Is Lance Armstrong the biggest cheater in sports of all time?

[yobore]

Definitely one of the tops.

No because he cheated a shitload in a sport where everyone cheats. Like literally everyone. It's a prerequisite. It makes it less ridiculous to me than say baseball where Bonds looked like a super hero compared to 95% of his teammates.

Sorry Armstrong is on another level. He not only cheated, but for over a decade he smeared any whistleblower and mocked clean riders. He successfully sued people for millions of dollars for calling him a doper years after it was common knowledge. Just read some of the stories of people who reported him doping, masseuse/journalists/trainers/teammates/teammates' wives/etc. there is something seriously wrong with him psychologically. I appreciate that he raised money for cancer but it doesn't change the fact that he's an a*shole who worked overtime to keep cycling dirty and enforce omerta. Cycling fans still have some form of respect for lots of the dopers. I was rooting for Vinokourov in the Olympics, but you won't find any cycling fan who actually follows the sport who can tolerate Armstrong after all the crap he has done.

[LJJ]

i kinda think being the biggest cheater is same as being the biggest fraud. and if all the accusations from his battalion of former teammates and close associates are true, lance armstrong is way up there in being the biggest fraud any sport has ever seen.

the guy won 7 tour de france titles and got all the highest glory to go with it. he fooled a lot of people. the level of deception also plays a role in being the biggest fraud because if huge sophisticated cover-ups are involved, that magnifies the cheating even more because it shows you're lying through your entire soul to claim that false glory, and few people got more glory than lance armstrong when he was winning.

lance armstrong received immense glory, so much, that some fans adored and placed him in almost a god-like level. they literally worshipped him. but if all that was a sham, then lance armstrong was an big-time fraud, deceiving all his fans. along with his beligerent denials and look-straight-at-your-eyes type of lying, no other athlete has ever come close to achieving so much through cheating, and lying with so much plotwork and planning. too bad he almost got away with it.

but now, he's got a fleet of teammates coming up and a mountain of evidences to break his fame. people like to call conspiracy, but the sh!t against him is just way too much.

The most damning factor to me is that Armstrong has always been the most vehement anti-doping guy of all the cyclists. Devious dude.

[Jasi]

The most damning factor to me is that Armstrong has always been the most vehement anti-doping guy of all the cyclists. Devious dude.

This.
To be honest this news is very bitter to me.
I liked the guy, he was one of the best stories in sports ever.
How disappointing. Damn!
One thing is knowing the freaking Ullrichs, Museuuws or Valverdes of this world are cheaters, another thing is Lance.

[B-Low]

[DCL]

i have a feeling that even if there was a video tape of lance armstrong sticking a needle to his vein, his hardcore cult would probably still say that's not him in the video or that needle was for something else.

[Wally450]

Eddie Guerrero

[nightprowler10]

Not sure about the biggest, but it's definitely the one that hurts the most.

[outbreak]

I hate how he's acted in regards to doping. He didn't just deny it he hunted down people who reported it.
I don't like the way it looks like this is being handled though, it really seems to just be targeting him now rather then the whole sport. Most of his team mates who are testifying against him now all say that to compete in the sport you had to be doping. If everyone has this attitude surely you need to target the actual sport's bodies hardest not the competitors who have no option but dope to keep up?

This also makes me wonder how clean other sports are, I've read the NBA has the worst drug testing policies of all U.S sports, really wouldn't surprise me if there was large scale drug use in most major sports these days. The leagues have no incentive to clean up their sports anyway, more so to cover up rather then expose.

[code green]

Do people really think you can just cycle up the Alps at 40mph like it's nothing without PEDs or doping? Of course he doped, they're all doing that shit. Cycling's better with the cheats, who the hell wants to watch some old dudes huffing and puffing up those mountains naturally?

[plowking]

To be honest, hes just riding a bike. Who really cares?

[KevinNYC]

To be honest, hes just riding a bike. Who really cares?

Why does anyone care about any sport. I cared.

armstrong is a hero and a legend-- if you're going to take him down, you sure as hell better not be half-assed about it. don't take him down for the sake of taking him down. take him down so you can totally clean up the sport.

Have you read the news reports? I just did. Nothing half assed about it. Multiple teammates testified against him. The biggest names in American cycling were all in on it, and detailed how the whole scheme worked. The news articles make it clear, that if you were a young rider on the Postal team, you had to dope or lose your job because Armstrong felt you might be a weak link if you didn't dope.







It's all going to make an interesting movie one day.

[maybeshewill13]

Pretty big deal considering how much of a role model he has been made out to be for the past 5 years or so. He was meant to be the one everyone looked up to. He was amazing, diagnosed with cancer, beat cancer and came back to win more TFD. Now it's been proven he was cheating all along.. terrible.

[KevinNYC]

http://cyclinginvestigation.usada.org/

Statement From USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart Regarding The U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team Doping Conspiracy

[QUOTE]Today, we are sending the

[blacknapalm]

the most damning evidence comes from big george. lance considered him a best friend at one point (not sure how they are now). he even dedicated an entire foreword to him in one of his books, calling him loyal and such.

for those that blame the other cyclists for snitching...what are they supposed to do? face perjury charges? attack USADA if you want but the cyclists themselves aren't going to go to jail to protect one guy. i don't think you can expect any reasonable person to do that.

ignoring the corroborated evidence itself, vande velde and zabriskie's testimony is also very strong considering those guys have never tested positive. to basically admit to being involved is a giant leap forward in sullying their own names and they have a lot more to lose than to gain in the process.

not sure what some people need beyond that. he'll go back to saying he's never tested positive and he was the most tested athlete alive. if that's good enough for you, so be it.

there's not going to be a picture of him with a needle in his ass. there's not going to be a picture of him smiling with a doped blood bag, but where's there's smoke there's fire and the smoke keeps brewing.

listen, i wanted to believe he was clean for a long time too. i wanted to believe it was disgruntled ex employees, bitter rivals and a media frenzy. things just stacked up to the point where it was hard to ignore it all.

then many of his rivals were getting popped. then his teammates would switch teams and get popped. that just leads you to ask questions...how was he able to beat out all those other dopers clean? not just once, but seven times? why are so many of his former teammates getting busted? he really knew nothing? these guys train, eat, sleep and travel together. it's highly unlikely a team leader would not notice anyone doping at any point. then you had the ferrari and bruyneel connection, which i'll let you look up yourself because it's too long winded to explain. ferrari was basically busted for supplying drugs but there's many more details involved. i almost feel like this is a soap opera, lol.

going back to what yobore said, armstrong definitely has some unsavory accounts about him out there. don't let his image fool you...he's far from a saint.

anyway, the entire cycling culture doped during that era. most of the peloton doped just to keep up. i still regard lance as the best TDF rider of that time easily so it really doesn't change my perception of that. he doped and beat other dopers. i don't think he had some grand batch that was 10x stronger than everybody else's. he still had to train his body and mind extensively.

controls are better now i think and split times aren't as outrageous as they were, so i do believe the sport has cleaned up a lot. that's a good thing because it makes it hard to find sponsors otherwise. i think it's shifted and most cycling teams realize that now. that's not to say it's 100% clean but i do not believe the majority dopes now.

the sport just needs to move on from this but i guess we'll keep hearing about this more and more as bruyneel's arbitration approaches.

[gigantes]

Have you read the news reports? I just did. Nothing half assed about it. Multiple teammates testified against him. The biggest names in American cycling were all in on it, and detailed how the whole scheme worked. The news articles make it clear, that if you were a young rider on the Postal team, you had to dope or lose your job because Armstrong felt you might be a weak link if you didn't dope.

i get all that, and i agree that it sucks, but as i said... my concern is that the public and cycling body is left with an impression that this is all about one guy. to make it about one guy and stop there is what i basically meant by "half-assed."

of course, if they went after everyone who cheated to the nth degree, they'd probably have to wipe out almost the entire list of winners for all the major events going back to the very founding of the tour. so maybe they do have to stop with armstrong and call it a day in terms of going after past champions. or maybe they just should have just let this one go, considering how bad it makes everyone in cycling look.

i guess we'll see how many fans cycling loses after this. maybe most of them just won't care, and maybe the sport doesn't need casual fans in order to function.