller doing so, but donate all the stollen cash to charity, the “good in me” doesn’t matter. It’s the totality of the circumstances and you can’t take parts of the story in isolation and only highlight the positives.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game. However, he knowingly and purposely excelled as a player of the game in all it’s seedy unethical, immoral details.
Slight update - respect LA, no, he cheated no matter the circumstances and was a general douchecanoe all around and as a person he doesn’t deserve respect. Was he evil incarnate that destroyed pro cycle racing, no, they were well on their way to doing that before he perfected it.
No.
Don’t respect or idolise in any way those cyclists of that era, but at least most of them weren’t such pricks as him.
Saying that, those that still maintain to have been clean are now a laughing stock for anyone with any knowledge of the subject.
Amazing how some are now seen as good guys vs others, when their paths were so similar, just crazy.
And I’m going to believe anything Tyler Hamilton or Floyd Landis have to say?
The same Tyler Hamilton who doped. The same Tyler Hamilton who said he might be a chimera due to an twin brother who died before birth aka the vanishing twin alibi. Etc…
The same Floyd Landis who failed a doping test and blamed too many beers and whiskey. The same Floyd Landis who was convicted for hacking a French anti-doping lab. Etc…
Lance doped. Lance lied. He was an ar@#hole, but as @Supermurph19 said, ‘the hypocrisy around him is ridiculous.’ If anything, at least Lance didn’t name names and throw others under the bus to save his own a#se. I can respect that.
I listen to his podcast…I think he has great insight into a lot of things. I got into road cycling after watching him win the TdF…I think he was the best doper in a field full of dopers. Like others have said…don’t hate the player…hate the game…almost 20 years later they still haven’t eliminated doping.
It seems a big problem with Lance is he didn’t know how to turn off the “competition switch” off the bike. The same aggressive tactics he used on the bike, he used off of it, and this led to the horrible way he treated people around him.
I do have respect for him as a competitor and for what he did with the Livestrong foundation. Are there may cancer fundraising events that exist today that he helped kick off years ago and these continue to raise millions of dollars for cancer research.
It seems he is in a much better space now with his family around him and his podcast taking off. He still had that edge to him though that comes through on occasion. Maybe one day he will try and make amends with those he slighted, but I suspect that is some ways off.
Yes. The study shows an inverse relationship between VO2Max and cycling economy/efficiency.
However, the study says nothing of the link between EPO and either VO2Max or cycling economy/efficiency.
In relation to Lance, who has a recorded VO2Max of 85 ml/kg/min (very high), are you trying to say that doping would have hardly any benefit to him?
When he talks about bike racing I listen to him. He keeps in contact with Bruyneel and is still close to Hincapie and other ex-pros. There’s a lot to learn there.
That’s pretty much as far as I take it. Same with Floyd.
I think he won in an awesome era and went from playing the hero to the villain in awesome fashion and he has some great stories. I would like for him to write a book as the villain, rather than someone else.
It’s never been about the doping for me, it was the treatment of other people and hiding behind cancer. Plenty of my sporting heroes doped, either confirmed or probability. I’ve a collection of retro, epo tainted jerseys (mercatone uno, telekom, festina, once amongst others), but I just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger on a postal one…
The whole “you can’t question me because I had cancer” really annoyed me, as I’ve lost far too many people I care about to various forms of cancer.
He got the longer ban than others because he didn’t cooperate. He still hasn’t come fully clean about the how and facilitated by whom. Something that keeps getting missed when discussing whether he was treated fairly in comparison to others.
I do sometimes listen to the podcasts if I’m stuck. Hincapie has good insights this time of the year, but I actually preferred the one the other week that Armstrong wasn’t on.
So to answer the question of legend or disgrace. Disgrace, but not really for the doping…
Their account of Lance is similar to most others who were close to him around that period. The general consensus seems to be the guy is a piece of sh!t.