
The Man Who Brought Down Lance Armstrong - scottie_m
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/lance-armstrong-floyd-landis/556868/?single_page=true
======
walrus01
Let's not forget that Armstrong enbarked on a spirited campaign to _destroy_
Greg LeMond (and his cycle business licensing his name to Trek), after LeMond
brought up all of the issues that were later proven true by Tyler Hamilton.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_LeMond_anti-
doping_stan...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_LeMond_anti-
doping_stance_and_controversies)

------
Ensorceled
Everybody was doping. The speed of the tour climbed until 2005 [1] and the
related scandals and then dropped and is now hovering around 40kph.

Talking to competitive cyclists in the US at the time, everybody knew everyone
was doping because it had become physically impossible to do that speed
without doping. The top 10 racers were within 0.3% of Armstrong’s time in the
2005 race. They were all doping and several have had their results stricken.

Armstrong was the fall guy and object lesson for a general cleanup of the
sport because nobody liked him. The rest was hypocrisy.

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France_records_and_s...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France_records_and_statistics)

~~~
nabla9
>Armstrong was the fall guy

He was far worse than just cyclist who doped. Most others just doped, cycled
and kept heir head down.

Armstrong was toxic bully and leader of the doping world who attempted to
destroy other peoples life's. He crossed lines others did not cross. His
gangsterism and strong-arm tactics against his accusers over the years deserve
no sympathy.

~~~
Ensorceled
Right, he was a terrible person and nobody liked him.

It's why he was the perfect fall guy; everybody was cheering that, finally, he
got his.

~~~
nabla9
Fall guy is a colloquial phrase that refers to a person to whom blame is
deliberately and falsely attributed in order to deflect blame from another
party.

The way you word you response it looks like you are implying that it was his
personality.

Me and others are telling is telling you that it was his __actions__. His
shady character was probably why he became such a gangster, but that's beside
the point. We are cheering his demise not because he was the right guy and the
blame is correctly attributed to the central figure. There was no other party
who deserves the blame more than Armstrong.

His actions when hiding his doping usage were far worse than his cheating and
doping.

------
garrybelka
People say everyone was doping. Lance, Floyd, Tyler, Levi, Big George, etc. A
crime without victim - everyone did it.

I never saw anyone claiming Chris Horner was doping. He was not competitive
internationally until his last years on the circuit when doping use somewhat
subsided.

Chris Horner is the victim. In a better world it's Chris Horner who won Tour
de France.

~~~
stevenwoo
Chris Horner was competitive in races when he was 41. That was unheard of in
modern bicycle racing until Valverde, a convicted doper now racing after his
suspension, continued to race. This is all after the invention of EPO so that
could be a coincidence or not.

In the redacted documents from the USADA investigation of Lance Armstrong,
several people are not identified still, rider 15 is never identified but his
name is redacted out. Because they used a font that is not uniform width per
character, there has been a lot of speculation over the years that rider 15 is
Chris Horner because a.) his name fits the redacted space, and the parts of
the characters USADA did not redact match the letters in Chris Horner, b.) the
background described for rider 15 match Chris Horner.

Many people came to this conclusion separately. Someone who actually didn't
dope and raced against Horner in his first prime wrote a lot about it - a
sample [http://stevetilford.com/2013/10/24/unbelievable-chris-
horner...](http://stevetilford.com/2013/10/24/unbelievable-chris-horner/)

~~~
nl
It's outrageous that anyone could think Chris Horner is a victim. See my other
reply as well, but this is just completely off the charts.

There were lots of victims to various degree of the Armstrong era. Even on
USPS people like Frankie Andreu were to some degree victims.

Chris Horner wasn't one of them.

------
I_complete_me
Over this side of the Atlantic (Europe) there was a book by David Walsh called
"Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong" where he describes his 12
years pursuing Armstrong and being subject to his Type A bullying character
some of it on video.

~~~
auxbuss
David Millar's, Racing Through the Dark[0] also provides some eye-opening
background and is a terrific read for anyone remotely interested in cycling.

Doping is not a forgiveable offence in professional sport, imo – I advocate
for lifetime bans in all sports – but as a reformer Millar has convinced me he
is genuine; unlike Armstrong, who is utterly unrepentant. I loath Armstrong
for what he has done to the sport of cycling. I'd have a beer with Millar. Two
even.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6797630-racing-
through-t...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6797630-racing-through-the-
dark)

------
Theodores
So Floyd also ended up being part of the opioid crisis and found salvation
through cannabis. Quite a change in career and interesting how he has no
interest in that first career.

It is a curious law that he used and fortunate that the sponsor happened to be
the government, had they had another sponsor, e.g. AmGen, then they would not
have had this legal route.

------
dredmorbius
#ISavedYouAClick: Floyd Landis.

------
reallymental
Everyone just acted like this was a huge scandal. One guy on roids beat all
the other guys on roids. Plain and simple.

He just had to be made an example of, by people he had pissed off. And he was
brought down by his own disgruntled teammates. Not by a + test.

It's widely known that athletes at the highest level have encountered people
who use roids. If you just don't inject yourself to the gills with it and
cycle out, you stand a good chance of passing the test.

You can use it and compete with the rest, or you can choose to not use it and
watch the others run past you in a pace you thought was supernatural.

Bikers used to drink alcohol and climb the hills in the Tour all the time. Is
alcohol not performance enhancing when it dulls the throbbing pain in your
legs?

Bring those cyclists down too. Then you'll have everyone's support.

Make a league for people who want to use roids, and for the ones who don't.
It'll multiply your revenue 2x, organisers.

~~~
Lio
For starters, although Armstrong took testosterone supplements he is mostly
accused of using blood doping and EPO.

We don't need to "bring down" those who drink alcohol. Drinking alcohol makes
you slower not faster.

The reason that we don't just let cyclists like Armstrong just use any
"supplements" they want in a special league is because they then pressurise
their domestiques to do the same. This is what Armstrong tried to do with
Frankie Andreu.

There are serious long and short term health implications to that, see Tyler
Hamilton's description of taking a "bad" blood transfusion in The Secret Race.
Many professional cyclists died from "mysterious" night time heart attacks.
Some just young neo-pros. Can you really say that they understood the risks of
over thickened blood?

I think we'd all be happier if Armstrong and the other cheats found a country
where it's legal to dope and set up a dirty league there and left the UCI
sanctioned events clean.

Of course the dopers would then have to contend with a new generation of
cheats trying to sneak eBikes into the drugs only league.

~~~
Someone
_”We don 't need to "bring down" those who drink alcohol.”_

For a small set of sports, alcohol _was_ on the banned substance list until
last year ([https://www.wada-
ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files...](https://www.wada-
ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/2016-09-29_-_wada_prohibited_list_2017_eng_final.pdf))

I think the fact that it makes you more relaxed is (thought to be)
performance-enhancing in sports such as archery and shooting.

It also was on the list in airplane, motorboat, and car racing. I think that
was because of safety concerns.

It still may be forbidden in archery in some competitions
([https://worldarchery.org/news/153442/statement-wadas-
withdra...](https://worldarchery.org/news/153442/statement-wadas-withdrawal-
alcohol-banned-substances-list))

~~~
walrus01
_Chess_ has an anti doping policy: [https://www.fide.com/fide/fide-anti-
doping-regulations.html](https://www.fide.com/fide/fide-anti-doping-
regulations.html)

though I'm curious what sorts of nootropics or mental alertness drugs a
grandmaster level player might be tempted to use. Adderal?

~~~
Someone
modafinil and methylphenidate, possibly
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28119083](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28119083))

I add “possibly” because the abstract mentions two effects: losing more time
due to running out of time and playing better, and doesn’t discuss when one of
them might be better.

~~~
aaron695
Modafinil was used competitivly in poker..... But I'd guess in part it would
have been great at killing tells more than increasing math skills.

I wonder if beta blockers have a use in chess for some players.

------
pimmen
I wonder how much of this is about money and how much is about prestige. When
you look a the figures at WADA, men are caught doping more often than females
and women earn much less in sports. In Sweden, the women's national hockey
team has to balance a day job with their sport.

Now, even the figures by WADA are not perfect (since women require lower
levels of the agent to raise performance and might just not get caught) but I
feel we should discuss the incentives for doping. I sure as hell don't want
teenagers making stupid decisions about their health for the prospect of
becoming a millionaire celebrity before they're 30.

~~~
cup-of-tea
Men have an advantage because they are already men. If women take the same
kind of drugs men take they start to become men. Testosterone is the best
performance enhancing drug there is.

