I don't feel bad for the guys who chose to dope, made it as pros, but didn't quite get the glory. They made a decent living out of the sport, and they made that living by cheating. I feel bad for the guys who chose not to dope and never even made it that far.

If you're a pro cyclist or you're trying to become a pro cyclist and it becomes apparent that all the top guys are doping, you basically have 4 choices:

1) You break omerta and tell everybody about it. The list that have done this is tragically short - Kimmage, Lemond, Bassons, etc
2) You refuse to dope and just do the best you can, whether that means being a domestique who maybe wins a few minor races and gets in some breakaways, or if it means you end up working in a bike shop and racing weekends.
3) You go with the programme and keep quiet
4) You embrace doping. You make others on your team dope. You ostracise those in the peloton who won't. You don't just do what everybody else is doing, you try and find new, better, more aggressive ways of doping to get an edge

The first group are heroes. The first and second groups are victims and get all my sympathy. The third group don't get any sympathy from me, at best I pity them because they're weak. In my book, they're no different from people who grow up in a bad neighbourhood and turn to crime because it's easier than trying to make an honest living, or who go into banking and end up doing insider trading. Yes, there are extenuating circumstances, but while you can't choose the hand that life deals you, you can choose how to play it. These guys didn't make the sport the way it is, but they did nothing to change it. If we all lived our lives by the motto "but everybody else is doing it", the world would be a much worse place.

The fourth group are the ones who deserve our scorn. It's people like them who allowed the culture of doping and omerta to get established in the first place, and they've left the sport in a worse state than they found it. They get no sympathy and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near our sport.

Armstrong falls into the 4th group, but he's trying to reposition himself into the 3rd group and get some sympathy or at least pity. Can't blame him for trying, but for me it doesn't wash. Sure he has some redeeming features - he's done some good stuff for charity, he's charismatic, I'm sure he loves his children, etc - and he's not evil, but he is narcissistic and lacking in integrity. I don't hate him, but I do wish he would just have the good grace to go away and enjoy his ill-gotten gains rather than trying to claim some kind of moral high ground.

"They all had the choice to not dope. ALL of them. They all made the choice to stay in cycling and dope."

i get that. and i agree with you. 100 percent. but this is not a binary choice. this isn't lance is irrevocably, irretrievably, 100 percent in every way evil versus lance my hero. that's what every lance thread eventually comes down to, and that's what a lot of us here object to.

in my mind, there is not one thing lance is guilty of that george hincapie is not guilty of. if lance bullied people, george saw all of it and kept silent when a word from him would saved the day, and that's either just as bad or almost as bad or, in a way, worse yet, because at least lance was the one in charge and who had to take the affirmative acts to protect the livelihoods of everyone who as along with the ride.

and i don't hate george. almost nobody does. and that's kind of the point. george is not an evil guy. he's a guy that made a bad choice, and compounded that bad choice by a series of further bad choices, and for every clean rider that lance cheated, there is another clean rider that george cheated, and that levi cheated, and that just about everybody you admire that i've ever heard of that ever rode a bike at a high level cheated, at least since the early 90s.

i think we all stipulate to that. i don't excuse that. i abhor that. you don't abhor that any more than i do.

look, there are 2 people who come up on this forum who elicit these kinds of responses: lance and brett sutton. nobody can discuss anything about these two guys without the internet terrorists calling jihad on everyone who doesn't hold the very same opinion of these guys in the very same way with the very same ardency. they write at full volume, so that nobody else can get a word in without getting morally called out.

if anybody wants to write anything measured or, god forbid, even uplifting or positive about ragbrai and lance's participation in it, that person is and should be free to do so.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Gord was 1994-1996 time frame if I recall correctly. Never made the Motorola TdF team on bread and water and miles.

Cool discussion on a ride with Gord, "How the heck do you guys sprint at 65 kph shoulder to shoulder?".....he answers, "How do you guys swim with 2000 people in rubber punching and swimming over the backs of each other?".

Amazing that a guy who was in Protour and continental Pro sprints would think our mass start craziness is more crazy! Maybe we can get him out of a tri now that Messick has us on the swim smart program :-)

I agree completely in what you have just stated.

Thanks, that's what I was after. In the video I saw you couldn't see the bike.

"That was not yelling. That was more along the lines of shaking my head in disbelief."

okay, sneering. belittling. i just think somebody like dev deserves to be respected more than that. not necessarily agreed with. but respected, in the same way that i think you should be equally respected for what you've accomplished, for your intelligence, for your tenure here in this community, for all of your contributions to this community.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Basic point you don't have to agree and can vehemently disagree but we should be respectful of others opinions. . . or at least use pink font.

I get your basic point - I just think when you get to point's 3 and 4 that people are way to complex and each situation is so unique to arbitrarily throw someone in a particular category.

Agreed there's some blurring of the lines. Not in Lance's case though - he's the alpha male in the 4th group, he's the guy who would do whatever it took to win, and would use any means at his disposal to protect himself no matter who got hurt along the way. That's why he polarises the debate so much. Of every pro rider from the 90s and 00s, the one guy who you simply can't portray as a victim of doping is Armstrong.

Agreed but I put it in the category of that is why he was able to beat other dopers who were probably on similar programs. He has that A personality that makes an athlete great, versus say someone like Ulrich who didn't.

Lance, the livelihood protector. Even Sally Jenkins and Rick Reilly haven't gone there. Wonder what Andreu, Swart, Lemond, Simoni, Bassons would think of that claim? College or Kevin Livingston might agree, but not many beyond that. There is not one thing Lance is guilty of that George is not? Wait, was it George that dimed Hamilton out to UCI? Was it George who terminated Lemond's line with Trek? Was it George who ran Simoni down or ran Bassons out of the peloton? Was it George who sued Emma O'Riley and the Sunday Times knowing everything they were saying was truthful? Was it George who took millions of SCA money under false pretenses? Oh no, that was all Lance. So, George should have snitched out Lance for all of this and he is equally or more culpable (you say George is in some ways worse) because he didn't? Yikes. George, Levi, Zabriskie, and others got off easy for sure. But Lance didn't just dope and lay low like Indurain, Ulrich, Pantani, all other winners in the epo era did. Lance played dirty and Lance became a high flyer who transcended the sport. And the higher you fly the higher you fall. And his playing dirty is why you see such strong responses to him now. Livelihood protector? Yeah, not so much. George and others just as guilty? Yeah, not so much.

If there are people who are intimidated away from commenting on positive experiences at Ragbrai or other positive impressions they have of Lance then they should be encouraged to post and you should not tolerate bullying of their opinions and posts. I'm in agreement there. On the other end of the spectrum, your constant and vehement defense of Lance and your stamping down of anti-Lance posts before he was "righteously busted" ran myself and others away from this forum, and your revisionist history of Lance being no different than the rest of the peloton makes it clear that nothing has changed even after all the "haters" were proven right.

Dev - when some guy at LP on Sunday with a bell on his aerobars blasts past you like a motorcycle, go anaerobic to keep up for a minute and have a discussion about his experience in the pro peloton.

the flaw in your logic is assuming that pro cycling ever was, or is supposed to be, "fair and clean". That is an illusion.

________

Irreconcileable differences ...... we need either the thunderdome or an MMA cage fight to settle this ..... I think they're both fine guys, but only the thunderdome/cage can prove who is really right.

Dave

Nothing that elaborate or large needed - we could just throw them both into a dog crate, with one frame pump, and see who came back out at the end.

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float , hammer , and jog

Winners tend to take on those traits. Froome will be a different person next year.

I think as tragic as a character Lance has become he has a character flaw, that on one end makes him despicable cause he cheated however it was this flaw that elevated him to a champion among cheats.

Oh not this LA shit again. Nothing to add to that discussion, but I like the thunderdome or fight cage idea... live streaming!

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Suffer Well.

Everyone you mention, Hamilton, George, Zabriski, Levi - all benefited from his actions, suing the Emma O'Reily, getting Trek to remove Lemond - so they are equally complicit and equally bad guys as Lance is. They all rode the Lance train and gained a lot from it and his actions all while doing nothing about it.

What I have a problem with is basically USADA and USA cycling and others want to ignore this fact and pretend like they were all innocent victims of some big Lance scheme and why it is total bullshit to hand them such a light penalty and spin them in a positive light - which they basically did.

I don't care who you are or what you have done....no one should have to suffer the ignominy of riding in a POC helmet. Look at the guy in this pic.....overweight, dumb-ass lid and stoopid shades.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.



*edit to fix the smilie*

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Agreed!

But the important question, is he winning?

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#WeAreTheForge #BlackGunsMatter

"Look, will you guys at leats accept that you are a bunch of dumb asses and just trust me on this one? Please?" BarryP 7/30/2012

In the past it was possible to win cleanly and fairly. Up until the late 80s, the drugs were mostly pretty unsophisticated and helped with racing not training, so needed to be taken on the day of the race. If you read Kimmage's book A Rough Ride he says that the top riders wouldn't dope in the big races because the leaders and stage winners would get tested. It was the domestiques who took the drugs because they were highly unlikely to be tested.

It was EPO and blood doping that took it to new levels, because for the first time there were drugs that not only gave you an advantage that made it pretty much impossible for a good clean rider to beat a good doped rider, but were also pretty much undetectable.

I ride Moots and that picture is crushing me.

Oh, I forgot. Did George try to get USADA defunded?

believe he filled out from tri...;)
he looks in pretty good shape.
Like the jersey though

We'll see. I can see Froome becoming a bit petulant when things don't go his way, he's already shown signs of that. I pray he doesn't turn into a whiner though! Really can't see him turning into Lance though, he's a totally different personality type.

Agreed. Yeah lots of whiners in sports...

I think he is saying it was wrong and he was complicit.

I also don't think he feels he could have done anything about it! He could have quit cycling...to prove what? Would anyone have actually cared? Lance is famous for winning. Name me one person who is famous for deciding to opt out of sport because of doping. If lance had quit there would be some other "fallen hero" to take his place.

Do I think he feels guilty? I don't know and don't really care.

Do you feel guilty when you get a speeding ticket or when you jaywalk?...or do you do what you need to do to get to where you are going on time?