He survived cancer.
He cheated to 'win' the Tour.
Nevertheless he survived an aggressive form of cancer & through performance enhancing drugs won the TDF.
Agreed.
Not sure what your point is though?
There isn't one I guess, simply stating the obvious..?
So he cheated? data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Ben Johnson won the 100m. He cheated and was stripped.
Marion Jones won 5 races at Sydney. She cheated and was stripped.
Floyd landis and Alberto Contador both cheated and were stripped.
Dwain Chambers won **** all. He may as well not have bothered cheating...data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I don't think anyone disputes that his recovery from cancer to "win" the tours was an amazing achievment, but it would have been more amazing had it been clean.......
The money he has raised for his charities and fellow sufferers will always be a testament to him and regardless of his amazing fall from grace, I don't think there will be too many cancer victims out there who he helped who will care about his 15 years of bare faced lies and cheating.
What was a fairytale has turned into a nightmare for him and I am interested to see how the history books for the tour are finally tallied, because most of the top 10 ten riders from each year he "won" were dopers.
If people are taking performance enhancing drugs in amateur sports what do people think goes on in pro sports...Some nieve posters me thinks...
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As it turns out, Greg LeMond Vs Lance 'Clean' Armstrong would have been less of an 'awesome matchup' and more akin to watching Greg Lemond pulling the wings from a Butterfly.
When the rose tinted sunglasses are ripped from your face, and you face the truth in the cold hard light of hindsight...
It's obvious going all the way back to the start of their professional careers, and watching their progression through to the tour, just who was the supreme athlete, and who was the ultimate doper.
In one last desperate attempt to cling onto the tattered remains of his PR caravan, Clean will make a suicide attempt on the eve of the 2013 tour, citing the 'Liars' as his reason, and repeating the phrase 'I never tested positive' 500 times over on the reverse side.
Am I the only one not to care.....?
Or I should say, care that much.
In no way condoning the cheating, and am completely in favour of the long bans and other measures to drive it out of sport, but I just think cycling in particular was almost beyond redemption.
By the sounds of it the cheating was so "the norm" it was almost still a level playing field!
And yes, am fully aware of the real losers were the minority of clean athletes, and is a true shame for them and applaud their stand. But have almost written off cycling as a clean sport and cheat or not I can still look at LA achievements with some semblance of respect.
It's really odd for me to say that, but I think the cheating was so widespread it almost goes into something else, kind of who is the best clean or dirty. It's the same with bodybuilding where (I believe) doping is still not allowed but use is both completely obvious and is not tested for to the point of some competitions being labeled as "natural". Like I say the only problem is the clean riders being caught up in it but in my mind I am starting to think they are greatly in the minority over this period.
Would also add that I think a lot of this in hopefully in the past now, and the current crop of riders are going a long way to give greater confidence, it's just a shame they have so much work to do.
Livestrong:
Figures for the most recent financial accounts for Armstrong's foundation show it had an income of $43million in the year ending December 31, 2011, of which almost $16m were donations.
Of the $35m spent in the same period, only $4.9m was spent on grants and awards for cancer sufferers and organisations helping them.
Livestrong is not a cancer research organisation the money (which looks a small percentage) goes to cancer awerness.
I think that's somewhat naive, LeMond may talk himself up as being anti-doping but looking at some of his performances and results, it would appear that he was as bad as the rest of the peleton!