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No, and as someone else today stated, I am thinking to sue Armstrong because of his antics I now know what the tour de France is.

Why would I ever care about a bicycle race in France, much less one of the racers. Give me back my time ever hearing about it.

I guess he didn't mean as much to you as he did to many people, particularly those dealing with cancer, and what his inspirational story meant to them.

Honestly, thread title aside guys, while you're certainly allowed to post in this thread, if you really don't care about the subject it would make sense not to.

I'm watching the second half now and he talks about how everyone who cooperated got a 6 month suspension from sport, and he has the "death penalty". Seems to be his main motivation for confessing to things as far as I can tell...

 RiTides wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Nope. Not watching. From what I understand, he was going to ask her for forgiveness and absolution, or some bs like that.

I have a tenuous enough grasp on reality. I don't need reasons to willfully sever the remainder of it.

That's what's crazy- he didn't ask for forgiveness, or really show remorse. So far, I can't tell why he's doing the interview.

As I'm apparently the only one watching I'll let you know if that changes tonight. I really admired him for awhile, but it's such a shame that even now he can't bring himself to really apologize for lying for so long, suing people who said the truth, etc.

Hmm. Perhaps that was the "creative license" the media applied to the story? I wish I could find the original article I read about this in. They all seem updated now.

Personally, I still care zero percent. It seems odd to me that we have these sports that effectively reward people for doing everything they can to maximize their advantage, such as healthy diet, "vitamins", and practice, yet they're not allowed to do other things to maximize their advantage. I say open the door wide and let people do whatever they want. "Unfair" advantage only applies when not everyone else can do it.

But that's exactly it- not everyone else could do it, it was against the rules, it was cheating.

Interview is done now. He got pretty choked up talking about his son and his mom. Well, who wouldn't...

He invalidated all he did with his continued lying about this. It's just a shame. Glad I watched it, though, as I consider this quite historic. Before knowing he doped, I thought Lance Armstrong was the greatest American athlete of this generation... and obviously one of the most inspiring sports stories, as well. The really sad thing is that he could have done much of what he did without doping, I think...

It is interesting that he is very adamant about being clean in 2009 and 2010. That's different than the USADA report, I believe. I wonder if it's for a liability thing since that is so much more recent and any statute of limitations might not have expired yet.

I've been hearing about this, and really I still don't hate him. He doped and got caught, as well as threatened to shut down people who snitched him out, but he still did some good in the world. I still like him more than most of today's pop stars.

I think people should be allowed to use helicopters in the Tour de France because it's ridiculous to restrict a sportsman from taking any advantage to boost his capability.

The little bit I caught about it, and the things about his personality that have been reported by those who were close to him, makes me think that he is not really sorry about anything. This is about him, what he wants, and what he thinks he deserves. He thinks he should be able to race and that is why he is doing this. Not to vindicate others, not to come clean, not to help his charity. Lance wants to race, he thinks he shouldn't be punished this hard "because everyone was doing it", and if this is something he has to do for him to get back to competing then so be it.

He's not sorry he cheated, he's not sorry he got caught, he is not sorry people think less of him now. He's just sorry that Lance cannot race and celebrate how awesome he is.

They shouldn't have taken his titles.
He was simply the best of all doping users.

If he was so willing to destroy the careers and lives of other people for his own ends, he should be willing to accept that he deserves nothing better.

I don't know a whole lot of this, but how exactly did he get caught?

Did some Doc admit to writing erroneous medication scripts?

Steroids are cheap and wouldn't "ping" on anyone's radar, but enhance red blood cells? That's likely Procrit (Epogen... is shorthand "Epoe"). That's expensive as HELL.

From the answers he has given and way he has given them, he comes out as sorry not for cheating or the damage to the sport, but simply his ego cannot be inflated further.

 daedalus wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Nope. Not watching. From what I understand, he was going to ask her for forgiveness and absolution, or some bs like that.

I have a tenuous enough grasp on reality. I don't need reasons to willfully sever the remainder of it.

That's what's crazy- he didn't ask for forgiveness, or really show remorse. So far, I can't tell why he's doing the interview.

As I'm apparently the only one watching I'll let you know if that changes tonight. I really admired him for awhile, but it's such a shame that even now he can't bring himself to really apologize for lying for so long, suing people who said the truth, etc.

Hmm. Perhaps that was the "creative license" the media applied to the story? I wish I could find the original article I read about this in. They all seem updated now.

Personally, I still care zero percent. It seems odd to me that we have these sports that effectively reward people for doing everything they can to maximize their advantage, such as healthy diet, "vitamins", and practice, yet they're not allowed to do other things to maximize their advantage. I say open the door wide and let people do whatever they want. "Unfair" advantage only applies when not everyone else can do it.

Sports media was reporting that Lance Armstrong was hoping that by doing this interview he would get his lifetime ban lifted. The Anti-Doping people said they wouldn't even consider lifting the ban until he confesses under oath.
http://www.chron.com/sports/article/Armstrong-s-ban-won-t-be-lifted-without-admission-4197030.php

 Monster Rain wrote:
I'm not sure where the implication that I'm defending him comes from.

If a significant number of other competitors are doing the same thing as you, though, the advantage gained from doping is lessened. And I'm not making this up, the news has been rife with people making this point, even those who are condemning Armstrong such as David Walsh. It doesn't make it right, but it lessens the impact.

Making the argument that something isn't as bad as people claim is a defence. Now, you might not want to defend him to the point of pretending he's innocent, but that doesn't mean you're not offering some kind of a defence.

And for that matter, I don't have a problem with people defending Armstrong, where such defences make sense. It's just that that particular defence doesn't make any sense to me, especially not when you consider that one of the major reasons the sport was so full of drugs was Armstrong's actions in encouraging others to take the drugs.

The question is "Is anyone else watching the live stream of Lance Armstrong's confession / interview?"

Answering no, and giving the reason why, seems perfectly within the scope of the topic. Not to mention the fact that if one were truly concerned about it they would probably hit the mod alert button instead of adding even more "off topic" posts to the thread.

Agreed. Seems to me the thread title was asking for comments of both yes and no. And I think knowing whether or not people care about this whole thing is fairly interesting. Afterall, he was the biggest name in his sport, and this final, sort of admission of guilt is the end of more than a decade of allegations... but on the other hand it is only cycling.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dogma wrote:
I think the point being made is part of the larger issue of what constitutes illegitimate performance enhancement*, and why we should be concerned with legitimacy at all; given that level of sport is predicated on sacrifice.

There is, I agree, scope to discuss exactly what should and shouldn't be an illegal performance enhancement. Your example of caffeine is a great example, as its a common drug that people in their daily lives regularly take in far greater quantities than is legal in competition. There seems to be a pretty hazy sets of principles on exactly what kinds of performance enhancements should be made illegal. Personally, I think the crack down needs to be on drugs that seriously threaten the long term health of the athlete, but other than that we need to take a step back.

But EPO absolutely threatens the long term health of the athlete. Like anything that increases the number of red blood cells, it puts a much greater strain on the heart increasing your chance of heart failure, and also increases the chance of a blood clot.


All that aside, the rules of the game remain the rules of the game. Even if a rule is absolutely stupid (like the caffeine limit) other people followed them, while guys like Armstrong didn't, therefore gaining an unfair advantage.

 sebster wrote:

Making the argument that something isn't as bad as people claim is a defence. Now, you might not want to defend him to the point of pretending he's innocent, but that doesn't mean you're not offering some kind of a defence..

I think that would depend heavily on the context of the conversation. I don't have a vested interest in whether or not he doped, but if the playing field was such that to be competitive they needed to cheat, the person who won still would have been the best.

The best cheater among the field of cheaters, if you will.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
The tour is pretty much a joke. Of the last 30 or so races 14 or 15 have been won by confirmed dopers.

Armstrong is big part of that statistic for sure, the biggest fish as it were.

The whole thing needs tearing down and restarted from the ground up

Which has already happened. There's far more rigorous drug testing regimes in place (including out of competition testing), and they've now got systems in place that stand a decent chance of catching people using drugs like EPO.


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 daedalus wrote:
Hmm. Perhaps that was the "creative license" the media applied to the story? I wish I could find the original article I read about this in. They all seem updated now.

Personally, I still care zero percent. It seems odd to me that we have these sports that effectively reward people for doing everything they can to maximize their advantage, such as healthy diet, "vitamins", and practice, yet they're not allowed to do other things to maximize their advantage. I say open the door wide and let people do whatever they want. "Unfair" advantage only applies when not everyone else can do it.

Drugs are generally banned because taking them represents a serious long term health risk. Opening the flood gates and letting people take whatever they want would mean people would have to take very dangerous drugs just to compete at the top level.

Basically talented athletes would be forced to choose between 'walk away from playing professionally' or 'die at 46'.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
I don't know a whole lot of this, but how exactly did he get caught?

Did some Doc admit to writing erroneous medication scripts?

Evidence against Armstrong basically built pretty steadily over about 15 years. A doctor he worked with was convicted of providing performance enhancing drugs to his team. Armstrong wasn't found to be receiving drugs, but he continued to meet with her until as late as 2010, in spite of the ban.

Two riders who had been on Armstrong's team stated he used drugs. Two former members of his entourage have also testified that he had banned substances in his possession.

Armstrong failed multiple drug tests. The first, for cortisone, was beaten when Armstrong provided a backdated prescription for a legal use of the drug (which one of his aides later stated was written after the positive test, and backdated). He also failed a test for EPO, which had been frozen and stored after an earlier win, with a new test method used on it. He beat this as the governing body rejected the method used by the lab (evidence later emerged that Armstrong bribed the governing body).

And finally... in preparation for treatment of his cancer, a doctor asked Armstrong about his use of drugs. According to the doctor Armstrong replied by saying he used EPO, cortisone, testosterone and some other drugs I can't remember. This later ended up in court as a company that had agreed to pay Armstrong a bonus for winning the Tour de France refused to pay it, alleging Armstrong used drugs. Armstrong won the case (the company is now going to attempt to recover the money).

Steroids are cheap and wouldn't "ping" on anyone's radar, but enhance red blood cells? That's likely Procrit (Epogen... is shorthand "Epoe"). That's expensive as HELL.

He used EPO, cortisone, testosterone and some others. EPO is really expensive, but there is a gak ton of money in cycling at the top end. As in Armstrong's bonus from one company that sponsored him, not even the team he was riding for in the Tour, was $4 million.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alfndrate wrote:
Sports media was reporting that Lance Armstrong was hoping that by doing this interview he would get his lifetime ban lifted. The Anti-Doping people said they wouldn't even consider lifting the ban until he confesses under oath.
http://www.chron.com/sports/article/Armstrong-s-ban-won-t-be-lifted-without-admission-4197030.php

Its kind of amazing that Armstrong is somehow in a position where he can look to have his pitiful penalty lifted from him. The guy perjured himself in court (suing multiple media companies who claimed he used drugs) and before a Grand Jury.

He's damn lucky he's not in jail.

 sebster wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
I don't know a whole lot of this, but how exactly did he get caught?

Did some Doc admit to writing erroneous medication scripts?

Evidence against Armstrong basically built pretty steadily over about 15 years. A doctor he worked with was convicted of providing performance enhancing drugs to his team. Armstrong wasn't found to be receiving drugs, but he continued to meet with her until as late as 2010, in spite of the ban.

Two riders who had been on Armstrong's team stated he used drugs. Two former members of his entourage have also testified that he had banned substances in his possession.

Armstrong failed multiple drug tests. The first, for cortisone, was beaten when Armstrong provided a backdated prescription for a legal use of the drug (which one of his aides later stated was written after the positive test, and backdated). He also failed a test for EPO, which had been frozen and stored after an earlier win, with a new test method used on it. He beat this as the governing body rejected the method used by the lab (evidence later emerged that Armstrong bribed the governing body).

And finally... in preparation for treatment of his cancer, a doctor asked Armstrong about his use of drugs. According to the doctor Armstrong replied by saying he used EPO, cortisone, testosterone and some other drugs I can't remember. This later ended up in court as a company that had agreed to pay Armstrong a bonus for winning the Tour de France refused to pay it, alleging Armstrong used drugs. Armstrong won the case (the company is now going to attempt to recover the money).

Steroids are cheap and wouldn't "ping" on anyone's radar, but enhance red blood cells? That's likely Procrit (Epogen... is shorthand "Epoe"). That's expensive as HELL.

He used EPO, cortisone, testosterone and some others. EPO is really expensive, but there is a gak ton of money in cycling at the top end. As in Armstrong's bonus from one company that sponsored him, not even the team he was riding for in the Tour, was $4 million.

He's damn lucky he's not in jail.

Thanks for the Cliffnotes!

I handle medications all the time (not the Narc stuff though of course), and EPO is commonly used for dialysis/infusion patients and they're epensive as hell. Because it's so expensive, it's heavily regulated and monitored... I'm very curious how he got 'em... like in the Carribean or Mexico?

I haven't watched it, and don't care to frankly.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I think that would depend heavily on the context of the conversation. I don't have a vested interest in whether or not he doped, but if the playing field was such that to be competitive they needed to cheat, the person who won still would have been the best.

The best cheater among the field of cheaters, if you will.

Sure, but the whole field wasn't cheating. Plenty of guys were battling away, unable to post times as strong as the best riders and work their way up to lead positions on teams, because they didn't cheat. And there was a host of extremely talented riders who couldn't get in the tour because they didn't cheat.

So Armstrong was better than some other people who also cheated, and those cheats, because they also cheated, finished up high in the rankings alongside Armstrong. But we have no idea how good Armstrong or any of the other cheats were compared to the honest riders... because Armstrong and co were cheating. So feth him and all the other cheats, take their titles from them and just say because cheating was so rampant for those years no-one is considered a winner.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Thanks for the Cliffnotes!

I handle medications all the time (not the Narc stuff though of course), and EPO is commonly used for dialysis/infusion patients and they're epensive as hell. Because it's so expensive, it's heavily regulated and monitored... I'm very curious how he got 'em... like in the Carribean or Mexico?

I'm not sure of the exact details of how he got it, but from what I've read there were a lot of support staff involved in doping. That Italian doctor who was banned from the tour, for instance. There is a load of money in cycling, and so I'd figure there'd be a load of money available for any doctors or medical people who wanted to provide drugs to the athletes.

The bigger question is why there's so much money in cycling. I've met one guy in my whole life that watches the tour. And what in the hell did the US Post get out of sponsoring Armstrong's team for millions of dollars?

The viciousness with which he perpetuated his lies is what makes his confessions especially hollow.
Why would admitting what he did under oath NOW merit any leniency? If he hadn't been caught he would have happily continued ruining the reputations and careers of anyone that spoke up with the truth.

Makes this more hilarious.

He seems like such a boring witch of a man, nasty too.

NSFW: Language and relevant to this story.
Edited by Mannahnin. Profanity, including images with profanity, is not permitted on Dakka.

I know this is kind of a dead story now, but I had one additional thought: I wonder if he timed his confession for right before the election / then superbowl / etc to try to limit the news cycle damage.

He does seem to be out of the news cycle... but more in a way of people just completely writing him off than having escaped any damage from his non-apology...

Was Armstrong cheating though? If everybody was taking drugs at the time, surely that's a level playing field? Thoughts?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Was Armstrong cheating though? If everybody was taking drugs at the time, surely that's a level playing field? Thoughts?

Read the thread. I said the same thing. Sebster disagreed with a bunch of normative statements, and it pretty much went nowhere.

Feel free to re-kindle the debate. I'm sure your attention span for this sort of thing is better than mine.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Was Armstrong cheating though? If everybody was taking drugs at the time, surely that's a level playing field? Thoughts?

As I already said, not everyone was taking drugs. The dominant riders were all taking drugs, but behind them was a whole lot of clean riders who, unsurprisingly, weren't as fast as the drug cheats. And then behind them was a whole field of riders riding away, unable to post times good enough to crack into the European tour and earn the big dollars. They weren't able to post those times because they weren't drug cheats.

All of which means that Armstrong was the best rider among all the drug cheats. Exactly how good he was compared to the honest riders though, we'll never know.

 sebster wrote:
All of which means that Armstrong was the best rider among all the drug cheats. Exactly how good he was compared to the honest riders though, we'll never know.

Don't we, though?

Don't we?

You guys are like my parents. You talk to each other, but neither really listens to the other.

I bet you don't even look at each other during.

 Monster Rain wrote:
Don't we, though?

Don't we?

No, we don't. I just said that, though I didn't explain exactly why that would be true. I didn't think I had to, because it's kind of staggeringly fething obvious. I mean, when someone cheats, his performance gets better. So it gets really hard to compare him to the people who aren't cheats, who don't get the benefit of all those drugs.

What criteria are we judging their performance by, other than the race itself?