Betsy Andreu is the face of modern omerta. Instead of honestly dealing with the predictable outcome of an undetectable drug with huge performance gains being injected into a sport with more than a hundred years of rampant drug use, she and the industry around pro cycling want to simplify the issue by blaming a handful of people. Fixing a systemic problem is intractable. Blaming a few scapegoats is easy, and the public likes easy solutions to complex problems. Those in the industry use this approach because it is in their financial interest to bury the problem, to pretend it ended with Armstrong, and to tread lightly when it comes to what all the other riders were doing at the time. Betsy does it because her whole life, just like her Facebook page, is about prosecuting her grudge against Lance.
She never cared about doping in cycling. Doping is just a convenient cudgel for her to use in her feud. What makes it more sickening is her assuming the role of steadfast truthseeker even as she lies to the public by manipulating the story to put more blame on Armstrong. This focused blame is an impediment to handling the doping problem. It has become the new omerta. Instead of zipping their lips, people can now blame everything on a notable whipping boy.
In the countless interviews, which she seeks out from a stable of pliant journalists, she never deals with the fairness of holding a few responsible when doping was the norm not the exception. She never mentionas the limited utlity of such an approach. Instead she has constructed a false narrative of Lance being unique and responsible for the whole sport. Just the other week she was pushing her usual lie with a tale of the sport being ready to clean itself up after Festina but Lance's 1999 Tour win dragging everyone back to the needle. She never mentioned that just a month and a half earlier Pantani was shooting up the climbs at the Giro and a month and a half earlier than that Franke Vandenbroucke was putting the wood to everyone at LBL. Year after year it has been a constant drumbeat of blaming one person for doping that stretches back to the late 1800s.
The fabulous story she has been pushing on the public is predicated on a lie. In her self-aggrandizing fable she was minding her own business until the SCA case and Lance hates her for refusing to lie in a deposition. In fact she had been engaged in a whispering campaign for years, online and offline. She sought out journalists, and that was one of the reasons the SCA case happened in the first place. The timeline betrays her deception.
The root of the feud is money. It is why she is constantly harping on about the sizes of other riders' houses and their gran fondos. She suffered under the crazy delusion that in an era of near universal blood vector doping Frankie could stop and still be a useful domestique. At the same time she concocted a plan to jack Frankie's salary by feigning an offer from another team. In short, she wanted Frankie to get more money while being less useful. Never a great plan for getting a pay rise. Instead of recognizing pro cyclists doping is like coal miners getting dirty, she constructed an elaborate fraud that had Lance forcing others to dope. She is the source of that lie. Tygart took it and ran with it. Other Postal riders found Tygart was more than willing to allow them to evade responsiblity for their own decisions if they blamed those he had targeted.
She uses this false narrative to manipulate the public and has been doing so for years. This is why, even though Frankie was strung out on EPO for years, she and Frankie cannot admit to his corticosteroid use at Motorola before 1995. In her mind, the monkey Frankie carried around on his back long before Lance won the Tour is not Franke's fault. Frankie didn't dope for himself; he doped for Lance! Admitting that Frankie was using the usual corticosteroids that were handed out at Motorola, just like they were standard at other teams, would be taking the blame off Lance Armstrong, and that is something that is not in Betsy's playbook. With her vindictiveness more and more evident since Armstrong's downfall, you can bet her husband is well aware of what would be in store for him if he contradicted her talking points.
She never cared about doping in cycling. Doping is just a convenient cudgel for her to use in her feud. What makes it more sickening is her assuming the role of steadfast truthseeker even as she lies to the public by manipulating the story to put more blame on Armstrong. This focused blame is an impediment to handling the doping problem. It has become the new omerta. Instead of zipping their lips, people can now blame everything on a notable whipping boy.
In the countless interviews, which she seeks out from a stable of pliant journalists, she never deals with the fairness of holding a few responsible when doping was the norm not the exception. She never mentionas the limited utlity of such an approach. Instead she has constructed a false narrative of Lance being unique and responsible for the whole sport. Just the other week she was pushing her usual lie with a tale of the sport being ready to clean itself up after Festina but Lance's 1999 Tour win dragging everyone back to the needle. She never mentioned that just a month and a half earlier Pantani was shooting up the climbs at the Giro and a month and a half earlier than that Franke Vandenbroucke was putting the wood to everyone at LBL. Year after year it has been a constant drumbeat of blaming one person for doping that stretches back to the late 1800s.
The fabulous story she has been pushing on the public is predicated on a lie. In her self-aggrandizing fable she was minding her own business until the SCA case and Lance hates her for refusing to lie in a deposition. In fact she had been engaged in a whispering campaign for years, online and offline. She sought out journalists, and that was one of the reasons the SCA case happened in the first place. The timeline betrays her deception.
The root of the feud is money. It is why she is constantly harping on about the sizes of other riders' houses and their gran fondos. She suffered under the crazy delusion that in an era of near universal blood vector doping Frankie could stop and still be a useful domestique. At the same time she concocted a plan to jack Frankie's salary by feigning an offer from another team. In short, she wanted Frankie to get more money while being less useful. Never a great plan for getting a pay rise. Instead of recognizing pro cyclists doping is like coal miners getting dirty, she constructed an elaborate fraud that had Lance forcing others to dope. She is the source of that lie. Tygart took it and ran with it. Other Postal riders found Tygart was more than willing to allow them to evade responsiblity for their own decisions if they blamed those he had targeted.
She uses this false narrative to manipulate the public and has been doing so for years. This is why, even though Frankie was strung out on EPO for years, she and Frankie cannot admit to his corticosteroid use at Motorola before 1995. In her mind, the monkey Frankie carried around on his back long before Lance won the Tour is not Franke's fault. Frankie didn't dope for himself; he doped for Lance! Admitting that Frankie was using the usual corticosteroids that were handed out at Motorola, just like they were standard at other teams, would be taking the blame off Lance Armstrong, and that is something that is not in Betsy's playbook. With her vindictiveness more and more evident since Armstrong's downfall, you can bet her husband is well aware of what would be in store for him if he contradicted her talking points.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram