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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Apr 25, 2018 - 12:53pm PT
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Largo,
I have been covering professional cycling as a journalist for 40 years and have covered all the major doping cases. I was personally involved in the Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton cases. There is no doubt that Lance behaved very poorly to a number of people during his racing years, but the claims of financial ruin are completely false. Even though Greg Lemond lost his bike line at Trek he still has lots of money.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Apr 25, 2018 - 02:28pm PT
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Did L cheat?
Did L lie about it for years?
Did L threaten people?
Did he follow up in those threats?
So, a better cheater than wrecker?
MOVING RIGHT ALONG TO CURRENT NEWS.
CNN. A former California police officer has been identified as the so-called Golden State Killer believed to have committed 12 killings and at least 50 rapes across California from 1976 to 1986, authorities said Wednesday.
Otherwise, though J.J. DiAngelo was a good cop.
Edit:
There is no known evidence that he was not kind to his dog.
↓↓
Edit2:
Whoops, apparently Joe was shoplifting dog repellant.
At least he didn't spit on the sidewalk, preferring to use a can.
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BigB
Trad climber
Red Rock
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Apr 25, 2018 - 02:52pm PT
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Z not really, he was fired for shoplifting
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Trump
climber
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Apr 25, 2018 - 03:44pm PT
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“My one big beef with him is that he has refused to make financial reparations to those whose lives he ruined in terms of money. Till he does that, he won't have made amends, not where it hurts him.”
150 years after slavery ended, median black wealth is only 1/13 median white wealth. I’m not gonna hold my breath waiting for that to happen, or expecting that I understand exactly who the bad guys are.
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Apr 26, 2018 - 10:55pm PT
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What about the people who never spoke up, because they were worried he would sue, or publically humiliate them? How many of those are/were there?
How much has Lance spent on lawyers? Comparably, has he donated more or less non-tax-deductable money to Livestrong?
You can speculate all you want, but I covered the whole affair from start to finish and, frankly, I can't think of anybody other than Greg Lemond who has suffered significant financial loss. Nobody else.
If you just don't like Lance, I can understand that. He treated a number of people very poorly while he was racing. He took drugs. He lied. But, he didn't ruin anybody's life as far as I can tell and I was right in the middle of the whole thing.
As far as the concern about Livestrong, for the 14 years(1999-2012) that he was involved in the cancer community before his downfall, Lance did an incredible job in all aspects surrounding the fight against cancer. It's hard to be negative about that.
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silverplume
Trad climber
Boulder
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Apr 27, 2018 - 07:35am PT
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Bruce et al: Significant financial loss directly attributable to LA is one thing, but the opportunity cost of exiting cycling because of the culture of doping -- of which LA was clearly a figurehead -- is quite another. I personally know at least a dozen professional cyclists whose careers were effectively ruined because of their decision not to participate in that culture. Two in particular were some of the best cyclists in the US -- if not the world -- and one was a national teammate of LA's who explicitly told me he voluntarily gave up a future in the sport due to direct pressure from folks like LA, Hincapie, Hamilton and others. That may not amount to financial loss directly caused by LA, but it's certainly attributable to the culture of which LA was complicit, and potentially directly caused by the pressure LA put on folks. In that sense lives may not have been ruined, but many people gave up big dreams and plausible futures as pro cyclists.
In terms of LA's involvement with Livestrong, there was a time when he did a lot of good, but he became a liability long before the doping allegations surfaced. A dear friend of mine was responsible for giving the foundation formerly known as the Lance Armstrong Foundation the name and branding we all know as Livestrong. I also have several friends who held prominent leadership roles within the foundation. LA had many conflicts of interest that directly competed with the foundation (particularly when Nike essentially tried to co-opt the brand) and I seem to remember a fracas that resulted when Lance and pals ran a website with a similar name as the foundation and were directly profiting from the brand association. Folks within the foundation were really frustrated and LA apparently didn't give a sh#t. They tried for years to distance themselves from LA due to the harm it was causing. There are lots of sordid details that will probably never be made public, but suffice it to say that what we know of LA's public personality was that much worse in private.
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Apr 27, 2018 - 10:36am PT
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You are making the mistake of attributing the doping culture in cycling to Lance and Lance alone. Having covered the sport of professional cycling for 40 years I can tell you that there has been doping in cycling for about as long as there has been professional cycling. Heck it was Tyler Hamilton and several others who brought doping to the USPS team a year before Lance even joined the team. You simply cannot blame Lance for the culture of doping in cycling.
I am sorry that your friends were driven out of the sport. One of my oldest and dearest friends is the only American to ever win the Giro d'Italia. We started racing together. We had many long talks about doping in cycling and how it was affecting his career which was cut short by the introduction of EPO. I completely understand that. But, again, you can't blame Lance for this. There has been a culture of doping in the sport since it's inception.
You are nitpicking about Lance and Livestrong. Every foundation has it's ups and downs and people don't always get along. But, if you step back and look at what Lance did for cancer awareness and the cancer community from 1999-2012 it is hard not to say it was impressive.
BTW, before Lance started winning the Tour de France the TV coverage of the race was almost non-existent. When Lance started winning the Tour we started to get live coverage. Now July is Tour de France month on NBCSN. If you watch the Tour on TV in America in July it's because of Lance. The exposure for cycling from having the Tour on TV is huge and it is entirely due to Lance.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Apr 27, 2018 - 12:04pm PT
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What you see here in some cases is what we all do - try and frame a person in black and white terms. Any attempt to do so is a distortion. Good and bad, that's how we humans roll. It's just in Lance's case his personality magnifies everything beyond recognition. He's a polarizing figure, and that is troubling.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Apr 27, 2018 - 03:14pm PT
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I never paid much attention to cycling after I quit my paper route, so maybe someone who hung in wants to comment on this
Bassons joined FDJ in 1999, but he was treated like sh#t by his teammates and the peloton for speaking out against doping. On Stage 10 of the 1999 Tour, the bulk of the peloton conspired to single out Bassons and intentionally ride slow to isolate him. When they eventually caught him, he was stared down en masse, taken aside by Armstrong, and told that he should quit the sport. Jonathan Vaughters later recalled that “Lance frequently made fun of him in a very merciless and venomous fashion, much like a playground bully.” Bassons abandoned the Tour and retired a few short years later, formally ending a promising career that was effectively ended by refusing to stay silent.
In purely pharmacological terms, Armstrong’s habit of using EPO, testosterone, blood doping, and cortisone is notable for its volume, though the fact that he chemically enhanced his performance during an era in which doing so was a near-universal fact of life at cycling’s highest levels is not necessarily damning. “Everyone was doing it!” really does characterize the top of the sport in the ’90s, and while it provides crucial context for Armstrong’s reign, federal prosecutors have noted that it’s also not strictly relevant to his case. “Regardless of whether every single rider on non-USPS teams was using PEDs, the question for materiality purposes under the [False Claims Act] is whether Armstrong’s compliance with the anti-doping provisions of the Sponsorship Agreement and his false denials of his own PED-use mattered to the USPS,” they wrote in a June 2017 briefing.
Legalisms aside, though, what made Armstrong’s doping extreme was neither its scope nor its efficacy. What set him apart was the way he exercised his power to abuse teammates and those around him to create the perfect winning machine.
EDI
T:
Note to self. Check other sports re MikeL's stmt
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 27, 2018 - 04:43pm PT
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What set him apart was the way he exercised his power to abuse teammates and those around him to create the perfect winning machine.
Alas, the same things could be said for most leaders from any quarter. Maybe even here on ST.
The meek might inherit the earth, but it’s clear they are not in-charge on this plane of existence. Somehow we expect to find immensely powerful people in very important positions who are righteously pure people through and through.
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Apr 27, 2018 - 05:54pm PT
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What set him apart was the way he exercised his power to abuse teammates and those around him to create the perfect winning machine.
(BTW, it would be nice to have a source for this quote)
That's not fact, that somebody's opinion and like a lot of the copy written about Lance it is totally overblown. I know/knew almost every member of the USPS cycling team and yes, there were a few like Dave Zabriskie and Floyd Landis who got treated poorly in several instances that they told me about, but on the whole the other riders were treated well. I don't know if it happened every year but at least a few times when Lance won the Tour de France he wrote a personal check to each rider for $40,000. That probably doesn't qualify as abuse.
A really good book about Lance that was written by a real(TM) journalist is "Lance Armstrong's War" by Dan Coyle. Dan lived in Girona for over a year to get the real inside story on who Lance really is. It's not sensational and overblown like a lot of the stuff quoted in this thread. It is real, hard core, good journalism.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Apr 27, 2018 - 07:49pm PT
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I like to remember reading about Lance making his miraculous comeback from cancer and doing a training camp with Bob Roll in the south and riding in the rain... I remember Lance eating apple fritters after he was done with his treatment...Whenever i eat an apple fritter i think about Lance... Sure , there's the doping scandal but like Largo says it's not all black and white...
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
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Apr 27, 2018 - 08:08pm PT
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Yeah, you've got to wonder what it takes to be at the top. I think I know but.......
I'm currently reading a Tour De France book that's not too bad and is holding my interest - written by a rider. Am currently at a section about Armstrong;
https://www.amazon.com/Ventoux-Sacrifice-Suffering-Giant-Provence/dp/1471113000
I want to read more about Greg LeMond since learning he trained on the Eastern Sierra passes. I've ridden most of those a number of times.
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Apr 27, 2018 - 09:55pm PT
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zBrown,
one of the problems you have when writers who don't follow the sport of cycling in depth like the person who wrote the Deadspin article you quoted is that they don't know the whole story.
In the Deadspin article Jonathan Vaughters is quoted about how Lance treated Christophe Bassons in the peloton. The interesting thing is that Jonathan Vaughters treated riders the same way. One time Vaughters made such disparaging remarks about a rider on another team that it shocked his own teammates so much that they told the rider in question what Vaughters had said.
That doesn't make what both Lance and Vaughters did was OK, but it does point out that this was a pretty common practice in the European pro peloton and not an example of bad behavior only exhibited by Lance.
As another example was when Team 7-Eleven rode their first Giro in 1985. Every time there was a crash they, being the most inexperienced team, got blamed and their riders got pushed to the back by the other teams. It's not right or fair, but it's just the way the peloton works sometimes.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Apr 27, 2018 - 10:06pm PT
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As my friend Vinny was fond of saying, “It’s just business.”
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Apr 27, 2018 - 10:23pm PT
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Reilly,
absolutely! I could tell you so many stories about what goes on in the pro peloton and not all of them are good. One European professional team (not Lance's USPS Team), made all their riders take drugs. Then when one of their riders tested positive the team, much like the Impossible Mission Force, denied that they had anything to do with it and promptly fired the guy. Now the guy is a fired, doper. He never rode in the pro peloton again!
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Apr 27, 2018 - 10:32pm PT
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7-11 crashes...? There was the classics race where Bob Roll accidentally crashes the great Sean Kelly a couple times...Kelly gets back on his bike just as they're passing a cemetery ... Kelly points to the cemetery and in his high-pitched voice tells Bob he's going to end up there if he crashes him again...
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Apr 28, 2018 - 06:38am PT
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So no one is denying that Lance Armstrong did it, it's just that in cycling I guess they were all doing it.
When were they called out?
Next up:
Beisbol and football steriods
The triathelete world (from whence Lance Armstrong came)
Would the "lack" of big money in triathlon really mean there isn't significant doping? I highly doubt it. In some of my local bike races, there was strong suspicion of PEDs usage by some of the athletes. I mean, we're talking non-pro bike racing and there was suspicion. I think ego and winning Ironman is far more than enough and that many if not nearly all Ironman contestants are using PEDs or doping in some way. Your thoughts?
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