Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

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landsurfer
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Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by landsurfer »

By David Walsh.
I have just finished reading this book. 3 evenings, enthralling.
If any one is feeling that LA should be forgiven read this account.
If you feel that LA was a scapegoat for wide spread doping, read this book

While the dopers, Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche, David Millar et al have the blind eye turned towards them and are welcomed back into the fold this account will make you rethink your approach to dopers within Cycling.

Cannot recommend it enough.
Last edited by landsurfer on 14 Aug 2018, 8:44am, edited 1 time in total.
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mnichols
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by mnichols »

Thanks for posting
mnichols
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by mnichols »

You might enjoy the new film by David Millar called Time Trial, nothing about drugs or Lance but I found it QI
ANTONISH
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by ANTONISH »

I've read the book and it is very interesting.
David Millar didn't have a "blind eye turned" - he served a two year suspension - he was also arrested and underwent a criminal process ( I can't remember the outcome of that).
Walsh's evidence suggests that Kelly and Roche were imbibing "substances" - I don't recall either being subject to any sanctions and I don't think there was any definitive proof of them doping. There were of course attributed comments about Paul Kimmage "spitting in the soup". His book "a rough ride" which predates David Walsh's book by several years is well worth a read.
IMO what condemns Armstrong is not his doping but his outrageous treatment of others.
landsurfer
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by landsurfer »

ANTONISH wrote:IMO what condemns Armstrong is not his doping but his outrageous treatment of others.


100% agree, the doping was almost a minor event when compared with the people he hurt and tried to destroy.
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landsurfer
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by landsurfer »

ANTONISH wrote:I've read the book and it is very interesting.
David Millar didn't have a "blind eye turned" - he served a two year suspension - he was also arrested and underwent a criminal process ( I can't remember the outcome of that).


He became a TV commentator and fashion guru. After resumed his cycling career.......
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Cunobelin
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by Cunobelin »

landsurfer wrote:By David Walsh.
I have just finished reading this book. 3 evenings, enthralling.
If any one is feeling that LA should be forgiven read this account.
If you feel that LA was a scapegoat for wide spread doping, read this book

While the dopers, Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche, David Millar et al have the blind eye turned towards them and are welcomed back into the fold this account will make you rethink your approach to dopers within Cycling.

Cannot recommend it enough.



I think for some the issue was not that Armstrong was a scapegoat, he unequivocally was guilty and deserved censure.

My problem was that as he became the "bête noire" he became a focus that meant a lot of other riders, teams, and drug related issues which could have been investigated were not
reohn2
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by reohn2 »

landsurfer wrote:
ANTONISH wrote:I've read the book and it is very interesting.
David Millar didn't have a "blind eye turned" - he served a two year suspension - he was also arrested and underwent a criminal process ( I can't remember the outcome of that).


He became a TV commentator and fashion guru. After resumed his cycling career.......

Is that a bad thing?
He served his time and resumed his career then continued in other careers afterward.Can a criminal not be reformed?

Armstrong OTOH was an [inappropriate word removed] and remains one.
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hondated
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by hondated »

landsurfer wrote:By David Walsh.
I have just finished reading this book. 3 evenings, enthralling.
If any one is feeling that LA should be forgiven read this account.
If you feel that LA was a scapegoat for wide spread doping, read this book

While the dopers, Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche, David Millar et al have the blind eye turned towards them and are welcomed back into the fold this account will make you rethink your approach to dopers within Cycling.

Cannot recommend it enough.

I agree a very good read. Not sure if its on YouTube yet but a really good film to watch is ICARUS and its a real eye opener.

LA even if you dont like him also has some great videos on YT which I feel are worth watching.

Slightly off thread I am not convinced that these record performances we are seeing in athletics swimming tennis are not drug assisted.
landsurfer
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by landsurfer »

Its a spin off from our, Cyclists, exposure to doping culture that when we see world record .. especially in swimming, the doping thought appears.
But sudden performance improvements must make many people uncomfortable, especially amongst older swimmers, say 27 ish, who suddenly break records after a middling career.
Irish Swimmers at the Olympics .......??

One of the problems with athletic doping, in ALL sports, is the effect it has on all our perception of improvement.
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Cyril Haearn
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by Cyril Haearn »

landsurfer wrote:
ANTONISH wrote:IMO what condemns Armstrong is not his doping but his outrageous treatment of others.


100% agree, the doping was almost a minor event when compared with the people he hurt and tried to destroy.

Surely *both* are very bad, dunno if one is worse than the other

Cycling is a queer sport, the "most aggressive rider" is admired (by me too :wink:)
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landsurfer
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by landsurfer »

Cyril Haearn wrote:Cycling is a queer sport, the "most aggressive rider" is admired (by me too :wink:)


But as Cyclists we recognise that the word "Aggressive" in our context means the hardest working, most dedicated to the sport / race on that day.
As opposed to aggressive and threatening behaviour, by for instance, Cricketers ....
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Cunobelin
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by Cunobelin »

Unfortunately one of the points that was missed is the narrow "grey" margin between legal and illegal

Many teams used (and continue to use) performance enhancing products up until the point that they become banned.


The WADA Monitored substance list highlights many of these
landsurfer
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by landsurfer »

Cunobelin wrote:Unfortunately one of the points that was missed is the narrow "grey" margin between legal and illegal

Many teams used (and continue to use) performance enhancing products up until the point that they become banned.


The WADA Monitored substance list highlights many of these


Good point, well made ...
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Re: Seven Deadly Sins, My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

Post by Brucey »

BITD I thought David Walsh was perhaps

1) a crazy guy
2) on to something
3) a self-publicist

but having thought about it, back then, I reckoned that 2) was the most likely explanation. In fact 1) applied as well, since confronting the most successful cyclist of the era was tantamount to professional suicide if you were a cycling journalist. Reading between the lines, other journalists clearly had reservations of some kind too but were not so overt in making them apparent; in the professional/ex professional ranks the code of 'omerta' was likely to hold sway in many cases, and anyone deeply involved in the sport would be seen to be biting the hand that fed it, if they publicly held that viewpoint.

I fell out with some of my chums back then, because they would harbour no talk of St. Lance being anything other than 'whiter than white'. Despite my suspicions I fervently hoped that I was wrong; if not, then the sport I loved was rotten to the core and winning meant next to nothing. I was so disillusioned that for some years I didn't even bother watching or following the TdeF for example, because I felt it was most likely an almost meaningless charade.

Clearly some folk feel the same way about Froome. FWIW I don't think he is a drugs cheat, but that means different things to different people anyway, hence all the controversy about TUEs and so forth.

'Cheating' means different things to different folk. It can mean

a) - anything that is not within the spirit of the rules
b) - anything that is not within the letter of the rules
c) - anything that is different from the perceived 'norm' for that sport
d) - anything that you are not likely to get caught (and/or censured) doing

In professional football, we have a lamentable state of affairs in which c) and d) are the most important things, and the 'professional foul' is endemic, even at an amateur level. Worse yet young folk are learning life lessons from this and in extremis may as a result have no internal moral compass whatsoever. I shudder to think about what a corrosive effect this can have on society as a whole, when the idols of the young are basically cheating *******.

There is a viewpoint that cycling as a whole would have been better off if LA had not been exposed. I don't hold with this, but I do have some sympathy with the notion that drugs cheating is probably a bit like an onion; peel away one layer and there is sure enough a new and slightly different layer beneath it.

cheers
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