Kapusta

You knew that was never going to work out, right?

Darth Lefty 

Lance is also appearing in “Stars On Mars”

GhostRider62

What evidence is there of such an unfounded, slanderous smear?

First of all recombinant EPO was first available in 1989.

Greg won his second Tour in 1990 and was world champ way before then. Indurain was barely pack filler in 89-90.

In 1991, I watched TdF in person. Indurain destroyed both Lemond and Hampsten up Alpe dHuez. IIRC, Hampsten won the climber's jersey in the Tour de Suisse that year and a 90 Kg horse beats him up? If Lemond were the one doping after the advent of epo, how would he lose to a previous pack filler like Indurain?

tomato coupe

Is that the present day version of Fantasy Island?

grantelmwood

YES! Someone who gets it! Thank you.

I know nothing about cycling and I was transfixed by this interview
Attia indeed CRUSHES it as the interviewer.

This is a very technical interview, nothing like Oprah media fluff.

The cancer discussion was a medical class
Headache, blurry vision, and coughing up blood as a testicular cancer marker.
Orchiectomy due to seminomatous tumor vs. choreocarcinoma
The downsides of BEP bleomycin, the progression of 4 cycles of chemo.
I forgot that Lance also has brain cancer spread.

The PED discussion was a medical class
Hematocrit levels, etc.

The race discussion was a cycling history class
Giro, Tour, Vuelta, etc.
He recalls every race he rode in detail year by year, 97,98,99,00,01,etc.

Darth Lefty 

Oh, it's much better (and somehow much worse) than that


​​​​​​​

grantelmwood

He talks about this incident at one point in the interview.
Blind luck he says.
Tar was boiling.

BillyD

Yeah but you're ignoring one thing: Lance and Bonds would still have dominated their fields if they were clean. These same people who weren't competitive because they did the right thing still wouldn't have been competitive enough if they had cheated. Those "untold others" still would have been untold. Canon fodder is still essentially canon fodder if you come along at the wrong time.

Reminds me of the Ali era in boxing. Frazier, Holmes and Foreman ALL would have taken a turn as champion if they weren't unfortunate enough to come along during Ali's reign.

grantelmwood

Some r too stoopid to get satyre

BillyD

You need to take it easy, my friend.

seypat

He's really good at shilling whatever products he's pushing at the moment.

Eric F 

If everyone was clean...maybe. Bonds' ability to deliver a round bat to a moving round ball is an athletic skill that isn't elevated by massive strength, and in that skill, he was exceptional. Massive strength gains improve the ability to hit the ball hard, which influences not only HR numbers, but also batting average for balls that stay inside the park. As for Armstrong, I'm less convinced that he would have dominated. The effects of PEDs used in cycling are not trivial. From one of the LA movies, I recall a segment where Frankie Andreu's wife was talking about watching Frankie leading up a big climb in the Tour, and right then she knew he was on dope. Armstrong changed the world of pro cycling by the way he trained with Chris Carmichael, targeting just one peak race. An argument can be made that the training component was enough of a difference maker. I'm not totally convinced. LA was a fiercely-determined competitor, to be sure, but his VO2max was good, but not exceptional.

livedarklions

He still hasn't admitted the testosterone he was busted for during the comeback, has he?
Ability not that amazing with that.

Harold74

I feel that it is logically irrational to assume Greg Lamond's innocence. Kind to assume his innocence?? Yes. Fair? Yes. Rational? No, based on these arguments.

1) Pretty much everything that I've read, listened to, or viewed on the history of the Tour de France suggests that it was dirty pretty much from inception until, at the least, the end of the Lance Armstrong era. This included EPO, corticosteroids, beer, plain old train hopping, and who knows what else. What are the odd that everybody before LeMond took PEDs, everybody after LeMond took PEDs, but Greg himself did not take PEDs for that brief moment in cycling history? Not great I would say.

2) One of the reasons that Lance was able to persist in his doping and lying as long as he did is because much of the world insisted upon having incontrovertible evidence of Lance's guilt before condemning him. And look how well that turned out for us? One of the important lessons of the Armstrong episode is precisely that it is irrational to presume PED innocence when the incentive structure overwhelmingly supports PED use. One of the lessons that we should take from Lance's guilt is LeMond's probable guilt. Not certain guilt, probable guilt. Those are different.

3) Attia and San Millan discuss the Indurain case in a way that I feel is salient. My takeaway from that discussion is that they, like me, suspect that:

a) Indurain used PEDs like most everyone before him.

b) No serious attempt has been made to investigate Indurain or anyone before him because would be a public relations nightmare for cycling if the result wound up jus being "Yup, it was always dirty. Cyclists are just despicable".

Since LeMond preceded Indurain, he may have gotten a pass simply based on chronology. Sometime after Indurain, but before Lance, was where the cutoff was deemed to be best placed.

It is possible that Greg LeMond was innocent. I'm not refuting that. And if he was innocent, then the presumption of his guilt by association is a travesty. That said, I don't feel that anyone -- other than Greg -- is well served by denying what is likely the truth of the situation for a lack of incontrovertible proof.

Eric F 

I was in the room while my wife watched that show last night. It was awful. I expect her to watch next week, as well.

Koyote

You assert this as fact, but it is actually speculation. You have no way of knowing whether it's true, because it did not happen that way.

livedarklions

Bonds, yes because he actually was doing it. But LA admits to doping starting about 1992. I don't think there's any way to support that claim in his case because he was doping damn near from day 1.

So, not ignoring it in LA's case I'm flat out denying it.


I don't think Bonds would have broken Hank Aaron's record, btw. I think that's a damn shame because Aaron actually had routine plausible death threats on his way to that. The man had courage and class.

Eric F 

Agreed. Without the additional strength/power, a LOT more balls stay in the yard.

livedarklions

Sorry but that is just babbling bs asserting we should just assume Lemond is guilty of something. That last sentence is so convoluted that I think you look embarrassed by it somewhere in the middle.

I am not assuming his " probable " guilt because there's no individualized proof of any kind. None.

Harold74

I also feel that it is important to view Lance himself as one of the victims PED use. I believe that a plausible case can be made that, in the absence of PEDs, Lance's story may well have worked out like this:

1) Still the seven time Tour de France winner.

2) Still a cancer survivor who proved that it is possible to be not just as good as you were before cancer but better.

3) Not a man with his reputation in tatters because he was put in situations that provided massive incentives for him to lie and bully.

4) Not a man who ingested potentially dangerous PEDs because he was put in situations that provided massive incentives for him to ingest them.

5) Perhaps not a man who got cancer at all if PED had anything to do with that as he himself speculates.

6) A man who, himself, is confident that he was the legitimate champion without any taint.

Yes, Lance was ruthless and that caused his initial outcome to be better than that of many other "victims". I feel that he's one of the victims of PED use none the less.

Harold74

Effectively, you are refuting my logic by way launching personal attacks against me. I'm babbling, I'm spewing BS, my writing is convoluted, I look embarrassed.

Sadly, that is very Lance-esque of you.

Individualized proof is not a valid argument against probable guilt. Probability is about aggregate trends, not individual outcomes. That was the crux of my post and precisely what facilitated Lance's debauchery for so long. Do they not flip coins and play cards where you live? I feel as though they probably do.

Eric F 

I have a hard time swallowing the "victim" thing. He was a willing and knowledgeable participant, and an integral part of the system.

drlogik 

I was a big Lance fan, even through the early doping, even in to the mid-career doping. It was when he started lying and threw his own team mates and friends under the bus and lied about his own use that I lost all respect for him. Then I read Tyler Hamilton's book and that was a real eye opener.

Harold74

To be very clear on a couple of things regarding LeMond:

1) I'm not suggesting that Lemond took EPO. I'm suggesting that he probably took whatever PED's were prevalent during his reign, prior to the advent of EPO in cycling. That said, I see little difference ethically.

2) I admire LeMond and in no way disdain him. Not for his criticism of Lance, not for his use of PEDs IF he used them, and not for his hypocrisy IF he did use PED's.

Like Lance, I see Greg as a product of his times and circumstances.

GhostRider62

There is no evidence that Greg took performance enhancing drugs. On the contrary, his tested VO2 max as an 18 year old amateur was one of the highest ever recorded.

That this forum would allow someone to slander Greg without sanction is beyond despicable.