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Lance Bashing

MFS62 Aug 24 2005 08:56 AM

The French know how to hold a grudge,eh? http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/story/339924p-290256c.html What's next, exhuming the body of Babe Ruth to check for hot dogs and alcohol? Later

Johnny Dickshot Aug 24 2005 10:35 AM

I don't see this as grudge holding. The guy in the article who says "It's not a he said/she said thing" is absolutely correct. If the test says he's positive, he's positive no matter how insulted he appears to be. My personal opinion: That entire sport is/was loaded with drug abusers and as a participant he's a suspect. Armstrong also talks a good game for a guy who left his wife and kids to bone Cheryl Crow and treats other people badly.

cooby Aug 24 2005 10:38 AM

. Armstrong also talks a good game for a guy who left his wife and kids to bone Cheryl Crow and treats other people badly !!! A kindred spirit! I hate that bitch and my respect for him went down the drain when that happened

metirish Aug 24 2005 10:45 AM

The whole sport is among the most corrupt at doping, they have long had the best Doctors to stay ahead of the testers, plenty of cyclists get caught every year but we rearly hear about them, Tyler Hamilton was/is among the better cyclists in the world and is currently banned for two years, you shoud hear his excuses, I treat this sport as I treat most of the Olympic sports, assume they are all juiced.

Frayed Knot Aug 24 2005 11:00 AM

It's not a grudge thing so long as the info is correct. That these results were anonymous until the connection to Armstrong was made by the French sports newspaper L'Equipe does throw a bit of suspicion on things since a sizable segment of the European sports press in general - and L'Equipe in particular - absolutely have an interest in seeing him brought down. It's a very gossip-y/tabloid-y business where journalists have openly rooted against Lance - in some cases by dancing in press tents when a loss in an individual stage race was thought to signal his downfall. There was also a piece I heard on the news last night about an admission by someone involved (I forget who exactly) that the testing process on these 7-year frozen samples wasn't without flaws. "That entire sport is/was loaded with drug abusers and as a participant he's a suspect." Of course he is. "Armstrong also talks a good game for a guy who left his wife and kids to bone Cheryl Crow and treats other people badly." The breakup of the marriage and the take-up with Crow were unrelated.

Willets Point Aug 24 2005 11:00 AM Re: Lance Bashing

MFS62 wrote: The French know how to hold a grudge,eh? Yes, "the French" all several million citizens of that country are behind this. Or perhaps it's just a French sports journal, and the article actually cites other Europeans as well (but they're not surrender monkeys so we can't stereotype them). I guess if Sports Illustrated or ESPN writes something it represents the opinions of all of the United States.

cooby Aug 24 2005 11:13 AM

="Frayed Knot"] . "Armstrong also talks a good game for a guy who left his wife and kids to bone Cheryl Crow and treats other people badly." The breakup of the marriage and the take-up with Crow were unrelated. Thank you Frayed Knot, for the clarification, I accept that you know far more about the sport than I do, so I trust you. Still, I find the sight of her with his real wife's kids after races disgusting.

MFS62 Aug 24 2005 12:23 PM

C'mon, WP. You know I was trying to follow in your smartass footsteps. Take it as a compliment that I have tried to learn from an expert in smartassness like yourself. Later

PatchyFogg Aug 24 2005 04:06 PM

Greg LeMond says he cheats, which is akin to Hank Aaron calling Barry Bonds a cheater. Good enough for me.

Johnny Dickshot Aug 24 2005 04:13 PM

]The breakup of the marriage and the take-up with Crow were unrelated. That's what they all say when they start banging rock stars

Frayed Knot Aug 24 2005 04:33 PM

LeMond's complaint about Armstrong was over his relationship with the controversial Italian doctor Michele (Mick-ee-lay) Ferrari. Other than that he runs into the same problem that they all do, that he lacks the proof to make anything stick. Ironically, Armstrong's retort to was that the things said about him could be turned back onto LeMond; that he also couldn't have won following his near-death experience without EPO. LeMond was shot in a hunting accident in the winter after his first TdF win. He missed 2 years before caming back to win twice more. It's the timing between the marriage breakup and Crow that prevents the latter from having caused the former.

metirish Aug 24 2005 09:27 PM

Decent look at this from Richard Williams of the Guardian.. ] A hotline to the White House but France hangs up on Armstrong Richard Williams Wednesday August 24, 2005 The Guardian Just over a century ago, in its earlier guise as L'Auto, the French daily sports paper L'Equipe was responsible for founding the Tour de France. Its feelings of proprietorship towards the great race, then, are hardly surprising. And one way of interpreting yesterday's allegations of traces of EPO discovered in samples of urine taken from Lance Armstrong during the 1999 Tour is to see it as the French cycling establishment's attempt to take back the race from an American who colonised their most precious sporting event as effectively as Hollywood, rock 'n' roll and Levi jeans took over the minds of French teenagers 50 years ago, to the disadvantage - some would say - of the indigenous culture. In France, a certain element has always resisted this kind of US imperialism. For Greg LeMond to win the Tour three times was one thing. It was quite another for Armstrong to obliterate the record of five wins first established by one great French cyclist, Jacques Anquetil, and equalled by another, Bernard Hinault, as well as by Eddy Merckx of Belgium and Miguel Indurain of Spain, all representatives of cycling's Old World. The absence of a single Frenchman among the pretenders to the Texan's throne is another source of frustration to L'Equipe's writers and, perhaps, its readers. After initially finding him difficult to love, eventually the French cycling public more or less capitulated to the cowboy with - as one of the newspaper's correspondents put it yesterday - the voice like ice cubes, the steely gaze, and the lips forever on the brink of a smile full of menace. Not to mention the posse of bodyguards and the hotline to the White House. On the centenary Tour two years ago there was certainly little sign of resentment as Armstrong drew level with the record held by his four great predecessors. Only the tidal wave of spectators from the other side of the Atlantic, turning the verges of the routes départmentales into a sea of stars and stripes, might have irked them during the two more recent tours. They were there to celebrate as Armstrong first set a new mark and then, in a crushing example of American might, doubled the distance between himself and those he had surpassed. Yesterday's publication of what are claimed to be the a posteriori tests of Armstrong's B samples, however, reawakens all the old doubts that led to cries of "dopeur!" being directed at him from the roadside earlier in the decade. Those were the days when L'Equipe could only express its doubts about the nature of some performances in coded headlines referring to "Le Tour à deux vitesses" - the two-speed Tour, meaning one speed for the dopers and another, slower, gear for those who raced clean. There is also, perhaps, the question of moral revenge for the shadows cast over French cycling in 1998 by the Festina affair, when the discovery of drugs in the vehicle of Willy Voet, one of the team's soigneurs, led to the disgrace of Richard Virenque, France's pin-up boy. Virenque spent years adamantly denying that he had used illegal substances. But then he cracked, and served a nine-month suspension before being welcomed back as a prodigal son when he won the climb up Mont Ventoux in the 2002 Tour. Armstrong's first Tour victory came the year after the Festina scandal, at a time when the race organisers were attempting to promote a new, drug-free image for the event. EPO was already illegal, but there was no test capable of determining its existence. That arrived in 2000, although the authorities were not ready to use it on samples from the Tour's riders until a year later. Yesterday L'Equipe published the results of Armstrong's Tour dope tests between 2001-2004, in other words after EPO had become detectable. In 36 separate tests during the four Tours, no illegal substances were discovered. In 1999, however, riders using EPO had no reason to suppose that it would ever be detected. And even now the retrospective analysis of that year's tests cannot be used as the basis for stripping riders of their prizes, since only the B samples have been tested. The A samples, which would be used to corroborate the initial findings, no longer exist. So Armstrong's lawyers could presumably claim that while evidence may exist, proof does not. Questions hang in the air, and some of them will probably remain there. In the light of the lengthy investigation conducted by the Paris police into the possible use of drugs by Armstrong's US Postal team in 2000, why did the French authorities wait until December 2004, more than four years after the test was developed by scientists in the national drug-screening laboratory at Châtenay- Malabry, before examining samples that were already five years old? And why has it taken until now for the results to be leaked to L'Equipe? Those preparing to confront Armstrong's legal team in the variety of court proceedings in which the rider is bringing actions for defamation will heartened by yesterday's news. For one or two of them it will be like seven Christmasses arriving at once. Less easy to assess is the effect it will have in the wider world on the reputation of a man whose victory over a virulent form of cancer inspired countless thousands of fellow suffers around the world. To make a historical analogy is to venture on to treacherous ground. But it can be said with some confidence that L'Equipe is unlikely to be casting similar aspersions on the achievements of Anquetil, whose five Tours were won on amphetamines and goodness knows what else. It is almost half a century since Maître Jacques posed the most famous rhetorical question in the history of cycling: "Do they expect us to ride the Tour on mineral water?" His Legion d'honneur ribbon, and his sacred status, went to the grave with him. Armstrong might not be so fortunate. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cycling/story/0,10482,1555217,00.html

mlbaseballtalk Aug 28 2005 04:26 PM

The other reason to bash Armstrong that no one, even the usual Armstrong/cycling bashers, picks up on is that he ONLY enters the Tour de France. That would be akin to Tiger Woods saying "I'm just concentrating on The Masters" or Roger Federer saying "I'm only doing Wimbleton" But because so much attention here in the States is paid just to the Tour de France, Armstrong gets "Well he must be the greatest cyclist ever" run

Let's Go Mets!!! Aug 28 2005 06:02 PM

cooby wrote: I hate that bitch and my respect for him went down the drain when that happened Hate is destructive. Leads to bad things. Oh, and using bad words is not Lady-like.

cooby Aug 28 2005 09:07 PM

Sorry, punk, but your opinion matters not at all to me. I answer to a Higher Authority.

Let's Go Mets!!! Aug 28 2005 09:13 PM

Have another cigarette.

Frayed Knot Aug 28 2005 10:48 PM

]The other reason to bash Armstrong that no one, even the usual Armstrong/cycling bashers, picks up on is that he ONLY enters the Tour de France. Well, sort of. The European biking season consists of all sorts of races from 1-day "classics" up to the multi-week events like the Tour de France and everywhere in between. Lance will (or did I suppose now that he's retired) enter a number of these over the years - even after he started winning TdFs. And yes, once he was good enough to vie for the TdF his entire schedule was geared toward winning that most renown of races and raced most of the others for training purposes not necc to win (although he did win some). What he did NOT do was to ride in either of the other two 3-week races; the Giro d'Italia and the Vuleta d'Espana (the Tours of Italy & Spain that are most similar to the TdF). But on the other hand neither does anyone else at this point, at least not anyone who expects to win any of them. Back in the day riders would routinely compete in the Giro one month, then in the TdF a month later, and finally the TdS in August. But the field is simply too big and too deep now-a-days and the races too tough. Long ago the riders accused the TdF organizers of being "murderers" when they first included mountain stages. Competing on drugs - however primitive by today's standards - was also openly flaunted at that time: "do they expect me to complete this ride on just mineral water?" was a famous quote by a rider. So taking Lance to task for not competing in all 3 multi-week rides is less akin to Tiger showing up only at the Masters and more like knocking pitchers for not hurling both ends of a double-header like they did years ago, or complaining that these wimps today don't play both offense and defense on the gridiron. It's a different era. Belgian Eddy Merckx, who last competed in the late '70s I believe, is considered by many - Lance included btw - to be the greatest cyclist ever because he has several wins in Italy & Spain to go along with 5 TdF wins. And sure, many Americans - who know only of the TdF and only that Lance holds the record for most victories there - will automatically make the leap that he's the greatest cyclist ever because of it. As a group we know little else of the sport which makes us prone to narrow-mindedness.

Edgy DC Sep 06 2005 10:31 AM

Cooby can celebrate. Lancey and Cheryl have announced their engagement.

cooby Sep 06 2005 10:35 AM

I thought they were already married

Frayed Knot Sep 06 2005 11:37 AM

The author of the book I recently read - although it was mainly about the biking and talked very little about Cheryl - did discuss her and [u:cd0bf70247]them[/u:cd0bf70247] briefly. It was his guess that because she was your basic introspective artisitc type while he is anything but that their relationship would have a tough time surviving his post *STAR* era ... although he also admitted to losing a bet to his wife that they would no longer be together by the time of the 2005 TdF (the book was written about the '04 Tour) so who knows.

Edgy DC Sep 06 2005 08:45 PM

I misspelled Ms. Crow's first name. A report today says he's already planning a comeback weeks into his retirement. That would break Celine Dion's record for shortest retirement.

cooby Sep 06 2005 08:55 PM

Look at that, he's already trying to get out of the house

Frayed Knot Sep 06 2005 09:56 PM

Just refer to her as Juanita Cuervo, that was her name around the Disco team's training camp. They train in Spain so it was Juanita - for a generic Spanish female name - and Cuervo which is Spanish for 'Crow'

metirish Sep 06 2005 11:10 PM

]Look at that, he's already trying to get out of the house Good one Cooby.