Rajflyboy

Looks like Armstrong is not putting out many podcasts recently. Is he intentionally cutting back or can we expect him to at least do the Tour de France podcasts again this year?

or maybe he will do TV ?

Koyote

I’m hoping he’s crawled under a rock and never comes back out.

Rajflyboy

he had some great podcasts but now with the mysterious absence I’m stating to think the same (again) and not wanting to listen anymore

cb400bill

Although he did one recently, Lance has put his interview podcasts on a back burner. But he has said that he is planning on covering the TdF and other races again this season.

texbiker

Maybe he is focusing on the $30,000 bike ride he is putting together.

livedarklions

I don't care if he wants to inject his insight and give people the inside dope on his podcast, but I do hope that NBC respects his lifetime ban this year and keeps him off the broadcast coverage.

canklecat

Off season for road racing. And it's hard to maintain momentum for radio and podcast programming. My family were in radio for years. I've dabbled in pre-recorded programs that were broadcast by folks with stations. That's time consuming enough. I considered trying record or live interviews and decided it would be way too stressful to make that commitment, knowing how often plans will fall through or communications glitches will thwart our plans.

It's not unusual for podcasters and freelance radio programmers to take a hiatus after the first season or two and brainstorm over how to keep it going... or whether to keep it going. Not many last more than one year.

And Lance isn't just doing it for ego or to pass the time. He's always thinking about business, branding, marketing. Same drive as when he raced, just a different game now.

Rajflyboy

He had 2 or three great interviews last year. Nothing yet this winter. Too much emphasis on his rides and his race with Hincapie (I don’t care about that stuff).

I guess he had a good 2 year run but I think I’m out this year.

Maelochs

Not many people have that much to say, or that much that people want to hear ... and the effort of thinking up stuff to say which people will want to hear can be tedious.

Wildwood 

Let's hope his "different game now" doesn't involve spending time and effort threatening his racing contemporaries (many that helped him cheat victories), ruining the lives of truth tellers, attacking people in the media, and spewing lies to uphold his undeserved image as a winner. The world needs fewer people like Lance Armstrong.

Rajflyboy

this

as much as I liked learning in depth things about the TDF on the podcasts it appears even the podcasts were largely just about Lance and his tight knit group of cohorts (all me me stuff)

McBTC

Lance definitely offered valuable insight during the last TDF...

veganbikes

Like him or hate him he was in the pro peloton for quite.a while and could provide some interesting commentary. I wish he hadn't been such a terrible person when everything came out and just had come clean and apologized but he was still fun to watch during that time and he was the best of the dopers,

Koyote

That line can be read two different ways: one, that he was the best rider of all of the dopers; two, that he was the best doper among all of the riders.

If the second interpretation holds any validity, then Lance does not deserve even the faint praise that some still give him.

texaspandj

Definitely best rider of all the dopers.
I saw him race as a teenager, simply incredible. Not just as a Cyclist but as a Triathlete. He was national class at 15 and world class at 17. Couple his genetic gifts with his determination/work ethic, sprinkle some dope and you have a world beater.
Per his podcast, I've never listened to it. But I suspect if all he talked about was cycling it could get old pretty quickly for him, especially since he's not actually racing and only has his past experiences to draw on.
I only listen to Joe Rogan podcast and not all of them. He has so many different guest he's been able to keep it up for 10 years. Of course I only listen to the interesting (to me) ones, including when Lance was a guest.

Koyote

Dopers are DQ’d precisely because doping destroys any ability to determine who actually was the “best rider.”

In other words, your statement is unprovable.

OBoile

We'll never really know about the first one, but the second is almost certainly true.
On paper at least, Lance shouldn't have been able to win a grand tour. He had the makings of a very good classics rider, but didn't have the natural ability to go up mountains (too big). His VO2 max was also very good, but not truly elite IIRC. Pre-cancer, he would have been more like a Wout Van Aert than an Egan Bernal type rider.

Miele Man

What a lot of people including myself have against Lance Armstrong and why we detest him is NOT the fact that he was a doper or even that he denied doping. What we have against him is the lengths he went to in order to destroy people's credibility and destroying people financially because they outed him as a doper. That was reprehensible of him and I for one will never contribute to anything that I think Lance Armstrong would make money from.

He should crawl back under whatever rock he came out from under.

Cheers.

TiHabanero

Forgiveness is divine. Let the guy put a product out and let the market decide if it is something that is wanted.

livedarklions

I'm pretty sure no one here is saying he should be restrained from putting out a podcast, and I'm pretty sure the people on this forum are fairly likely to be part of that market that will "decide".

I do think he should be banned from the official broadcast of the race, and that putting him on was a pretty crummy decision by NBC.

m3tal070

Sounds like you have made the decision not to listen, though your OP seemed like there was some concern about the number of podcasts that Voldemort of Cycling was putting out? Beyond devolving into a bashing LA thread, not sure where this thread can go. Just sayin. The guys over at GCN put out some fun videos to watch.

Rajflyboy

We do have a lot of good stuff to watch concerning cycling.

I guess I feel now that Lance was promoting himself with the podcasts and not just trying to educate the fans on how things work at the top levels of cycling.

Koyote

And if I recall correctly, those people did not even want to out him as a doper… Some of them were under subpoena, testifying in various lawsuits and such. And he still engaged in witness tampering and intimidation. his treatment of Greg LeMond was particularly heartless and cruel.

He never really expressed much regret or contrition for what he had done. He’s a bad person, and I will not listen to or watch any program that features him.

Rajflyboy

i think you are right on with your thinking

Maelochs

Genius .... perfect allusion, and I don't even read harry Potter. Worth the time spent reading until this point.