Benotti69 said:
They dont need me to make fools of themselves. But since they are on a public forum i call it!
Histor in here has proven that those who need to declare they are not defending Armstrong usually end up been proven as trolling for him. Be warned.
No. Armstrong arrived as a cancer survivor. Blue eyed Yank who was a maketing mans wet dream. Stapleton realised this back in 1997. He and Weisel knew with Armstrong they could generate huge income if he could win.
There were other dopers, but none had the cancer shield that could be employed in so many ways to defend any allegations of wrong and also become a cash cow.
What other rider had that? None.
After 1998 lots in the sport wanted to clean it up. That Armstrong in the 1999 TdF showed that he was prepared to dope meant everyone else had to if they wanted to compete. That none had the integrity to call out Armstrong, ASO and UCI meant they got Amrstrong for another 6 long years.
This has been called big time. But they are in the business of making money. Look at Nike. Didn't drop Marion Jones or Tiger Woods.
What dont you know? He never tested positive! He ha been extremely anti doping. He never had a team mate call him out for doping. He never had a Directeur Sportif call him out for doping. He never had a soigneur call him out for doping. He never had a Team Doctor call him out for doping. He never had a mechanic call him out for doping.
In 20 years since LeMond retired he ha been talking about anti doping. Someone somewhere would by now have been pi$$ed of with him and his hypocrisy and said I am going to put an end to this! But nada, zilch, niente, nothing.
What dont you know?
What makes LeMond's TdF wins stand out is that he showed huge early promise as a GT rider. He did not ride when there were oxygen vector drugs available as a youngster so he was a natural at GTs. That is beyond question.
Time proves it. Anecdotes, stories, dots are joined etc. With LeMond this is not happening. In the world of social media and internet forums LeMond is not been shown to be anything else but a ranting anti doping ex pro who is the only amercian to have won the TdF.
If you were not here in any other guise you would know that there is a momentum building from fans that is telling he UCI they dont want this scandals problems swept under the rug. The riders are not listening to their detriment but the fans are what will decide whether the sport grows in the future as something to be watched and enjoyed for its natural beauty of man and bike versus the parcours or whether it is entertainment dressed up as sport.
dude, get it over it, i HATE lance. I raced with him when he was 15-18 in triathlons. don't think he doped then and that he had huge talent/potential. the fact that was (is) a BIG TIME ***/pedantic a**hole who I absolutely hated as a human being doesn't change that.
since 1999 i knew he was on something. it took a while for the public to catch on, and i'm glad it finally did. i'm not trolling for him or whatever.
I don't buy the fairy tale that Festina 98 was a turning point, and if Lance hadn't come along, cycling would be clean. Just like I don't believe cycling's clean now. Festina, Puerto, Armstrong, etc are just road bumps.
It's crazy, Indurain/Contador/Valverde defending lance? Wiggins/Cavendish feigning "surprise"? Julich/Leipheimer only doped until 99/06? wtf? McQuaid pretending it's all/only lances fault.. it's all signs that the whole sport is rotten.
Everyone who was anyone knew he was doping in 99. But he was making money for everyone (specially himself). Pretending that LA is the almighty devil who single handedly managed to screw cycling up is not going to move things forward.
If Lemond doped or not is irrelevant. but refusing to even consider it, is. I personally believe he was as clean as possible, mainly because he raced at a time where IT SEEMS you could win a Gran tour without doping, and because EPO was still not around. (although blood doping, anphetamines, etc, were)
Still, I think he did everything in his power to win the TDF. what about the aerobars, helmet, bike in TDF 89? that was a kind of shady thing. yes right, it's no doping, but it WAS getting every possible little thing to win. He looked for and found a small edge that no one was using, and used it for his advantage. I remember before the final TT, discussions about if they were legal. Now we know it's a huge advantage to race on a TT bike.
So it is a FACT that greg was willing to do tricky things to win. You can argue it's not the same as doping, but I think you see my point.
i think it's dangerous to blindly put all faith and "saintify" one person. Be it Lemond, Tygart, and/or LA.
The whole sport needs to be reformed.
Current UCI is gotta be kicked out, separate entity (USADA like) to be responsible for antidoping control, putting all blame on a pr*ck like lance armstrong I think does not help...