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Lance Armstrong "wouldn't change a thing" about his doping – it’s all about learning and growth and all that…

“I was asking for them to come after me”

Lance Armstrong says he “wouldn’t change a thing” about his cycling career, despite the infamy and law suits that followed being stripped of seven Tour de France titles for doping. If you’re a connoisseur of these sorts of confessional retrospectives, you’ll guess that it’s the old ‘I’ve learned a lot, it made me the man I am today’ reasoning.

“We did what we had to do to win,” said Armstrong. “It wasn’t legal, but I wouldn’t change a thing — whether it’s losing a bunch of money, going from hero to zero.”

In a 30-minute interview due to be aired on the US channel NBCSN next Wednesday, the former cyclist said of his doping: “I wouldn’t change that. It was a mistake. It led to a lot of other mistakes. It led to the most colossal meltdown in the history of sports. But I learned a lot.”

Lance Armstrong settles $100m USPS case for $5m

Referring to the doping culture he feels was already prevalent when he first raced in Europe, he continued: “I knew there were going to be knives at this fight. Not just fists. I knew there would be knives.

“I had knives, and then one day, people start showing up with guns. That’s when you say, do I either fly back to Plano, Texas, and not know what you’re going to do? Or do you walk to the gun store? I walked to the gun store. I didn’t want to go home.

“I don’t want to make excuses for myself that everybody did it or we never could have won without it. Those are all true, but the buck stops with me. I’m the one who made the decision to do what I did. I didn’t want to go home, man. I was going to stay.”

Lance Armstrong says his own attitude led to his downfall

He does however regret the way he went after anyone who tried to expose him.

“I couldn’t turn it off. Huge mistake,” he said. “We’d all love to go back in life and have a few do-overs. I never should have taken it on, especially knowing that most of what they said was true.”

At the same time, he reiterated: “I wouldn’t change the lessons that I’ve learned. I don’t learn all the lessons if I don’t act that way. I don’t get investigated and sanctioned if I don’t act the way I acted. If I just doped and didn’t say a thing, none of that would have happened. None of it. I was begging for, I was asking for them to come after me. It was an easy target.”

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23 comments

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crazy-legs | 4 years ago
1 like

The problem with Lance was simply that the media and the Tour de France themselves had put him into this pinnacle position. The Tour was recovering from scandal afer scandal (Operation Puerto, the Festina affair...) and along comes this handsome clean-cut cancer survivor who was suddenly the darling of the cycling world. He was given a free pass by the media, it was all adulation. Then of course the undercurrent of "well if you're not fawning all over him you're not going to get an interview" and interviews with LA sold millions of copies of magazines, got millions of clicks online so everyone wants one. The media are then implicitly involved - deep down they know (or suspect) all sorts of wrong but they're also all looking at their sales figures and magazines with LA on the cover sell more.

So he's been put in an impossible position - the Tour (and the UCI) desperately need this articulate English-speaking, heartwarming-back-story guy to drag cycling from the depths that they had allowed it to get to. LA responded by just doping better than anyone else but once you're in that position, you're in a corner from which there is no way out.

Someone says you're doping, you HAVE to challenge that - partly it's the American way but partly no-one just rolls over and says "you know what, you're right, I am, sorry everyone I'll show myself out". If it had been a 2-bit amateur team at the arse end of the Tour, no-one would have cared about a doping allegation but the full glare of the media spotlight is on him 24/7 and he's already placed himself (or others have placed him) on top of this pyramid of righteousness. So he has to fight it in the courts, of course he wins cos he's got fame and money and actually not much in the way of evidence against him and the show rolls on - he thinks he's invincible, the media and the public love it (more sales, more comments online!) and it snowballs.

And then eventually the snowball got very large indeed and rolled off the end of a cliff.

I think the interview is yet another slightly mis-quoted / taken out of context look in order to generate more headlines like "unrepentant bastard says he'd sue everyone all over again!" He seems to have accepted his fate and mellowed a little bit - what he's saying seems to be something along the lines of "I learnt a lot of lessons which i wouldn't have learnt if I'd behaved differently and learning the lessons was valuable to me".

Probably with a degree of self-pity and "please I'm a nice guy really" about it.

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jamesppics | 4 years ago
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Indeed, perhaps the curious shade of dark orange his skin looks is a pre-requisite for an American Presidential campaign now. Make America Livestrong Again ?

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don simon fbpe replied to jamesppics | 4 years ago
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jamesppics wrote:

Indeed, perhaps the curious shade of dark orange his skin looks is a pre-requisite for an American Presidential campaign now. Make America Livestrong Again ?

Hmmm! MALA emblazoned on hats might not be the best idea for a presidential candidate.

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Dingaling | 4 years ago
1 like

"@froze

Lance was not and is not deluded and unrepentant because he doesn't need to be, and that's because about 95% of the peloton was doing it!  This has been going on for a very long time and the reason they went after Lance was because he was an AMERICAN winning Europe's pride and joy race that belong to the Europeans not some dumb American, once was ok, twice fine, but beyond that the European cycling authorities got their panties all in wad and went hunting"

 

I reckon that is bullshit. There was nothing in cycling about LA winning or the authorities going after him that was anti American. He was treated as a cycling hero by all the European fans just like anybody else. Investigations into doping had been going on for some time and, if I remember correctly, Bjarne Rijs, Team Telekom, Jan Ulrich, Erik Zabel and many other Europeans had been exposed and humiliated long before they got round to Armstrong. Immense damage was done to cycling to the extent that tv companies would not televise the big events and many hobby cyclists on the streets were verbally abused as if they were dopers. All this happened before Armstrong was exposed and when the scandal started to break I was in Montreal and I remember it being US authorities that were determined to expose him for the cheat that he was, ably supported by that other cheating AMERICAN Floyd Landis.

As for Merckx, it annoys me that he is still on the books with all sorts of records, but I suspect that if they took away his titles, he could go to court and, after so many years, there would be insufficient proof.

 

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Midnight Rambler | 4 years ago
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Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

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don simon fbpe replied to Midnight Rambler | 4 years ago
3 likes

Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

Lance is special because he didn't dope likevirtually  everyone else. He took it further, much further than anyone else,

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steveal50 replied to don simon fbpe | 4 years ago
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don simon fbpe wrote:

Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

Lance is special because he didn't dope likevirtually  everyone else. He took it further, much further than anyone else,

So you're condemning him for being too good at doping?  The poor dopers who didn't win, or got caught (or ignored) are OK?

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don simon fbpe replied to steveal50 | 4 years ago
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steveal50 wrote:

don simon fbpe wrote:

Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

Lance is special because he didn't dope likevirtually  everyone else. He took it further, much further than anyone else,

So you're condemning him for being too good at doping?  The poor dopers who didn't win, or got caught (or ignored) are OK?

No, obviously.

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steveal50 replied to Midnight Rambler | 4 years ago
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Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

 

Here's an idea. Why not let you decide who is a good enough human being to win?

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Jackson replied to Midnight Rambler | 4 years ago
2 likes

Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

He helped raise over $300 million for cancer research

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don simon fbpe replied to Jackson | 4 years ago
2 likes

Jackson wrote:

Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

He helped raise over $300 million for cancer research

And even his charity binned him because he's a poor excuse for a human being.

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brooksby replied to Jackson | 4 years ago
2 likes

Jackson wrote:

Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

He helped raise over $300 million for cancer research

If that's going to be your argument...

How much money did Jimmy Saville raise for good causes? Do you think that exonerates *him*?

(I know that's some sort of celebrity Godwins Law)

Nope, sorry, but "but he raised money for good causes" is a sh!t defence.

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FluffyKittenofT... replied to Jackson | 4 years ago
1 like

Jackson wrote:

Midnight Rambler wrote:

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

He helped raise over $300 million for cancer research

 

I don't know about this "does a lot of work for charity but doesn't like to talk about it" thing.  Surely _he_ didn't donate that money, other people did?  He didn't work in a productive job for years and then donate all his earnings.

 

From what I've heard it sounds like he was a bit of a bully in how he protected his doping operation.  Personally I judge him more for that than the doping itself (sport is never a level playing field anyway, everyone at the top has some 'unfair advantage' pretty much by definition, even if only genetic)

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Midnight Rambler | 4 years ago
1 like

Ok, so he doped like virtually everyone else. The problem is that he is a poor excuse for a human being. 

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froze | 4 years ago
2 likes

Lance was not and is not deluded and unrepentant because he doesn't need to be, and that's because about 95% of the peloton was doing it!  This has been going on for a very long time and the reason they went after Lance was because he was an AMERICAN winning Europe's pride and joy race that belong to the Europeans not some dumb American, once was ok, twice fine, but beyond that the European cycling authorities got their panties all in wad and went hunting.

I use to race Cat 3 level back in the early to mid 80's in California and there were already people on some teams that I knew of that were doping at that level!  But when a team is constantly winning trying to get points to move up the Cat levels by doping and another team is failing because they're not but they too need to move up, guess what happens?  As far as I know no one on our team doped, but we as a team, we never did that well either, and no one wanted to go professional so the ambition to dope simply wasn't there, but a few of the other teams all had their dreams and those did indeed dope. 

Some of you need to think a bit more, look at this way, if by some odd chance those 7 TDF's that Lance won had nobody, not even Lance and his team doped, the results would have been the exactly the same!  Only difference would have been the average speeds would have been a bit lower.  All Lance and his team did was to level the playing field.  Think of it like a car race, two contestants are drag racing naturally aspirated cars with the same engine horsepower figures, one car wins, so the loser figures he'll cheat and put some nitrious in his engine, but the previous winner finds out so he puts nitrous in his car and he wins again; the winner is the same, the only difference was the trap speeds for both. 

Lance is absolutely correct, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight, there is nothing for him to apologize about, now if he was the only person and the only team doping well then yeah Lance should have been disgraced and perhaps even jailed, at the very least apologize, but that wasn't even remotely the case.

Since they stripped Armstrong of his wins they should have stripped Merckx as well, and probably a lot of other riders; but Merckx, well he was the golden boy from Belgium, another European country.  A lot of European countries don't like Americans, and the Armstrong debacle was that temperment and mindset coming to the surface.

Personally I think of all the money that's been spent trying to vaguely stop doping they should just give up and allow it.  There is no way they will ever stop all the various ways of cheating, so just allow it and move on, but don't allow mechanical cheating which is far easier and cheaper to find.

 

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JohnnyRemo replied to froze | 4 years ago
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froze wrote:

 

Some of you need to think a bit more, look at this way, if by some odd chance those 7 TDF's that Lance won had nobody, not even Lance and his team doped, the results would have been the exactly the same!  Only difference would have been the average speeds would have been a bit lower. 

Blood doping benefited Armstrong much more than his opponents. His natural haematocrit level was much lower than normal, so EPO and blood transfussions gave him a bigger advantage. Without blood doping he was a decent one-day rider, but he couldn't compete in one-week stage races never mind grand tours.

 

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JohnnyRemo replied to froze | 4 years ago
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Tour Le Tour replied to JohnnyRemo | 4 years ago
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I can’t remember the numbers right now, but retrospective testing has shown that Armstrong wasn’t the only one cheating in races he came first in - not races he won, you can’t actually win it if you are breaking the rules. It has also shown though that there were a whole lot of people who weren’t cheating. Anyone using the excuse that “everyone was doing it” or even “95% were doing it” is making excuses out of alternative facts. Certainly he wouldn’t have come first if he hadn’t cheated, but if he’d been good enough and worked hard enough he could have still raced. If that wasn’t enough for him, he should have gone home.

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Velovoyeur | 4 years ago
2 likes

"Lance was his usual self, deluded and unrepentent. He is in some ways correct about learning from his mistakes but surely he'd have preferred success without the need to cheat..."

Partly right about the character traits but with regards to the success, in all probability, he would have preferreed to cheat, win relentlessly, belittle his opposition and not get caught.

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alansmurphy | 4 years ago
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I disagree with your last statement, there's plenty in a good many sports. And it's not a dumb question, it gave Lance the opportunity to apologise, talk about the culture at the time, maybe say he went too far with the bullying, forcing drugs on others, trying to bankrupt LeMond etc. 

 

Lance was his usual self, deluded and unrepentent. He is in some ways correct about learning from his mistakes but surely he'd have preferred success without the need to cheat...

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BehindTheBikesheds | 4 years ago
2 likes

You can't change history so the question is a dumb/naive one at best, pointless saying would you do x or y when at the time you go with what you think you want to do/what others encourage or coerce you to do and what you think are the chances of getting caught and the fall-out from that.

The vilification of Armstrong is fucking ridiculous, USPS made a fuck ton of money/massive advertising out of him that any sponsorship/winnings they put into the cycling team made them a fuck ton more back and there was no damage to the brand, that's just BS.

As for the doping itself, well all the big names of the big tours have doped to one degree or another, Moser, admitted tio doping before the scandal broke, Hinault was bobbins at drug tests and refused more than a few times, Merckx we know was on it frequently (yeah, usual BS excuses but it works for all or none at all), Indurain was just a ridiculous fucking cheat, going up the mountains at times like a 5ft 2/8 stone columbian chewing coca leaf whilst absolutely smashing everyone by minutes in the TT, you can add a few more massive names to that list of dope cheats.

In modern times cycling is probably one of the cleanest sports out there but athletes still take as much stuff as they can get away with within the rules and if it's within the rules then it's not cheating, unethical, what utter fucking cobblers, EVERYONE wants an edge!

Certainly cycling seems to have a hell of a lot more testing than most sports I know of (soccer, rugby union, tennis and golf get a massive free pass in this respect but money talks so ...).

Oh yes, I forgot, LA was a nasty piece of work and a bully, well so was Merckx, so was the bastabbing liar Hinault, there's not many non ruthless, nice guy winners in sport fullstop.

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peted76 | 4 years ago
2 likes

Lord Voldemort for President!

 

 

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Organon replied to peted76 | 4 years ago
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peted76 wrote:

Lord Voldemort for President!

It would be an improvement. Crooked Lance, he is a nasty man.

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