OT: Lance Armstrong admission

Submitted by TruBluMich on

He finnally admitted to it (According ot the AP), do you feel as if this is the right direction for him to clean his image.  Having lost my father in law to cancer and having a parent who just beat cancer, I really think of him as more than just a cyclist, what he did with his fame is far more important to me than what he did on a bicycle.

http://espn.go.com/sports/endurance/story/_/id/8844549/lance-armstrong-admits-doping-interview-oprah-winfrey-report-says

 

 

Lance Armstrong confessed during an interview Monday with Oprah Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

gotohail

January 14th, 2013 at 7:20 PM ^

Who cares... Nearly everyone in that sport does it.



I look at it this way... I either want my sports clean and drug free or I want everyone using. This way nobody has an unfair competitive advantage.

mackbru

January 14th, 2013 at 11:46 PM ^

You can't? After he spent years self-righteously denigrating and tearing down anyone who said the truth about him -- including his own teammates? And his charity, while itself a positive thing, served to make Lance very rich. Lance Armstrong "branded" himself into a hero. And he's only coming clean now because he has no choice. And note how he's still trying to spin things, via Oprah and calculated media leaks about how he "might" come clean. He's pathetic.

remdog

January 15th, 2013 at 12:53 AM ^

All his good work fighting cancer, likely many lives saved, is negated by lying about something everybody in his sport does.

Uh, actually no, not even close.  That statement is obviously beyond ridiculous.

Armstrong's human and therefore, flawed.  But he's still a hero for beating cancer and helping others do the same.  That's far more important than whether he took performance-enhancing drugs and lied about.

It's the same for probably every single person who's done great things in this world.

Yeoman

January 15th, 2013 at 2:23 AM ^

He didn't just lie about it. He tried to use his position in the sport and in the pelaton to destroy the careers of people that witnessed against him.

Is there any parallel in any sport to what he did to Fillippo Simeoni (well, a parallel that doesn't involve Armstrong himself)? Probably not--there's no other sport where cooperation or its lack is so critical, even among members of different teams, and it's hard to even imagine what a parallel could be. You could maybe imagine some weird alternate universe where Bonds or Clemens or somebody made threats against an accuser and convinced players on other teams to spit on the guy as he ran the bases, but it's hard to imagine how they could do real damage to the ability of that accuser to even compete. Maybe if every pitcher in the league went headhunting against him on every trip to the plate and all the umpires refused to acknowledge or penalize it.

remdog

January 15th, 2013 at 3:28 AM ^

again, his wrongs are still outweighed by his contributions to fighting cancer.  It's all about perspective.  I get a very healthy dose of perspective every day dealing with life and death and suffering.  I think anybody who places more importance on the negative here is seriously lacking that perspective.

Yeoman

January 15th, 2013 at 10:01 AM ^

It's not at all clear to me that his net contribution to fighting cancer was even positive. What good was done by a branding and marketing campaign whose only real purpose was to convince people to donate money to the campaign, money that would be spent on ever more branding and marketing to snowball the donations? Were there really that many people that didn't realize cancer was a serious problem until Livestrong brought them into the light?

I suppose the placebo effect on cancer patients who thought that all the countless people wearing bracelets had donated hundreds of millions of dollars that had been put toward researching their disease was a positive boon--there's been plenty of testimony to that effect here. But if there had never been a Livestrong maybe more of that money might have been donated to foundations that would actually use it to fund research.

Ali G Bomaye

January 15th, 2013 at 3:22 PM ^

"Using" isn't as simple as a yes-or-no question.  There are many different types of PEDs, and as many ways to try to avoid positive tests.  Maybe Armstrong was the fastest of a bunch of drugged-up racers, but there's no way to tell whether that's because he was the best athlete or because he had the best drugs.  You can't just say everyone was on equal footing because they were all cheating.  They (likely) were all cheating, of course, but the Tour should be an award for the best racing, not the best chemists.

snarling wolverine

January 14th, 2013 at 7:25 PM ^

I'm sorry, but the guy's a scumbag and it goes well beyond the fact that he doped (which pretty much everyone did in his peak years).  The Livestrong Foundation was basically a huge scam that he got rich off of.  Not to mention all the blackmail crap he pulled for years to anyone who'd dare speak out against him.

 

snarling wolverine

January 14th, 2013 at 8:17 PM ^

Not just that, but Armstrong raised a lot of that money by making the argument that his foundation was funding research.  And then there's LivestrongFitness, a for-profit enterprise that technically is separate from the Livestrong Foundation but uses the same marketing language and even uses the Livestrong Foundation as a way of guilt-tripping customers into supporting it. 

Look at this website.  It claims that  it'll "donate at least $4 million to the fight against cancer." 

http://www.livestrongfitness.com

That $4 million is just a big ol' donation into an "awareness" campaign that basically keeps Armstrong's name in the news (while also helping get him a tax break).

 

TruBluMich

January 15th, 2013 at 1:39 AM ^

Thank you for the link, learned a few things about the foundation, I did not know.

To answer your question, help is not always finacial.  Sometimes having someone who knows what to do when your completley lost is a lot more valuable.  I have charities I support and donate to them based off of what I feel is important.  Livestrong is not one of those charities, but not because of anything negative I heard about the charity or Lance Armstrong.   I just choose to donate to more local charities who have more of a hands on approach.

superstringer

January 14th, 2013 at 8:18 PM ^

He is "rehabilitated" when he returns the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in his bank accounts, which he STOLE by creating a completely false image of himself and selling that false image to advertising and the rest of us.  And then by lying and lying and lying for years and years and years, getting richer off of the false image.

It's like bank fraud.  Just a different way of making money by being a complete liar.

He is a LOSER of a human being.  Period.  End of story.  Nothing to see here - just another scumbag getting rich no matter what corner he can cut, what marriage he can dump so he can go bang some petite blonde singer, etc etc.

The fact he 'beat' cancer?  What, he did something extra special?  No, he got fortunate.  Other people don't beat it, cuz they don't have the physical body, or their doctors arent as good, or just the randomness of the Worst Disease Ever.  He was fortunate he beat it off, then he figured out how to lie and take millions of dollars.

Return the cash, loser, and I will be impressed.  I'm not holding my breath.

BiSB

January 14th, 2013 at 7:29 PM ^

I don't care that Armstrong was dirty in a dirty sport. What I do care about is the number of people he tried to destroy in the effort to save his own ass for all those years.

I lost my father to cancer when I was nine, and I respect the hell out of what Armstrong did with LiveStrong. But as for the rest of it, he can kiss my ass.

stephenrjking

January 14th, 2013 at 7:52 PM ^

I'm a cycling fan. I cheered Armstrong on. He was an inspiration to my father, who later died of cancer.

But the way he tried to destroy everyone who opposed him was awful. And until he apologizes for that, he still has unfinished business.

Yeoman

January 15th, 2013 at 2:35 AM ^

To hell with that. He should make restitution. Take some of that hundred million he's supposedly worth and donate large chunks of it to the favorite charities of Filippo Simeoni, Jonathan Vaughters, Emma O'Reilly, Andreu and Hincapie and Landis and.... I can't even keep track of all the people he's sued and/or defamed.

And then he should give them whatever tax break he gets from the donation he makes in their name.

CLord

January 14th, 2013 at 7:38 PM ^

He's a piece of crap.  Can never be trusted again.  If he had played by the rules no one would know his name.  He'd have been some schmuck who beat cancer and didn't win much.

swan flu

January 14th, 2013 at 7:44 PM ^

I don't care about him one iota. It has been clear for a long time that he juiced and he always struck me as a huge douchebag. He divorced his wife and immediately started dating Sheryl Crowe, which strikes me as narcissistic and shady as hell.

He can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care.

twohooks

January 14th, 2013 at 7:46 PM ^

I still believe it is a disgrace. I also feel he compromised his battle with cancer to step unto the forefront of a one man branding franchise. It is a win/lose scenario, you do things the right way the road to riches is acceptable. You don't, there are consequences, period. 

So I'm sure White Bread America will be slapping on there yellow "Sorry About That!" bracelets any moment. 

 

 

 

inthebluelot

January 14th, 2013 at 7:47 PM ^

far outweigh anything he has done in the world of cycling. We are going to tear him down because he lied about doping in a doping sport? His detractors can chastise him until the day he dies, but at the end of the day, he came back from cancer, down a nut, and kicked everyone's ass on a level playing field. People who attack him are simply butt hurt because he was an American who dominated a sport made famous by the French. To hell with the French and cycling. The sport will never enjoy the type of attention it garnered when he beat the hell out of the rest of the world for 7 years. Actions speak louder than words and his actions were deafening.

LiveStrong... Go Blue!

ken725

January 14th, 2013 at 7:48 PM ^

I really don't give an eff if he admits to it or not. 

I try to separate what his foundation has done for cancer research and his cycling career.  Like what others have said he ruined lives of others trying to keep his name clean.

GoWings2008

January 14th, 2013 at 7:52 PM ^

I'd be fine with his admission and even accept it if he hadn't professed his innocence for so long.  As a current triathlete, I know he got his start as a pretty talented multi-sport guy and I do know that there's lots of triathletes who have been accused of the same thing.  But he took his fame as a winner of the Tour to a much higher level.  He tried to act pure and sactimonious before today...that is why I'm so pissed at him.