@BillRM,
he'd have been better off raising $100 dollars at a bake sale, than using false celebrity to raise the money he did
@djjd62,
Quote:he'd have been better off raising $100 dollars at a bake sale, than using false celebrity to raise the money he did
LOL I am sure the lives that are likely to be save will agree with but once more he is the best cyclist that ever mounted a bike.
Take note of the interesting fact that the person that came in second on six of his seven races have doping problems of their own.
@BillRM,
BillRM wrote:
Take note of the interesting fact that the person that came in second on six of his seven races have doping problems of their own.
Many of the racers who came in behind him were dopers. I saw one article that said in one Tour de France, they have to go down to eighth place to find someone who wasn't doping. That in no way excuses Armstrong. He was the best doper out there, but that's not a great title.
@BillRM,
BillRM wrote:
Quote:Bill does, since from all the interest he's shown I think he's sorta sweet on Lance.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Copying Firefly approach to winning arguments?
Who said I'm arguing?
You may be. I'm just noting that it seems so dumb to bring up the same thing over and over, when it's already been addressed. Big waste of time.
@Walter Hinteler,
Quote:UCI chief Pat McQuaid:
Quote:
"Lance Armstong has no place in cycling. He deserves to be forgotten. [...] Something like this must never happen again."
When Mr. McQuaid can win seven titles then he can talk until then the word that come to mind is BULLSHIT.............
@BillRM,
Why do you defend him so strongly? Does it mean anything to you that he cheated the whole time and lied about it the whole time?
@snood,
Bill routinely takes the position of the individual against the government. I doubt it has to do with Armstrong personally.
@engineer,
That might explain some of his more surprising positions. Most of us have histories that make us fairly predictable. Not Bill.
Didn't this guy survive cancer? Didn't he start off with a pretty dire prognosis for survival at first? All else aside, I'm not sure anyone can say he should have done things differently or else he might be dead. I doubt anyone knows what kept him alive. Maybe it was the doping or maybe the doping just gave him the drive he needed to pedal his way to extraordinary health. Or maybe he would have beaten the cancer either way, but if I were him and I had it to do over again I wouldn't change a thing. And if the doping really did help him survive and become one of the greatest athletes on the planet, maybe we should should be rethinking just how bad this stuff is.
Also, I could be wrong but I think his organizations also help a lot of people with cancer. Don't they?
I'm not a cyclist or a cancer survivor, so I can't comment on what his actions mean from their perspective. Maybe this really hurts them, I don't know. But I can't really fault anyone in his position (with cancer) from doing whatever it takes to survive, the hell with being Mr. Perfect, at least he's alive.
@rosborne979,
I wonder if the doping had anything to do with the cancer diagnosis.
Messing with chemicals and blood, I dunno, doesn't seem like a medically smart thing to do.
They need to change the rules of cycling.
All competitors should have to sleep on one big tent erected on a nearby soccer/football field.
No one except rider are allowed in, any medical assistance a rider needs will be preformed under Klieg lights and recorded on video/audio just to the left of the single exit/entrance.
No support of any kind while on the road.
No vans, mechanics, coaches chasing the peloton.
Get a flat? Get off and fix it, Jack.
Crash? Don't worry, there will one or two sag wagons authorized to pick up those who cannot continue.
It won't take long to shake out the fakers.
Joe(I am so pissed at Armstrong)Nation
@ehBeth,
ehBeth wrote:
I wonder if the doping had anything to do with the cancer diagnosis.
Messing with chemicals and blood, I dunno, doesn't seem like a medically smart thing to do.
That's the conventional wisdom. And I guess we can second guess it until the cows come home. But the bottom line is he's alive, and apparently in pretty good health.
Truth be told, I suspect his health owes a bit to luck and a bit to his determination to drive himself like a machine. The modern human body is exposed to so much crap these days that I doubt "doping" is any worse for anyone than living on a daily diet of Dunkin coffee, Big Mac's, cigarettes and beer.
Armstrong beat cancer through chemotherapy, an orchiectomy and a typical anti-cancer drug cocktail, with a substitution of one drug, ifosfamide for bleomycin, because the latter has a side effect of lung toxicity.
One of the performance enhancing drugs that he's subsequently tested positive for, Erythropoietin, or EPO, is used legitimately to counter the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
One thing about Armstrong is that his physique is, or was, above average in terms of physical performance. At his peak he was able to process enormous amounts of oxygen (83.8 VO2 max); he had a very low resting heart rate (32-34 bpm), and his maximum heart rate was 201 bpm. It's possible that these statistics were affected by his doping, but the variance would still put his numbers at above the average. An average rider on PEDs would not perform at those levels.
When Armstrong was a teen racing in triathlons, before he got into professional cycling, he held his own against seasoned pros like Mark Allen. Allen had related a story where they were in the bike leg of a triathlon, and Allen was going at full throttle, "near red line" as he put it, and Armstrong gingerly rode up next to him and started a conversation. Not too many people, let alone teens, have the physical capacity to do that.
@InfraBlue,
And he had hubris even greater than the physical prowess.
That's what got him.
I read his book "It's Not About the Bike" a few years ago. I came away from it with the feeling that this guy didn't get any humility at all from coming close to death and overcoming adversity. I got the sense that he thought it made him unconquerable - god like, almost. I picked up that book expecting to read about someone I could admire and respect. when I put it down, I felt like I had just met an arrogant prick trying his hardest to sound magnanimous, but failing.
@Joe Nation,
Joe Nation wrote:
They need to change the rules of cycling.
All competitors should have to sleep on one big tent erected on a nearby soccer/football field.
No one except rider are allowed in, any medical assistance a rider needs will be preformed under Klieg lights and recorded on video/audio just to the left of the single exit/entrance.
No support of any kind while on the road.
No vans, mechanics, coaches chasing the peloton.
Get a flat? Get off and fix it, Jack.
Crash? Don't worry, there will one or two sag wagons authorized to pick up those who cannot continue.
It won't take long to shake out the fakers.
Joe(I am so pissed at Armstrong)Nation
Why stop at the sport of cycling Joe?
As far as I'm concerned, all sports could get more real.
@chai2,
or go all out juice
or have two divisions for each sport
i'd love the steroid olympics
@djjd62,
and we could have an unlimited class.
to allow cyborgs and mutants too...
@Rockhead,
mr. spatula legs is well on his way to being a cyborg
and some of them former commie eastern european ladies(?) are damn near mutants
@Rockhead,
Rockhead wrote:
and we could have an unlimited class.
to allow cyborgs and mutants too...
Hey, and why not remote controlled robots?
