Lance Armstrong cheated? I don’t believe it. Lance has maintained his innocence and says he was just tired of fighting an endless battle.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is a self appointed group of witch hunters who started their work in 1999. Like all such people they make up the rules and change them whenever they feel like it. Things that are legal this year will get you banned for life next year. Which is fine, live and learn. What isn’t fine is the fact that this group of do-gooders treats hearsay evidence as if it were scientific fact. A cornerstone of it’s case is that 26 people who have every reason in the world to hate Lance Armstrong have sworn that he cheated. Really? People who stand to gain Yellow Jerseys they didn’t win are testifying against Lance Armstrong? You amaze me.
Professional Cycling is a Team Sport where all the glory goes to one rider, not the Team. Imagine the New York Giants winning the Superbowl and Eli Manning being the only one to get any praise or acknowledgment for the victory. Do you think the rest of the players would line up to congratulate Eli or would do everything they could to bring him down? Professional athletes are people who trade their entire lives for a chance to win-so when they don’t win, it has to be someone else’s fault. Someone who cheated.
Graeme Obree set records with his radical bike design-then rules where changed so he couldn’t ride his bike in official record attempts anymore. In effect, if he used his world record setting bike, he would be cheating.
Lance Armstrong was a master of the new training methods using aerobic, anaerobic, lactic threshold, and other very specific techniques to improve his already amazing VO2Max. I’ve used many of these methods myself and I can tell you the results are pretty damned incredible, and I’m sure as hell no Lance Armstrong. If Lance Armstrong cheated, it was by training smarter than those around him. Which, by the way, isn’t cheating.
Lance Armstrong has never been a likable fellow. There is little love for anyone who wins more than one Tour de France when there are so many cyclists out there who will never win so much as a Stage in that great and glorious race. All those people who have lived in Lance Armstrong’s shadow for all these years have reason to be happy. They know the odds are good that there will never be a mob with torches and pitchforks heading their way. For some reason all the hatred has always been focused on Lance and Lance alone.
The only time most Americans have paid any attention to Professional Cycling has been when Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong were racing. Those were Tours that I watched and loved it when they won and was crushed when they lost. I don’t care what the bastards at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency have to say. Lance Armstrong won 7 Tour de Frances.
Update:Ok, I believe it now, but I think the main result of the Oprah interviews will be a rush of people looking for cheap EPO. Lance Armstrong has done nothing to lessen the hate people feel for him, and it still isn’t clear why he decided to do confess his sins now.
