Thoughts on Lance Armstrong

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1. It's cycling, I don't pay attention, though I am impressed. In the words of Kenny Powers (former MLB Pitcher), "I play real sports. I don't try to be the best at exercising" I play real sports

2. Everyone in cycling cheated/cheats/will cheat. It follows that if everyone was doping, Lance is still the best. Everyone had an equal advantage, so it canceled everyone's doping out. If no one doped, he still would have won.

3. Our taxpayer dollars have paid for this ridiculous witch hunt (that goes for Marion Jones, Barry Bond, Roger Clemens, etc)

4. My opinion of Lance Armstrong (and I bet 95% of the population) is the same today as it was 7 years ago.

5. He's raised a lot of $$ for Cancer Awareness

6. I have routinely heard he is not a nice guy at all. What's the deal with that? Any personal stories?
 
The very limited bit I have read about this story is that he has never tested positive for anything illegal, and yet he may be stripped of his seven Tour titles. If the agency pursuing him on doping claims cannot demonstrate guilt, how can this happen?
 
Cancer "awareness". Give me a break. Did his cancer "awareness" pay for his $11 million jet?

My thoughts of Lance are also the same as before. I think he's an extreme Type-A personality, to the point of being a churlish a-hole; has an extreme chip on his shoulder (probably necessary for his line of sport); he cheated and had the smarts and $ to evade the testing; he cares only for himself.

I think this fight between the US ADA and Lance had a large element of "personal" in it. Lance, as is his style, pissed people off and took no prisoners.
 
Lance is an enteresting case. One thing people forget is that he was a world class triathelete as a teen.

Logic says he doped. However, forgetting the test in 1999 or whenever, he has been tested a massive amount of times and seemed to be clear. USADA had multiple people ready to testify against him but, apparently, no new "science" that backed up their claims.

If someone has never been through a complex legal type process then they have no idea how overwhelmong the process can be. It literally dominates your life. Lance has fought this stuff for years and years and I am sure he is very weary of the process.

Plus, defending yourself against hard evidence and science is one thing, but defending yourself from "eye witnesses" is quite another. While I never believe in conspiracy type stuff, the total number of folks coming forward, allegedly, was big enough that to accuse all of them of lying or being mistaken is unlikely. In other words, they could never get him with the science so they went a route that is pretty hard to defend yourself against.

One thing I will say is that certainly Lance had money and fame to get the best drugs out there, but so did basically all of the elite top performers. Many of them, like Contador, have failed tests. I refuse to believe that they didnt have accesss to the same type of stuff Lance did. Yet they tested positive and he didn't.

Unlike Bonds and the others mentioned, the science never caught Lance. Bonds' last defense was he didnt "knowingly" dope. Big difference.
 
Lance is indeed a Grade A A-hole. It very likely came back to get him in the end but he has tons of money still and his foundation will hopefully not suffer from it. It gives people hope and that's not a bad thing at all. All of us can agree Cancer sucks and if his foundation makes it suck even a little less for people I say hooray.

But the dude himself, pricksville. Also an a-hole with the ladies around town and I have heard this from more than a couple of 'em. It goes with his personality and many at his level of ability in their sport or profession are the same way.

There was a parade of people willing to come forward and that likely spooked Lance a bit. Who knows what kind of evidence or details they could have provided and been willing to do so under oath.

I think once the blow to his ego is gone and he keeps his money that would have gone to defending himself he'll be fine.
 
The attitude expressed above is the perfect environment in which unscrupulous foundations may take advantage of donors.
 
The issue I have with Lance's most recent issue is that it's not a failed drug test that brought this on, it is a 10 year witch hunt. Hundreds of drug tests passed. Yes, they have a series of individuals who claim to have seen Lance juice. I don't doubt it. But if you are going to strip Lance of the medals that he won and give them to someone else, are you going to do the same level of inspection on those individuals that you have subjected Lance to? If not, then it's clearly a vendetta, not a search for the truth. Lance played by the rules of the races when the races were won, passed the drug tests, and came in first place seven times. It's not fair to come back later and cry foul based on some new standard.

Whether Lance is a nice guy or a complete DB (I've heard the same) shouldn't make a difference. I think most A list athletes have a pretty prima donna attitude. It's part of their character that makes them achieve the things that they achieve.
 
Bonds was tested 22 times by MLB and he was clean all 22 times. 8 years later they went back with new tests and he tested positive for some masking agents. The rules for Steroids and MLB didn't exist until 2003 and the only MLB test he ever tested positive for was an amphetimine.

These are all drugs and prescriptions you can obtain legally.

If he would have tested positive for any of the 22 MLB tests then you would be correct, he did not. How many times are you going to try and convict a guy.

I am not saying he didn't do some type of enhancements, but it was not against the rules of baseball nor did he fail anything but that amphetamine test by MLB.

mlb.mlb.com/mlb/news/drug_policy.jsp?content=timeline
 
Not exactly breaking news that the guy is known as an *******. You'd think cancer would humble people. This is interesting reading:
The Link
 
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