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In the autumn of 1993, Greg LeMond and his wife, Kathy, were sitting at home in the suburbs of Minneapolis, when they received a visit from Linda Mooneyham, the three-times Tour de France winner has recalled. Her 21-year-old son, Lance Armstrong, had just become the world champion and she had travelled from her home in Texas for advice.
"What does he do now?" she asked. "What does he do with his money?"
"Well, let him find an agent – a good one with an attorney," LeMond replied. "And one word of advice – just be his mom."
They sat on the porch for a while and then moved inside to the kitchen. Linda had something else on her mind: "How do I make him less of an asshole. He doesn't care about anyone."
"Well," LeMond replied. "I can't help you there."
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Greg LeMond remains the only great US cycling champion.
I didn't see the first half of the Oprah interview, (though I did watch an excellent panel discussion Anderson Cooper hosted about it) but I did watch the second half...
I have to say, it reminded me a lot of the David Frost interviews with Richard Nixon....
And given Armstrong's behavior, the Nixon analogy works well; Armstrong was ruthlessly petty and vindictive to the point of obsession....
In fact, the more I have learned about Armstrong, the more I have come to see his doping, (bad as that was ) to be one of the lesser things this man is guilty of. Armstrong systematically set out to ruin anyone who dared to cross him, particularly if they had the courage to tell the truth about performance enhancing activities. (In the Winfrey interview, he said he had "lost count" of how many people he had sued.) Armstrong is far worse than just a dirty athlete; he is a thoroughly reprehensible human being. (On top of that, given the seemingly disinterested and unemotional way in which he described and admitted to his reprehensible behavior suggests to me that he's got a screw loose; the guy is a text book malignant narcissist.)
The whole "Lance Armstrong, All American Boy and All 'Round Good Guy" persona that he so consciously cultivated turns out to have been a complete fraud. There's still no taking away from him the fact that he did some good things, (so did Nixon) particularly with his cancer foundation...(which from his perspective was no doubt more about aggrandizing Armstrong than about helping people, but nevertheless, it has helped many.) but had it not been for the bad (very bad ) things he did he would never have been in a position to do whatever good he accomplished.
On a credibility meter of 1 to ten, with ten being the Dalai Lama and one being John Edwards, Lance Armstrong at this point comes in at about a 0.3....I wouldn't believe a single word that comes out of the man's mouth....
It seems to me that in the Winfrey interviews, (and btw let me take a moment to say that I was surprised by Oprah; she did a much better job than I expected.) Armstrong was attempting to thread a needle; to borrow again from the Nixon analogy, he tried to take " the modified, limited, hang-out route"...rather than be totally forthcoming...
He confessed to a lot of generalities but very few specifics, (except for the Tour de France doping) and seemed to continue to try minimize the extent of his role, and make excuses for himself. ("Everybody did it") He also to continued to deny charges that he pressured others on the US cycling team to dope. (but given Armstrong's credibility at this point, I assume that the way to tell when he lying is that his lips are moving; I assume any claim he makes that contradicts a claim made against him to be false, unless proven true.)
He had good reason to try to take this approach given the myriad of lawsuits he will now be facing. (In fact he had very good reason to say nothing at all; my guess is that his craving for being in the limelight was such that it overcame his sense of good judgement, or even self-preservation.)
The good news out of this whole sad and tawdry tale, is that Armstrong will now spend a large portion of the rest of natural existence traveling from court room to court room and deposition to deposition, watching his bank balance grow ever smaller in the process, as all the many people he has wronged will now have an opportunity to get a well deserved financial piece of him. (Armstrong is believed to have a net worth in excess of 100 million dollars; true justice would have him completely penniless by the end of all the legal proceedings, but I have to believe that a man as cunning as Armstrong has socked away at least a few million somewhere that no one will be able to get at it.)
In addition to the mountain of civil suits, if he chooses to perjure himself on one of the many occasions he will have the opportunity to do so, (and the arrogance and self-destructiveness of this man is such that I wouldn't put it past him) he could face criminal charges as well....
And if Armstrong found himself on trial for perjury, I wouldn't put a lot of money on a jury acquitting him. If they did a poll on it, I would suspect that at this point Lance Armstrong would have a lower popularity rating than the US Congress, Lindsey Lohan, and painful rectal itch....
would have a lower popularity rating than the US Congress,
Not with me. He hasn't taken (or been given) one red cent from me, unlike congress which continues to take more than their fair share.
Lindsey Lohan, who cares.
Painful rectal itch is about $5 a month (much less than what congress takes).
An Australian library sign promising to reshelve books by disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong in the fiction section has sparked approval online.
The sign was posted in Manly library in Sydney over the weekend.
All non-fiction books by the cyclist, including "Lance Armstrong: Images of a Champion", would soon be moved to the fiction section, it read.
A council spokesman said the sign was a joke and that local libraries could not arbitrarily reclassify books.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
I agree; I presume now we'll see him join the others who seek to purge themselves of their "sin" by ratting out their fellow athletes. We saw that in the 50s with the House and Senate investigations into the evil communism, and there are many who helped themselves at the expense of others. Lance will show himself to be no better than nay of those others.
But, FWIW, I did enjoy his thuimbing his nose at the US antidoping agency who hit him with everything they had except solid evidence. That was fun while it lasted.
Is the second place guy now getting the winners trophy?
My understanding is that no one is going to be awarded the trophies for those years, precisely because the problem was so widespread.
Figures.
Now, will they go after those in charge who most likely knew what was going on but turned a blind eye. probably as much as they went after the managers in baseball who also turned a blind eye
Lance Armstrong exits from one sport, and ends up the US's premier sport....
Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong is facing a class-action lawsuit from readers of his autobiography who want their money back after his doping confession.
The sports star spent years vehemently denying the cheating allegations which have blighted his career, but recently went public with his confession in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey, during which he admitted taking illicit drugs to win cycling races.
Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and his Olympic bronze medal over the doping scandal, is now facing a lawsuit from fans who bought his 2000 book It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.
The lawsuit, filed at a federal court in California this week, names Armstrong and his book publishers as defendants and claims the plaintiffs were duped into buying the book, as well as 2003 follow-up, Every Second Counts.
The readers accuse Armstrong of fraud and false advertising for marketing the books as works of fact, rather than fiction, according to CNN.com.
Among the plaintiffs is Rob Stutzman, who worked as Arnold Schwarzenegger's deputy chief of staff while he was Governor of California, and claims to have met Armstrong before his doping confession and personally thanked him for writing the "inspiring" book.
The plaintiffs are demanding "statutorily permissible damages, attorneys' fees, expenses and costs".
Meanwhile Armstrong has reportedly turned down an offer to appear on the hit US TV show Dancing with the Stars.
The offer is believed to have been made prior to Armstrong's recent confessional interview with Oprah.
Entertainment Weekly reports that ABC network offered the US cyclist the chance to compete on the forthcoming spring edition of the show.
However sources suggest that Armstrong is one of several "big get" celebrities who are regularly asked to appear on the show.
"Lance has been offered the show each and every year since its inception," a representative for the cyclist told the magazine.
"Although flattered, he has passed on their generous offers."
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
I have to admit, I don't really follow cycling. I've seen bits of the TDF over the years because it was on in a bar or my parents' house or a friend's; I certainly recognize what a thrilling sport it is - or could be, if everyone wasn't cheating.
With regard to Lance Armstrong; he wasn't just another cheater. He really was the biggest fraud in the entire history of sport, IMHO. And he was, and still is, pathological - NPD or some other personality disorder. As his mother said to Greg LeMond in the bit quoted by rubato, he doesn't care about other people. It wasn't the doping that was so terrible - it was the systematic way he went about destroying other people who either didn't get on board, or tried to tell or get to the truth.
Especially egregious is the way he portrayed himself as a cancer research advocate and yet his foundation gave almost nothing to research compared to the amount of money it took in; it seems it was a lot about his ego and making him look good as a defense to the accusations or questions about doping. Sure, cancer awareness is important - but who wasn't aware of cancer before Livestrong came along?
He's a seriously sick pup and I hope he loses everything he has left in the lawsuits pending against him. He doesn't even deserve to be working in a neighborhood bike shop.
I, for one, am hoping that this doesn't go well for him:
Lance was famously an asshole when he switched from triathalon to cycling. Disliked and despised by most in the cycling community. A lot of people wanted to believe the story that cancer had made him a better man. That he had passed through the fire and been re-made. But he was still the same lyin' cheatin' asshole fucker he was at 18.
BoSoxGal wrote:Especially egregious is the way he portrayed himself as a cancer research advocate and yet his foundation gave almost nothing to research compared to the amount of money it took in; it seems it was a lot about his ego and making him look good as a defense to the accusations or questions about doping. Sure, cancer awareness is important - but who wasn't aware of cancer before Livestrong came along?
The Lance Armstrong Foundation (which later became the LIVESTRONG Foundation) was never intended to be another fund-raising organization for cancer research; it was more about the support services needed by the individuals who were battling cancer. These excerpts from their own website pretty well sums it up:
Our Mission
We improve the lives of people affected by cancer, now.
At LIVESTRONG, we fight for the more than 32.6 million people around the world affected by cancer now.
There can be—and should be—life after cancer for more people.
We provide direct services to anyone affected by cancer;
connect people and communities with the services they need;
and call for state, national and world leaders to help fight this disease.
Our Work
Helping cancer survivors and their loved ones has been our goal from day one.
We believe in putting the survivor first,
and that is why we created tools and resources to help ease the challenges of a cancer diagnosis.
Read the article I posted before you attempt refutation of my position, BB.
In fact, the foundation was sold to many donors by Lance and other staff as being about cancer research for many years, either through outright misleading people or by failure to clarify their mission.
I'm not disputing they do some good, but the track record of percentage of funds going to direct services v. to publicity, etc. hasn't been great. Again, read the article. My opinion is certainly justified.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
