Bye Lance

[Mrs Pingu]

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/nov/11/lance-armstrong-inquiry-loss-doping-uci

Oh waah waah waah, poor little Lance.

[LEE]

He really doesn't get it does he?

It's still everyone else's fault but his own.  Breathtaking arrogance and vanity.

Mind you, it must be galling to see cheating tossers like Vinokourov winning gold medals and leading pro teams.

[tiermat]

He really doesn't get it does he?

It's still everyone else's fault but his own.  Breathtaking arrogance and vanity.

Mind you, it must be galling to see cheating tossers like Vinokourov winning gold medals and leading pro teams.

I would say unbelieveable, but this is Lance we are talking about, so I do believe it.

About the only bit I agree with in the whole of that article is the "Level playing field" bit.  I suppose it could be taken as "If I am going down, you all deserve to go with me"

At least other players in this ongoing comedo-drama are man enough to put their hands up and say "I did it, sorry, I throw myself upon your mercy"

[clarion]

Lance has had years and years of being surrounded by yes-men.  The concept of his guilt, or the possibility of his being wrong, simply do not exist for him.

I often felt that Michael Jackson, too, could have done with someone saying 'No, Michael' once in a while.

[mzjo]

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/nov/11/lance-armstrong-inquiry-loss-doping-uci

Oh waah waah waah, poor little Lance.

I read his comments on BBC Sport. He still doesn't realise that he is the only one to have made millions by lying in court and persecuting the innocent. It's a bit like the mafia chief saying he'll take life for murder if all the little hooligans took life for pinching a packet of fags.
I bet he feels bitter about people like Virenque who now have a big popular following as sports broadcasters. Problem is he never considered his life after competition.

Cross-posted with tiermat and Paul Metcalfe

[citoyen]

I think Lance has a point - it's really unfair that the USADA should single him out like this.

Why aren't they going after all the other pro cyclists who cheated their way to seven TdF titles while bullying, menacing and basically trying to ruin the lives and careers of anyone who stood in their way?

[Hot Flatus]

You see I think that view is mistaken.

The only one of those things that is within the remit of USADA is the cheating. The rest is none of their business, any more than it is the job of a traffic warden to issue you a ticket for speeding. It's not USADA's job to punish Armstrong for being a cunt.

And as far as the cheating goes, Armstrong probably has been treated more harshly.

Not that I care much, frankly.

[citoyen]

It's not USADA's job to punish Armstrong for being a cunt.

Read the bullying, menacing and ruining in parentheses - it's incidental to what they're punishing him for. Maybe if he hadn't been such a cunt, he wouldn't have gone to the lengths he did.

And as far as the cheating goes, Armstrong probably has been treated more harshly.

But proportionate to the extent of the cheating compared to others, no?

[Hot Flatus]

We don't know the extent of his cheating compared to others.

All we know is that as well as cheating, he won. The next 50 or so steps down in the podium were almost certainly cheating too.

I really don't see that winning or not winning has anything to do with it.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Really? The scale of the punishment shouldn't reflect the scale of the crime and its rewards?

[Hot Flatus]

Doesn't seem to have been the case with other doping bans

[citoyen]

We don't know the extent of his cheating compared to others.

We may never know all the precise details but we now know enough to say with reasonable confidence that his cheating was a level beyond what anyone else in the sport was doing.

Using PEDs alone may not have been enough to secure seven TdF wins, but his mafia-like control and corruption of pro cycling prevented anyone else from competing on anything even vaguely resembling a "level playing field", even the ones that did have access to the same drugs.

Even if USADA can only technically convict him on the doping itself, I'm happy for the punishment to take anything and everything else into account. Including parking offences, if applicable.

[Hot Flatus]

We don't know the extent of his cheating compared to others.

We may never know all the precise details but we now know enough to say with reasonable confidence that his cheating was a level beyond what anyone else in the sport was doing.

Do we? When you say cheating do you mean doping? You must know something I don't. Other than USADA's self-justifying hyperbole I've seen nothing.

Using PEDs alone may not have been enough to secure seven TdF wins, but his mafia-like control and corruption of pro cycling prevented anyone else from competing on anything even vaguely resembling a "level playing field", even the ones that did have access to the same drugs.

Indurain managed 5 wins, just with the drugs 

Even if USADA can only technically convict him on the doping itself, I'm happy for the punishment to take anything and everything else into account. Including parking offences, if applicable.

Yes, I'm happy with it too, but that isn't the point.

Hear about that wounded Taliban that was summarily executed? 

He probably deserved it.

[vorsprung]

We don't know the extent of his cheating compared to others.

We may never know all the precise details but we now know enough to say with reasonable confidence that his cheating was a level beyond what anyone else in the sport was doing.

I don't see how you can say that.  For two reasons

1) We don't know all the cheating that went on.  We will never know

2) It's clear that the actual physical doping that LA and his team were doing was just the same as everyone else, no more, no less.

For his whole career he had the luck of the devil in avoiding injury and crashes.  To some extent you make your own luck.   The same goes for getting caught for doping.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

How many other racers had the UCI in his pocket? That sure looks like a level playing field there.

[Hot Flatus]

We don't know that Armstrong did.

Besides, again, USADA is an anti-doping agency....nothing else

[LittleWheelsandBig]

You are right -we don't know that Armstrong had the UCI in his pocket. We do know that Armstrong paid the UCI on more than 1 occasion, that no other pro cyclist did so and that nobody has explained what happened with the money after it got to the UCI. How many dots do you need to connect before you get the picture?

[Hot Flatus]

Its irrelevant

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Not if you want to consider the size of the crime or if you want to stop the same sort of UCI crap continuing unabated.

[Hot Flatus]

Not USADA's remit.

Outside of that I agree entirely. Interestingly though, the Armstrong UCI donation needs a little thought and investigation. For one thing, why was the payment on UCI books?

[LittleWheelsandBig]

I am very happy that USADA has stretched the bounds of its remit as every other agency that should have been doing something mysteriously dropped the ball.

Armstrong was offered leniency by USADA in exchange for assistance. He told them to piss off and he is getting pissed on in turn. Exactly right too.

I'm very interested to see the result of the much-delayed Bruyneel prosecution and what might come out of Cookson's evidence gathering. There is a lot of accumulated dirt in US racing and it is very closely linked with Armstrong.

[citoyen]

2) It's clear that the actual physical doping that LA and his team were doing was just the same as everyone else, no more, no less.

I would say the exact opposite - from what I've read, it seems clear that he was doing considerably more than anyone else and that this was made possible by collusion at the highest levels of the sport.

Depends who you choose to believe, I suppose. Call me gullible for falling for the charms of Travis Tygart if you like but he's a righteous dude in my book.

[Hot Flatus]

How would Travis Tygart know what everyone else was doing?

He's not that righteous. He's bigging himself up by trying to make out he's brought down the biggest most sophisticated doping run everrrrrtt. He clearly feels he needs to justify the public money invested in his agency and in this case.

[hazeii]

We do know Armstrong took not just companies, but also private individuals, to court (the companies had to suck it up, but the private individuals, well, there's a whole story in itself).

So we have someone who'd lie under oath in a court of law, ruining lives in the process.

That's way more unforgivable that popping a bit of EPO.

[Hot Flatus]

Totally.

However we remain to see if he will be liable under US law for that.