• Welcome to the Cricket Web forums, one of the biggest forums in the world dedicated to cricket.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join the Cricket Web community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

Tour de France

BoyBrumby

BoyBrumby

Englishman
straw man said:
Opening paragraph goes for shock value with a few harsh words used (though hard to call any of those unfair), while the second sentence is unnecessary. However the rest of the article is an excellent dismissal of the cult surrounding Armstrong.
Click to expand...
I think youvers means we can literally only read a paragraph without logging on to the site. Quick C&P in order? I enjoy a good j'accuse style character assassination, me.
 
grecian

grecian

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Ah, the 5358944th chapter of Piers Morgan is a ****ing ****, is a doozy



You'd think a former news editor may just choose his words a tad better.
 
straw man

straw man

Hall of Fame Member
Odd, it didn't make me go through the paywall first time and now I found a way around it by googling the first paragraph and then clicking on it. Anyway,

LANCE Armstrong is a creep. A liar, cheat and a bully. So awful is Armstrong, you are right to question whether all his work for cancer patients is not just calculated camouflage to protect his abuse of drugs, his competitors, teammates and supporters.

He is not just part of the drug regime that saturated cycling when he was at his peak, but he has been that culture's bodyguard. Its enforcer. And he remains so today, arrogantly dismissing the US Anti-Doping Agency findings by telling the world through Twitter that he was "unaffected" by the release of the 1000-page investigation findings. No one in sport has lived a bigger lie. Tiger Woods led two lives, one in public and one in bedrooms other than his own. But he did not cheat his sport as an athlete. Woods is flawed. Armstrong, who used his bedroom as a blood bank, is a crook.

And he had accomplices. They are not just within his team and entourage. Not just his doctors on the tour, not just his "people", not just his teammates, not just his message boys and fetch-it people.

They include cycling administrations, international and local. They include a besotted media and they include a sycophantic public. Excused are those who fight and fought cancer armed with the inspiration of the Armstrong myth.

A read of USADA's Reasoned Decision published on Thursday tells you that Armstrong was not exposed earlier because the sport of cycling did not want to catch him. Nor did the media have the courage to expose him, nor the public the will to disbelieve him.

The USADA documents detail a sport not just aware of, but complicit to, the use of performance-enhancing drugs. It is inconceivable that officials were not conscious that cyclists believed that they could only become competitive on the tour if they used EPO, blood doping, testosterone, cortisone and other drugs and techniques. It appears fundamental to drug use flourishing that cycling officials chose not to stop it. Armstrong, after all, was the face of a sport with an international profile.

The media did not just praise Armstrong, but fawned over him. An example: when Armstrong announced in August he would not fight the charges tabled by USADA, News Limited journalist Anthony Sharwood wrote this: "There'll be some hard-bitten French sports journalists popping champagne corks tonight, while a few in the Australian press will uncork chardonnay. Let them gloat. Lance Armstrong is still a winner to me and to so many of us."

Why? He's a fraud. And frauds aren't and can't be heroes. Sharwood addressed the Armstrong cheating again this week after USADA published the results of its investigation. "The cult of Lance is over now. He's no longer locking anyone with those eyes. His credibility is dead in the water. Mind you, it doesn't say much about the health of the sport of cycling that he was allowed to win seven Tours de France in the first place," Sharwood wrote.

Nor does it say much about the media that sections so fiercely supported Armstrong when all around him tested positive or were found to be involved in drug cheating. It is true Armstrong made it as difficult as he could for anyone who might question the validity of his performances.

He was wealthy, had influence and was litigious. USADA alleges he was able to make a positive EPO test "go away".

A positive test to a steroid was excused after Armstrong's team doctor backdated a script for a cortisone-based ointment for treatment of saddle sores. Nonetheless, too much of the media found it easier to swoon than to suspect. It was not just the media. Former South Australian premier Mike Rann defended Armstrong as an "honourable" man after the star of the state's Tour Down Under was accused on US TV by former teammate Tyler Hamilton of regular use of EPO.

There was too much to lose if Armstrong was found to be a fraud, so best pretend the growing evidence was the result of a "witch-hunt", which is exactly what Armstrong's people did and aggressively so. How does honourable stack up now?

This year's Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins said: "It's pretty damning stuff. It is jaw-dropping the amount of people who have testified against him It's not a one-sided hatchet job. I'm shocked at the scale of the evidence." But not of the scale of drug use?

So vast was drug abuse in cycling that the Lance Armstrong years have to be expunged from the record books altogether. No asterisks, just nothing. Most of the placegetters have proved to be drug cheats. From the 1998 Tour won by drug cheat Marco Pantani to the 2010 edition won by another drug fraud, Alberto Contador, only once, in 2008, has the winner, Carlos Sastre, not been associated with drug deceit.

In every Tour won by Armstrong, at least two of the top three placegetters have been found guilty of drug infractions. In 2003, seven of the top 10 have been exposed. Cyclists filled up with drugs in races as regularly as Formula One drivers stop for petrol.

Cycling will go on, the Tour will continue to draw headlines and publicity, but if you take it seriously, emotionally invest in the race, you do it at your peril.

Armstrong always chanted that he had been tested more than 500 times and never returned a positive. That only proves he never tested positive, not that he did not use drugs. More importantly, the creep must have defended himself more than 500 times and never told the truth. You can be positive about that.
Click to expand...
 
Burgey

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
chaminda_00 said:
How can you be confident anyone is really clean in cycling?
Click to expand...
Probably because he had the same tests carried out and samples kept; and has been cleared.

They should just declare a free for all in cycling. It's become that much of a joke.

That Four Corners episode was brilliant. FMD it's a great show. Consistently of such a high standard.

So high, in fact, I suspect it may be taking something.
 
chaminda_00

chaminda_00

Hall of Fame Member
Burgey said:
Probably because he had the same tests carried out and samples kept; and has been cleared.

They should just declare a free for all in cycling. It's become that much of a joke.
Click to expand...
I love to believe it but there been a number of guys who have come out and said they cheated, but never had positive test. Even after new technology was available.

The tests clearly don't catch the cheaters. So saying some have never tested positive, so they are clean. Is a bit pointless as the tests are good enough to catch the cheaters.
 
Spikey

Spikey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
nike ends deal with armstrong. then armstrong steps down as chairman of livestrong.

with evans, i think the main thing in the favour of those who believe he's clean is how he races - wheel sucking, basically. some riders who have been found to dope gain minutes from a successful attack, evans topped out at about 20-30 seconds. at the tour anyway. he just hangs onto those wheels and tries to get them in the TT. And if they attack, he struggles to hang on. and he actually looks like he's just raced 200km and climbed a couple of huge mountains when he finishes a day's ride. that's always helpful from a PR POV.

but of course, he won the tour, and he's stuck around on the wheels of dopers for years and years, so there's gotta be some doubt. and also, he never really had team support. that's both good and bad. if there was a team wide doping policy on a team evans was on, they should be asking for a refund, cause they didn't help evans out when he needed them. there wasn't a team postal/team sky train that's for sure. but then of course, he managed to win the tour with a team that protected him on flat stages, but crumbled on the mountains.

but anyway, evans scrapping his way to victory, rather than cruising his way, is why there's a bit of hope about him, inside and outside of australia. ultimately though, he won the tour, so he's suss
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Top