thehog said:
...
Correct, it go down as the one of the dumbest deals in history.
Anyone with a ounce of due diligence would have realised betting against Armstrong in that era with the UCI and Ferrari on his team, Lance wasn’t going to lose.
My thought is Armstrong wouldn’t have paid more than the fine levied of $10m. There was no need to. He could have kept appealing the decision until sometime in 2025. SCA had cut their losses at some point.
Like I said, there were no winners or losers in this sham. Armstrong might have come out on top but that’s a big “if’. If he invested the ill gotten gains wisely he may have done well from all this.
It is hard to blame someone for entering a contract where the counter-party was planning to defraud them.
Nonetheless, the biggest win for Lance is that he has thus far escaped true punishment and any short of jail time.
The premeditated nature of the fraud is inescapable. He was actively working with Ferrari, and had been tilting results at least as far back as Thrift Drug.
But, to be fair to SCA, there is a lot more clarity though 20/20 hindsight than there was at the time.
* The Festina scandal had cleaned up the sport.
* EPO was really a cancer drug.
* Doping was something that only East German female swimmers did, and the wall had just come down demonstrating the failure.
* Lance was an American, and therefore untarnished by any sort of Festina-like European activities and was, of course, GI Joe clean by nature. (Not trying to bait or promote any sort of Nationalistic jingoism, just stating the common (mis)perception(s) aka at-the-time conventional wisdom).
* Corruption in American sport wasn't revealed until post the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and Balco (also 2002). Even then, it is still isolated to a very few and very isolated bad apples....
* There was only one guy saying anything, and nobody was listening.
AND, he didn't make that statement until AFTER the SCA contract had been signed. The contract was signed in January, Greg made his statement in July. Moreover, as true as Greg's observation was, he is still pilloried for it fifteen years later. The Lance PR machine remains effective.
So, yes, easy to condemn SCA.
After all, they were duped.
Stupid victim. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Dave.