BBC Storyvile The Lance armstrong story
shoestring25
Posts: 4,715 Forum Member
✭✭✭
very interesting what an evil evil man ! if you even suggested drugs were a possibility he would ruin you make you out to be on drugs liar etc calling in favours to get FBI investigations dropped lieing for years blatantly to everyone even in legal proceedings and nobody in the US postal team got done for it.
interesting program worth a watch i will be watching the armstrong lie on ch4 tonight see how that coveres the story
interesting program worth a watch i will be watching the armstrong lie on ch4 tonight see how that coveres the story
0
Comments
I haven't followed his story much, has he been stripped of the titles he won while taking steroids?
Yes he has. Interestingly they didn't award the victories to anyone else as they conceded that they were most probably taking drugs too.
In William Fotheringham's excellent book about Tom Simpson, there is lots of content about how they all took uppers, speed and then valium to get them back down again back in the 50's and 60's.
The riders soigneurs carried all the stuff in little suitcases.
A mate of mine has just told me about his dad, who raced the lower tours 40 years ago and how it was all going on with one Russian rider emerging from the bathroom in their hotel with a syringe hanging from his arm!!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Put-Me-Back-On-Bike/dp/0224061879
Armstrong possibly did more damage than any other single cyclist. He was held in very high regard, hero worshipped by many followers, but when finally 'caught out' his arrogance had no limitations whatsoever.
One thing I didn't get is why that personal assistant woman for Lance - who lied on oath but had been recorded on a phone call with a cycling journalist stating that she knew LA had taken the drugs - was so angry with Betsy?? Anyone heard something I didn't or worked that one out?
You mean Stephanie McIlvain? She was a friend of Lance and worked at Oakley Eyewear who had a commercial relationship with him, so I guess that it could have been bad for business if his drug taking had been found out. There were also rumours that she and Lance had a more "personal" relationship if you know what I mean.
And to think, had Armstrong not gone back for 'one last crack' at the Tour de France in 2009, he may well have almost got away with it. As someone commented, it was like a retired Bank Robber wanting one last big job. He just couldn't resist.
That Betsy Andreau is quite some woman.
I think the Storyville showed her being more responsible for bringing down Armstrong, just by sticking so strongly to her principles.
I found the Ch4 one was very good, especially with having an interview with Lance after all this had come out, but did come across as almost overly sympathetic to Armstrong in the end.
I've no idea how she and her husband figure in Armstrongs life now, but i expect any kind of friendship is cool to luke warm at best. Going from personal experience i would have cut him out altogether.
I had a friend whom i'd grown up with from very early childhood....life long buddies you could say. Then when my first marriage crumbled and i re-married a few years later, i invited this friend and his wife to our wedding. They never replied so i telephoned....only to receive a very curt response from his wife. That was over 30 years ago and i've never seen or spoken to them since.
Driven by ego & greed with an incomprehensible level of entitlement It makes me wonder if he has a Messiah complex.
Anyway the cheating bastard got caught and the naysayers vindicated.
The next thing he should ride is a bull in Pamplona with it's horn fully up his anus.
I prefered the Storyville documentary to the C4 one.
Betsy Andreau should be so proud of herself to stay steadfast while that doped up little sociopath persistently defamed her.
He swore on oath a few times, and lied, thats perjury, he threatened physical violence and to 'ruin' lives if they didn't keep hush.
Why didn't he get prison time? Was he too famous?
Seems to me, apart from not being as rich as he was & having to live with being caught, he's got off lightly.
I just find it an astonishing story. Armstrong hurt some people along the way, but indirectly helped countless more. How can you ever balance the two things up?
If we focus solely on cycling, it was rotten to its very core for decades. Doping was the only way to compete on a level playing field, I couldn't blame anyone who made a professional decision to go down that route. You played by the rules, you didn't make any money.
I'm afraid if anything, all the good Armstrong did in his Cancer fundraising has been tarnished by what he's left behind. I'm not sure what Cancer sufferers think of him.
I think that for a lot of people, including myself, it's not the drug taking itself that bothers me about Armstrong, it's the way that he screwed anyone who didn't play along with his game.
After watching this documentary I was thinking about exactly how many people he destroyed in one way or another. There was Betsy and Frankie Andreu, Emma O'Reily, Filippo Simeoni, Greg LeMond amongst others.
It seems strange to me that that's the one question he wouldn't answer.
It still angers me that he sued anybody who merely suggested he was on drugs. Did he believe he was so powerful and the truth would out?
I think it's either for it to grate on Betsy or avoid throwing Stephanie MacIlvain under the bus. From what I saw in both Docs, I'd go with the former.
Interesting to note that Emma O'Reilly and Lance have now made up and he wrote a foreword for a book she's written.
Doping helps cause cancer? He should speak out against doping?
Also I wonder who much it was really just him revelling in being a celeb and getting good publicity from it. Those who do things more anonymously and without their name plastered all over it I respect more.
Also he did make millions for himself, easy to be charitable then.
I agree cycling was (hopefully in the past tense) crooked and it was hard to change that, though he was certainly in the vanguard of keeping ahead of the written rules.
In the tour he won, he was in the lead, had a bad day and lost the lead. Next day he came out, was great and got the lead bavk, and it was that day he failed his drug test.
I thought the storyville was the better expose.
Cycling is such a hard sport though, its hard not to admire them. Anyone who saw bjarne riis eyeballing indurain, and then riding away could not fail to be amazed. Then he admitted doping.
Armstrong was different in that he obliterated everyone around him. Thats why he attracts so much hatred.
Riis who is now managing the team of Contador who has failed one drugs test and suspected of being involved in the Fuentes scandal as well. Couldn't make it up.
But as I asked on the other thread was Indurain on drugs too? Riis may just have been on better? If so then that cover up is about as big as the Armstrong one, and also continues.
One thing noticeable with many charity givers is they often only do it after they themselves have been personally affected by the issue concerned, before that they normally don't give a crap however much money they have.
And ultimately it's hard to ignore that Armstrong did do extremely well out of it himself. He tied other people up in the lie as well including charities. That probably helped keep him safer until his decision to come back from retirement which opened him up to scutiny again.