Climbing Weight
When it comes to weight and body dysmorphia, we cyclists can go toe-to-toe with any thirteen year old tween who has done their time flipping through the pages of Vogue and Sixteen. However fit and thin we might be, at some point it dawns on us that we’re not as light as we could be. The obvious solution is to buy lighter parts for our bikes, but eventually we will run out of parts to buy or money to spend. At that point, we’ll have no alternative but to start losing weight.
On the surface, this is a fairly simple matter; calories in minus calories out is the magic to any weight loss voodoo, right up to the point where it stops working because the “calories in” part deviates from our lifestyle or our metabolism decides we’re old and that since everything else is slowing down, it should too.
It is at this juncture that we ask ourselves how we can lose those kilos that seem unwilling to melt from our bodies. The answer varies depending on your lifestyle, body type, how loud your Awesome is, and your ideal riding weight. (By the way, similarly to the number of bikes to own, your ideal riding weight is one kilo less than your current weight, or weight ideal = weight current – 1). But assuming that you enjoy eating, alcohol, or anything else that doesn’t suck, it will require doing something drastic.
My journey through weight loss started with doing everything the same but riding more until that program stalled, and then I started doing sit-ups and leg lifts, both of which meet the aforementioned suck requirement. And then I cut back on beer and wine, which sucks even more, but that’s when things really started happening. A surprising side-effect of cutting down on booze, by the way, is that although you get less charismatic, you feel better in general and sleep better in addition to losing weight. It turns out that alcohol is a poison or something. Who knew?
But now that my V-Jersey isn’t stretched like a balloon on a pumpkin, I’ve moved on to worrying about my upper body, which is bigger than a typical cyclist’s thanks to 15 or so years of nordic ski racing. Which brings me to Ullrich’s sleeves. I have always had it in my mind that Jan and I are of similar physique, aside from the quads and calves and the devilishly good looks. But my stupid sleeves are always tight, and his were always loose. I take off my jersey, and sure enough, there’s that little mark that the sleeves made on each of my arms. Infuriating. The only solution is to focus completely on wasting my upper body into nothing.
Since I’m not doing anything outrageous like routinely lifting weighty objects or doing pushups, the only conclusion I can draw is that I’m carrying too many groceries into the house at once. I’ve therefor moved to a strict regimen of only carrying one gallon of milk at a time. It takes twice as long to unload the car that way, but all that walking is good for my cardio, you just have to push through the pain. I also alternate hands every few strides if I’ve parked more than a hundred meters from the house in order to avoid becoming lopsided.
Finally, if this latest program doesn’t work out as well as I expect it to, I’ve also realized that while carbohydrates are an athlete’s friend in terms of providing easy energy to burn during a workout, they are heavy on the fork, and repetitively lifting forkloads of pasta into my mouth may be what’s causing my shoulders to bulk up unnecessarily. I’m therefor on the lookout for a healthy food source that can be drank from a straw or something in pellet form that I can peck out of a bowl.
It’s drastic, sure, but drastic times call for drastic measures, and I’m determined to get there eventually.
Holy Moly! I just saw this news (this is what comes from living in my Dad’s RV in the middle of nowhere West Point, NY and having REALLY sucky internet- not to mention the five kids and the VMH and myself all bumping into each other continuosly in our ittybitty living space)! Man, never thought it would work out that way.
You just have to know that Lance realized that he would be royally FUCKED when all the evidence would be made public if he fought the charges so he decides that he will not fight it and just not recognize the USADA. Lord, the guy is unbelievable. I bet the UCI is on a phone with him right now asking for a few million in “donations” to also not recognize the USADA.
CRAZY!
@Oli, @motor city – I’d have to agree with the both of you. As much as I dislike the man for being a COTHO, the fact that he did as well as he did – with or without the dope – can’t be waved away. He’s accomplished some pretty good things (regardless of how valid they were). It still doesn’t change the fact that he’s a twatwaffle.
Well now everyone knows he doped and it’s the dishonesty and cover-ups which I hate the most, but this quote from the man himself has a ring of truth for me (apologies for the font size)
USADA cannot assert control of a professional international sport and attempt to strip my seven Tour de France titles. I know who won those seven Tours, my teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours. We all raced together. For three weeks over the same roads, the same mountains, and against all the weather and elements that we had to confront. There were no shortcuts, there was no special treatment. The same courses, the same rules. The toughest event in the world where the strongest man wins. Nobody can ever change that. Especially not Travis Tygart.
@Rigid
True. Although Landis can say the same thing, as well as any doper ever caught in the history of the sport. Not arguing with you, just pointing that fact out which a lot of people seem to be glossing over.
@Rigid
On another forum I visit frequently (bass guitar) most people still believe he was clean. It is quite amazing.
The thing that gets me isn’t that he doped (he did) or he’s an asshole who skims money off a terrible disease and dupes people into believing that he is saving the world. That’s all fact. Yes, everyone was doping. Yes, he beat them. But, pre-cancer, he WAS NEVER GOING TO WIN THE TOUR! Fucking FACT. He used cancer as his cover, possibly thinking he could die in a year, he risked it all and doped to a degree that turned a Classics rider/stage winner into a fucking TTing/climbing machine, probably to get just one Tour win before he possibly died. When he didn’t die, he needed to keep the illusion going so had to continue to dope better than the actual Tour riders he had so surprisingly beaten. And that’s why I hate him.
And all these fuckers that have covered for him over the years, they can all get fucked. I hope that every day Lance, Phil and Paul, McQuaid, Bruyneel, all those cunts who maintain the Omertà live with a gut wrenching guilt that they are part of the cancer and I hope the stress of deceit makes their existence a wretched one.
Just lost a lot of respect for Phil Anderson too.
@brett Wow you could have come forward with the FACT theory much sooner than now.
@brett
This.
Yeah, Phil Anderson just lost my respect as well.
Interesting that USADA has stated that Lance’s blood values from his comeback are fully consistent with doping, especially in light of the fact that the UCI waived the required testing period (6 months was it?) prior to his re-entry to competition that would have enabled doping authorities to get a baseline. Might mean nothing, or it might point to the UCI aiding and abetting the most successful cheat of our generation.
Forget about how inspirational he was. Like OJ Simpson, he certainly was. Like OJ Simpson, now he’s certainly not, and it appears that the weight of evidence that he was a total cunt is pretty overwhelming. Move on. Inspiration is a moving feast. No point in feeling like you have to defend him to honour your inspiration. That would be wrong.
@frank I know personally several people who have been helped in very real and practical ways by Livestrong, and one that I know of who was personally reached out to by Armstrong himself. In all these cases the help and support was very much timely and appreciated. I can’t speak to the overall effectiveness of Livestrong’s work, but from the above cases I figure they must be doing at least something right.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest –
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men –
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
@Oli
I agree with you. Things that he has done off of the bike are probably far more significant (from a social perspective) than what he did on the bike. His recovery from cancer to return to racing at any level probably outweighs any race victories no matter how big the race.
My own take is that he is giving up because continuing to fight this would hurt more than just Lance Armstrong. I fully believe that if he was the only other dog in the fight then a different decision would have been reached.
@the Engine Wow, I wish I’d thought of this exquisitely apposite quote. I’m going to use it unashamedly though…
@Oli
Yeah – I had a post ride Leffe Bruin and it just came to me.
I thought that “The evil that men do lives after them;/The good is oft interred with their bones;” caught the spirit of what you were saying.
@frank Broad strokes. When things are going well for everyone, it is easier to believe things that are too good to be true. When the shit hits the fan, people tend to look inward to examine their own opinions and responses to things that were going on at the time. The articles I’ve read over the last 2 days have been doing a lot of that, and the Cyclismas article (on a site that has “satire” in it’s banner and is written by the UCI overlord) may have it’s tongue somewhere in the vicinity of it’s cheek.
But like the best satire, it keeps close to reality:
(snipped from site)
There are hundreds, if not thousands of lives that have been affected negatively by the Armstrong era – those who were harmed by the maniacal pursuit of cycling monetary gain at any cost or by any means. I can think of vast swaths of people – the ones who actually performed the jobs and did the volunteer work to give the sport its backbone at the grassroots level all over the world – who, over the past twenty years, have walked away with a sour taste because of what happened in that era. This is the reason why McQuaid has had to force his globalisation efforts around the world, as he stated in interviews this year, complaining of a lack of volunteers at European races. The sour taste of a tainted Armstrong era turned them off the sport they loved. Maybe through USADA’s actions, we’ll begin to bring them back.
As you can see, the circumstances aren’t about Armstrong, in spite of what he wants you to believe, and they certainly are not about the jerseys. Armstrong is merely a symptom of the era, and a necessary exercise in order for us to finally begin to close a chapter of excess and a lack of regulation. We need the regulation. We need the oversight. We need checks and balances. Without these circumstances, we couldn’t return the sport to its central theme. We need someone to stand up and say it’s time we unite to bring all the elements of cycling together equally to continue to promote our sport in a healthy and sustainable manner. (end snip)
All in all, seems like he gave a great deal “to cycling” and he loves it. This is still cool.
lancearmstrong.com is a humanizing website
For me the whole Armstrong this saddens me in so many ways…..
The sport again gets dragged down in the public opinion, tainting a sport I love, rather than celebrating and embracing the fact that the tour this year has been won by a clean ridder and that teams like Sky and Garmin are leading the way in riding clean. Again we focus on the negative of the past rather than the positive of the future.
I am saddened because i have such happy memories of sitting on the couch with my father in awe as Lance attacked in the mountains. Today I feel those memories have lost a bit of the shine they once had……
I hope this will be the end of it, and we can put this sad era behind us and move on, otherwise what’s next are they going to go after Merckx, Simpson etc. Time to let sleeping dogs lie.
My formative teenage years was during this period and therefore was inspired into the sport by abunch of dopers! I’m not sure what that says about me but I’m glad that they did inspire me otherwise I wouldn’t be having so much enjoyment today.
Oops don’t know how “cycling” became “teenage”…….I’m not that young.
@the Engine
Indeed… this one works quite well too – I dragged it up for a young friend (appropriately named Daniel) who has been worshipping Armstrong for years. He probably doesn’t understand feet of clay anyway, but whatever…
Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. (Daniel 2:31-33)
@brett
That makes absolutely no sense… You’re not mad that he doped, but you’re mad that he doped? Bottom line, Lance did what everyone else did… he trained hard, took some dope, and rode his bike. He just managed to train better, dope better, and ride better than anyone else did for 7 Tours. The guy may be a world class douche, he may be a world class saint.. it’s not relevant to cycling. He was the best doper in a field of dopers. Lance Armstrong didn’t invent the doping culture, he just mastered it.
@minion
How is it that you don’t see that ‘chapter’ as already closed? Unless Wiggo or Evans comes up dirty and unless you count traces of clenbuterol as a real PED, I’d say the sport is pretty clean right now… Seems to me that this whole case, if anything, reopened a closed chapter and exposed cycling in a very negative way to the public eye that doesn’t accurately reflect the state of the modern sport. The casual observer is going to read on this and think less of Teejay Vangardaren or Taylor Phinney assuming that all cyclists are dopers when it’s a pretty safe bet those kids are riding clean. This whole case is a joke… no resources for doping controls at the AToC but resources to chase down a retired doper a decade after the fact, way to waste tax payer funds.
@Leroy
I think you just agreed with me. He wasn’t the best rider, or even a Tour contender. Dope made him what he is.
@brett
No… they were all doped so the dope essentially negates itself. Lance wasn’t winning doped up against other clean riders skewing the results is my point. Had they all been clean, maybe Lance wins 4 Tours instead of 7 but he still wins. There’s a lot more to building a Tour winner than a few syringes and you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. Gene doping didn’t exist back then so there was no reshaping yourself through dope.. doping while training like a fiend, sure (which is what everyone else did too)… but there was no GK1516/AICAR combos back then which could yield any lasting results to be consider solely responsible for his transformation.
I need to read this side more…where have I been…
Nice article Frank.
I’ve been trying to rid myself of extra weight for the last year…it has become and obsession like nothing I’ve ever known before.
I think a powermeter may be the best next step…it’s a serious rule violation but as you said desparate times call for desparate measures.
@Leroy
I disagree… first, Armstrong is still involved – he was racing triathlons and is involved in the RSNT team, and who’s to say he wouldn’t set up his own team etc. Plus the case was not only about Armstrong but about 5 others who are all active, including Ferrari and Bruyneel, so it very much touches on the sport today.
Secondly, and more fundamentally, it accurately reflects the state of cycling by exposing the corruption, neglect and general incompetence which characterises the administration of the sport. The way the UCI has overseen this whole sorry saga for the last 20 years, failed to deal with it, failed to recognise conflicts of interest and failed to support those who seek to get rid of the culture is a joke. It has been interesting that a number of comments about the Armstrong case, especially from some high-profile ex-pros have been very critical of the UCI.
They may not have planted the evil root, but they have tended it, watered it and eaten the fruits of it and if they now choke on its poison then an even bigger prize than Armstrong’s scalp will have been achieved.
@Sauterelle
Fuckin Awesome!
Also, if you have some time, it’s worth reading this interview done with Dr Michael Ashenden where he categorically states that Lance Doped with EPO to win the 1999 Tour.
here
@ChrisO
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/havent-we-all-done-steroids-in-a-way,29317/
@Leroy
Heard how doping turns donkeys into racehorses?
http://www.bicycling.com/garmin-insider/featured-stories/exclusive-interview-vaughters-reveals-more-about-his-doping-and-new-?page=0,3
Since Marko went there first http://www.theonion.com/articles/lance-armstrong-lets-down-single-person-who-still,29313/
“Everything is Fucked up! It’s all coming down!” — video
F-F-Fuck it! This link is shitty and links to a shitty video (that is humorous for DEVO) and…
In the last paragraph of this article, Cycling News reports that the power output of Wiggo and Froome in the TdF was comparable to that of heavy dopers in the late 90’s and 00’s:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/report-armstrong-warned-before-all-doping-controls
@ChrisO
Actually, Lance isn’t involved with RSNT at all… though he does already have “his own team” Bontrager-Livestrong… one of the better developmental squads in the peloton, and one that’s consistently producing CLEAN young riders. And, like Lance, all other parties named who are still involved are racing clean now… Ferrari is far from currently active on a large scale and is a known doping doc, Bruyneel is fielding clean teams just like everyone else is these days. You’re singling out people you don’t like and demonizing them while giving others a pass. What about Vaughters… you link to his article but he doped too. Shouldn’t he be banned from life and prevented from running a team? But just because he admitted it and moved on, he’s somehow OK…? At this point, EVERYONE has turned the page on the doping era, including the guys who still don’t admit to doping… Chosing a select few of those individuals to persecute, LONG after the fact while failing to conduct your basic duties to screen and monitor for doping in the events happening right now today is a FAILURE on USADA’s part. I don’t give a shit if Lance doped… the whole field was doped and it does nothing to change history. If you’re serious about being anti-doping and having a clean sport, get over the decades old hard-on for riders you hate and focus on making the sport clean right now today.
Just like Lance didn’t invent the doping culture in which he partook… he isn’t going to pop up now to invent a new doping culture. That’s the same insane witch hunt logic that Tygart uses. Lance got to the pro’s and found out that the top guys were doping so he started doping. Just as his meticulous approach to training and riding helped him avoid injury and accident on the road, his meticulous approach to doping allowed him to make great gains and avoid detection. Period, end of story. Lance didn’t bring the drugs to the party. He didn’t start a massive doping ring. He wasn’t some pusher-man out there getting kids hooked… to demonize him is to turn a blind eye to the severity of the problem at the time.
However broken you or I think the UCI is, you don’t fix that by stripping Lance of Tour titles… No change will come about from this case. Your last statement there really shows how heavily biased your anti-Lance opinion is though… you clearly just hate the man and aren’t basing your decision on reason. He’s not gonna choke on any poison. There’s still going to be lots of court room time spent before any titles are even lost and regardless of what happens in the end… his fame isn’t based on being a Tour winner any longer, he’s moved far beyond it. Nike, his largest sponsor, already announced that they were keeping him on regardless of outcome…. Miller just re’uped for a new Lance commercial… Also, no one remembers who came in second a decade ago… Hell, no one remembers that Andy actually won the Tour just two years ago… Alberto got it on the road just like Lance and whatever’s written isn’t going to change a thing. Lance, win or lose, will be just fine…
@minion
Except that doping doesn’t turn “donkeys into racehorses”… I hate to break it to you my friend but there isn’t a chance in hell you could even hang with the group at the Tour regardless of how much EPO you’re taking unless you’re an extremely well trained and physically gifted athelete… PERIOD. Suggesting that you can use doping to turn a “donkey” into a “racehorse” is flat out ignorant. Even today, with massive gains made in genetic manipulation technology, where we can actually ‘gene’-dope and modify our underlying physical predisposition you can’t take a physically untalented rider and make them a champion. You can’t take a rider who isnt’ willing to train hard and dope him into being a champion. This is what you guys are missing… doping doesn’t make a shit rider a great rider. It makes a great rider a even greater rider. Doping saved Lance from some bad days on the road… over 7 years he should’ve had a day or two where his body didn’t react well to one thing or another, elevation or temperature or whatever. The doping kept that from happening… That’s it. He may have won three Tours, or four, maybe even five, without doping… the doping took him from being a multiple Tour winner to being a legendary Tour winner. It didn’t, as many people seem to think, turn a classics rider into a legendary Tour rider. If that was the case, if it was as easy as just doing the right drugs, why didn’t Hincapie take the same program all those years he was with Lance? He doped and supposedly testified to doping with Lance so they presumably had access tot he same products…
@G’rilla
Wow, interesting find. They were definitely suspiciously dominant.
@DerHoggz
Yep, shocked too! As a said on a post earlier I assumed that the average person presumed his guilt (as it seems pretty obvious) talking with some in-laws today and they still “doubt that he doped”. Man is bulletproof to the average non cycling fan American (which is most of our population)
@brett
Really?! I’d never heard that. I thought he was douchey, but at least tried to do right with Livestrong….like pentance or something….very sad indeed.
Sorry for the long ass post, but wanted the words to be here, not just the link. Saw this on Ritte and though it doesn’t fit my position to a “T”, there’s a lot of points here that I do agree with…especially the parts about the millions of self righteous posts from all knowing amateur cyclists and cycling fans across the interwebs:
From Rittecycling.com
http://rittecycles.com/lance-armstrong/
Did Lance dope? According to USADA yes. According to the “secret” eye witnesses yes. According to every amateur cyclist who has ever ridden 150km two days in a row and thinks “Look man I’ve done a couple long days back to back and there’s NO WAY these dudes aren’t riding juiced. I was exhausted. And I could have gone pro in ’92 if it weren’t for all those Brett Easton Ellis books I read.”. Anyone who follows the sport and realizes that Phil and Paul have been replaced with an online Phil and Paul soundboard operated by a NBC intern knows that doping was RAMPANT in the 90″²s and 2000″²s. It wasn’t just a practice reserved strictly for the richest, highest profile stars. If you wanted to compete, actually if you wanted to finish professional bike races during that period of time you were taking something. Most of you already know that nearly everyone that was on the podium in Paris at that time has in one way or another been connected to doping. It was as much part of the sport as a teary Richard Virenque. Oh and remember what he was up to then?
Doping will undoubtedly make you a faster cyclist, no argument there. What doping won’t do though is make you win the Tour de France 7 times in a row. A higher hematocrit doesn’t instill in someone a maniacal drive to not just succeed but dominate. HGH doesn’t help you climb back from the edge of near certain death and come back to the sport you love to not just compete but win. Corticosteroids don’t lift you off the tarmac on Luz Ardiden and propel you to victory. All those things will make you faster, they don’t make you win. Cycling is not some magical sport where as soon as a red blood cell agitating needle touches your vein you’re vaulted into the ranks of legends. Cycling is like every other sport in existence, there are amateurs and professionals. The professionals are so much better than the amateurs that it is literally impossible for us to understand the scope of their competitive level. All of the pharmaceuticals in the world aren’t going to turn me into a professional bike racer let alone a multiple Tour champion. There is a reason there are so few dominant athletes across the sporting spectrum. They all share a insatiable ferocity that equates losing with failure. It is not enough to just win, they must destroy. Jordan, Federer, Woods, Schumacher and Merckx (who tested positive let’s remember) all athletes who relished the opportunity to exhibit the superiority of their talent. The list of sporting legends is short because becoming one is so damn impossible. Doping doesn’t make champions otherwise I would have been on the cover of Wheaties boxes years ago.
Lance not only did something which has never been done in cycling but he also was the reason so many of you probably even know what the sport is right now. And rather than fading into mild obscurity only to emerge selling half decent bikes with his name emblazoned across the down tube like so many other past champions he funneled his fame and efforts into a cause that affects nearly each and every one of us at some level. Does doping change the fact that he beat cancer? Does doping change the fact that he decided he wouldn’t die? Does cancer give a shit if he doped? And before you talk about how his inspiration was fueled by deception lets just remember that World War II was ended by an lifelong alcoholic and a rampant philanderer. They did know a thing or two about great quotes though.
So while it seems that so many of you are so happy with this decision and relieved that we can finally move forward I sit here (in a Hermes scarf and Dolce slippers of course) sad. Sad for the sport and sad for a great champion. Because this embarrassing USADA charade masked in “unbiased fairness” has done nothing to clean up cycling. It has sullied it further. It’s the frothing at the mouth, pitchfork wielding mob who upon finally burning down the subject of their ire are left standing around a smoldering pile of smoke and ashes that lies on the front steps of their own house. Nothing will change because of this and if so many of you are so happy to see this outcome then I suggest you quit watching professional cycling altogether. It’s not cleaner now than it was, the sport will always have cheats and the science will always be one step ahead of the piss cups. This is a black eye for cycling, let’s just hope there’s enough ice to stop the swelling.
@LA Dave Great read… Couldn’t agree more.
I lol’d at the Phil and Paul soundboard part I wonder if there is a Sean Kelly soundboard as well.
Seriously though I’m not one of those Americans who has rose colored glasses on about L.A. and even tho I knew in my mind that this kind of thing was bound to happen eventually I still find myself pretty disappointed and a little angry about all of it.
The thing is that I already spent a lot of time being pissed off at a sport full of cheaters, as a big Baseball fan at about the same time that Lance won all those tours. Its just not worth it having all that hatred and anger in my heart about it. I like pro cycling but at the end of the day it is only a sport, its not life or death.
@San Tonio
Not sure about the King Kelly soundboard, but Team JVA has a Jensie soundboard and it’s amazing.
http://teamjva.com/jens-voigt-soundboard/
First post……
a little bit of comic relief wouldnt go amiss here, http://www.theonion.com/articles/havent-we-all-done-steroids-in-a-way,29317/
@LA Dave spot on. His ride up Luz Ardiden is still my most favourite cycling moment. Whilst that fact has more than a little to do with there being effectively no live Euro cycling on Australian tv prior to about 2000 -when the dust settles Armstrong should be regarded with admiration.
But what do I know? I love Vino.
@Sauterelle
Pure fuck’in GOLD!!!
@the Engine
You, my friend are a well educated genius. That sums up a lot. Most useful bit of WS I’ve seen in recent memory.
I realised a while ago that he true measure of a man’s charcter isn’t the big, showy things he does, but in what he does when he thinks nobody’s looking. It’s called integrity. If LA had laid it bare like Bjarne Riis, I would have been mightily impressed. Call me naive, but I think Livestrong would have come out better for it too. Instead we have more of the same BS.
We’ll never know if he could have done what he did if the entire peloton were clean. Doping helps some more than others. Who knows if a clean Ullrich would have torn the legs off a clean Armstrong? It would be silly to think that anyone could answer that question with any confidence at all.
What it comes down to is that this changes my opinion of cycling not at all. I’ll still ride, and I’ll still watch.
Cycling News mentions that USADA may make their evidence public over the next few weeks or months, even though LA is not fighting his ban. Will we then see an enquiry into why the federal fraud case was dropped so surprisingly when evidence was readily available? That, and how much shit is about to hit the fan at Aigle, is going to be interesting. Unfortunately for cycling, it’s possible that LA’s ban is just the start, not the finish.
Fuck this! I’m going for a ride…
Not usually a fan of Kimmage, but enjoyed this read.
@meursault
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/26/cycling-clean-up not sure if insert link is working… I’m not going for a ride, at work and bike is in hospital, very sick.