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

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.

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 ?

"@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.

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

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

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.

"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.

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...

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.

Lord Voldemort for President!