Who'd have thunk it?

[Lau2046]

Report: Lance Armstrong may admit PED use, doping as part of reinstatement quest

Published 38 minutes and 46 seconds ago Last updated 21 minutes and 46 seconds ago
Staff report Sporting News

Lance Armstrong may be ready to come clean and admit he cheated during his cycling career, The New York Times reported Friday night.
Sources with direct knowledge of the situation told The Times that Armstrong is considering a public admission that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and engaged in blood doping in a career highlighted by a record seven Tour de France victories.

Lance Armstrong may use a confession as a means to reduce his punishment. (AP Photo)
The confession, according to the anonymous sources, would be part of Armstrong's effort to be reinstated from a lifetime ban issued against him last October. Armstrong, 41, wants to compete in triathlons and running events, according to the Times, many of which follow the World Anti-Doping Code that Armstrong allegedly violated.
Armstrong's attorney, Tim Herman, told The Times he did not not know about a possible admission.
"I suppose anything is possible, for sure. Right now, that’s really not on the table,” Herman was quoted as saying.
Cycling's governing body stripped Armstrong of his Tour titles and banned him for life, following a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused him of leading a massive doping program on his teams.
The USADA report said Armstrong and his teams used steroids, the blood booster EPO and blood transfusions. The report included statements from 11 former teammates who testified against Armstrong.
Armstrong has vehemently denied doping, saying he passed hundreds of drug tests. But he chose not to fight USADA in one of the agency's arbitration hearings, arguing the process was biased against him.
Months later, according to the Times, Armstrong is in discussions with USADA and has met with Travis Tygart, the agency's chief executive. Armstrong also wants to meet with David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Herman denied that Armstrong and Tygart have spoken. Tygart declined to comment when reached by The Times. Howman, who is on vacation in New Zealand, did not respond to requests for comment.
Although the sources told The Times that Armstrong is exploring an admission, they also pointed out that several legal cases may prevent it. In one federal case, Armstrong and officials from his U.S. Postal Service team are accused of fraud against the U.S. government for violating a no-doping provision in their contract with the USPS.
According to The Times, the World Anti-Doping Code allows for athletes to have their punishments reduced if they make full confessions and provide extensive details about their doping.
The Times report also said that benefactors assocated with Armstrong's charitable organizations are pressuring the cyclist to confess. Last year, Armstrong's cancer-fighting charity formally dropped him from its name and is now officially known as the Livestrong Foundation.

 

[deafbirk]

Bit too late for a confession. I disliked him after he broke up with the mother of his kids then dumps twain when she got cancer.

 

[rockin'robin]

Well...whoopie-do!

 

[Lau2046]

I sense a comeback attempt...but given how much of a failure he is as a man, the damage is not easily undone.....but try telling that to him and his ego....

Laura

 

[deafbirk]

I always wondered how he managed to win so much with just 1 ball. Would have been less testerone in a normal male

 

[rockin'robin]

I always wondered how he managed to win so much with just 1 ball. Would have been less testerone in a normal male

 

[Lau2046]

Another good article....

Lance Armstrong: Caught in web he created, cyclist deserves no sympathy


It would be cathartic to hear Lance Armstrong admit to the mountain of falsehoods (pun completely intended) he created over the years, as a New York Times report indicates he might soon do.
It would be refreshing and fun to get salty about it, too. Whatever scorn, ridicule and retribution he gets from it, he deserves.

Lance Armstrong hopes to gain atonement through admission. (AP Photo)
But why bother? Why waste good snark and valuable vengeance on someone so meaningless? The joy in these things comes from popping someone who is too inflated, cutting someone that got too big down to size.
Well, Lance Armstrong has been cut down to size. His balloon has popped. The biggest name in sports, so big he transcended sports and stood astride the world, is just an annoying gnat now. Swat him, and move on. He's no longer worth the aggravation.
Just as he puffed himself up, he shrank himself down. Revelation after revelation about who he truly is and what he truly did to those who dared stand up to him, all made clear one real truth. Lance Armstrong is small. He's a small man. He's the very definition of smallness in a human being.
He's no champion. He's no hero. He's no role model. He's no inspiration for genuinely suffering human beings who wrestle with mortality, pain, loss and the temptation to make wrong into right, to make the righteous end justify the dishonorable means.
Lance Armstrong is nothing more than a liar, a cheat, a thug, a bully. He draped himself in the American flag, adorned himself with the trappings of a great sportsman and posed as a general in the war against cancer.
— Cancer foundation drops Armstrong name | UCI strips Tour titles
To maintain that image, that façade, that phony veneer, he treated other human beings like garbage. He manipulated them, threatened them, insulted them, slandered them, misled them, wiped his feet all over them.
There's nothing big about that. That's small. Weak. Soft. And fake.
Do we respect and fear fake tough guys, studio gangsters, people who flex "popcorn muscles"? Not lately, we don't.
That goes no matter how many triumphant rides on national TV he has made through the streets of Paris, no matter how many clean urine tests he brags about, no matter how many hilarious movie cameos he makes (along with everything else, he's now ruined "Dodgeball"), and no matter how many yellow bracelets he sells.
Keep this in mind, all who are troubled by this in any way — those who feel betrayed, those who feel he did the right thing for the wrong reason, and those who feel he only did what the competition demanded he do (that is, the "everybody cheats" crowd): Armstrong is not what he presented himself to be. He fooled everybody. He played us.
Don't feel like a sap or a sucker because of it. Don't feel as if you have to keep inflating Lance to make yourself feel better about falling for his deluge of lies on top of lies. It happens. It hurts when it does, but it goes away, and every day we become one day wiser.
To his credit, he's as good at it as anyone ever has been. In that area, Lance Armstrong really is world-class.
At the same time, though, he's as common as they come.
His type aims high but also falls hard. The universe seeks its own level. When he was selling it and the whole world was buying it, he was higher than he should have been. Now, he's sinking lower than he normally would have.
So low, that he's reportedly making this act of contrition to get back into competition — that is, get back into the celebrity game. Discuss among yourselves, then, just how sincere he really is.
What he seems sincere about, once again, is getting over on everybody. He liked being the famous, beloved, rich Lance Armstrong, and being his ordinary, invisible, middle-of-the-pack self isn't good enough.
Just like being a perennial All-Star wasn't good enough for Barry Bonds, being a brittle slugger wasn't good enough for Mark McGwire, being a really fast sprinter wasn't good enough for Marion Jones.
Remember, McGwire and Jones admitted it, too. They said they were sorry. What were they sorry about? Getting busted. Losing their fraudulently earned fame and status. Being on the outside instead of on the inside.
Sound familiar? Except much bigger … or smaller?
Lance Armstrong, of course, should owe people money. He definitely owes certain people direct apologies. To the public, though, he owes nothing. We actually owe him.
We owe him the backs of our heads. We owe him our closed mouths and closed ears. We owe him our indifference and inattention to anything he says or does anymore.
Lance Armstrong isn't big anymore. He's small. So small, we can't even see him anymore.

 

[VacationGuy234]

I've been following steriods in sports for years since baseball started breaking record with impunity. I found it amazing that our generation, those who grew up with the movie Pumping Iron, have broken every world record in every sport, this is not a coincidence. At first, I thought jail should be a solution for the likes of Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Rodger Clemens and so many other dopers. I've grown up with the Body Builder lifestyle. I've admired it, but never done drugs myself. And, personally, I don't think they should be illegal. However, it is with great conviction, I believe they should not take titles away from men who got records without designer steroids. While I believe the fault lies more with the managers for professional sports than the player themselves, I cannot deny fault among the players themselves. I think it is just that all records be taken away from all major players of our era. In the future, I think it is prudent to declare a modern league that cannot be compared to the past.

We need to do justice to those who played without steroids, we owe them that much.

 

[Lau2046]

One of the things I often think about is all the baseball greats in the Hall of Fame - The Boxing Hall of Fame, that have these pretenders recognized alongside them, and they doped their way to the top. There should be a hard rule against giving these men that play dirty the honor of being recognized alongside those that played fairly - with integrity, with honesty, and clean.....


Laura

 

[rockin'robin]

Good clean sports....not gonna happen...A lot of records would never have been broken if it wasn't for doping.

Steroids give an athlete superior strength and more aggressiveness....that's what the public expects to see from football players, etc.

 

[Lau2046]

Good clean sports....not gonna happen...A lot of records would never have been broken if it wasn't for doping.

Yet a lot of records were made and broken by players that played fairly. Sadly, this is no longer the case; too many people who should know better, have chosen to look the other way, and their silence is easily bought. What an example to children that sets....

Laura

 

[VacationGuy234]

One of the things I often think about is all the baseball greats in the Hall of Fame - The Boxing Hall of Fame, that have these pretenders recognized alongside them, and they doped their way to the top. There should be a hard rule against giving these men that play dirty the honor of being recognized alongside those that played fairly - with integrity, with honesty, and clean.....


Laura

Yes, I'm sure there are dopers in the hall. You don't get paid not to hit the ball. But, in larger sense, it is up to management to hold sacred the accomplishment of players who have played for the major leagues. And, that responsibility lies solely with Selig. In my opinion, he should be tried for manipulating the public, at the least. The entire league doped, save for a small handful of men who will never get recognition.

EDIT: Boxing as well. My favorite, Evander Holyfield was also a known cheat.

 

[rockin'robin]

It's like cheating on an exam...many think it's OK as long as you don't get caught....and looking at those huge football players....no need to wonder how they acquired all that stamina, roughness and aggressiveness.....Even body builders...

 

[Lau2046]

EDIT: Boxing as well. My favorite, Evander Holyfield was also a known cheat.

I never read that....Shane Mosley, Fernando Vargas, yes...but never anything about Evander....unless you're talking about head buts...

Laura

 

[VacationGuy234]

Bit too late for a confession. I disliked him after he broke up with the mother of his kids then dumps twain when she got cancer.

That was Sheryl Crow not Twain, but you are right, he dumped the wife of his kids who stuck with him through cancer. In my opinion, she is better off without him.

Who he really needs to publicly apologize to is Betsy Andreu who stood up to this idiot and he called her everything in the book. The dude picked on women.

 

[VacationGuy234]

I never read that....Shane Mosley, Fernando Vargas, yes...but never anything about Evander....unless you're talking about head buts...

Laura

It is actually pretty obvious, but here:

Allegations of steroid and HGH use

On February 28, 2007, Holyfield was anonymously linked to Applied Pharmacy Services, a pharmacy in Alabama that is currently under investigation for supplying athletes with illegal steroids and human growth hormone (HGH). He denies ever using performance enhancers.[36]
Holyfield's name does not appear in the law enforcement documents reviewed. However, a patient by the name of "Evan Fields" caught investigators' attention. "Fields" shares the same birth date as Holyfield—October 19, 1962. The listed address for "Fields" was 794 Evander, Fairfield, Ga. 30213. Holyfield has a very similar address. When the phone number that, according to the documents, was associated with the "Fields" prescription, was dialed, Holyfield answered.[37]
On March 10, 2007 Holyfield made a public announcement that he would be pursuing his own investigation into the steroid claims in order to clear his name.[38]
Holyfield was again linked to HGH in September 2007, when his name came up following a raid of Signature Pharmacy in Orlando, Florida.[39] As of September 2007, Signature Pharmacy is under investigation for illegally supplying several professional athletes with steroids and HGH.[40]

 

[VacationGuy234]

The fact is: In our lifetime just about every major sport record has been shattered by a U.S. Athlete. Statistically, that's just not possible with a level playing field.

 

[Lau2046]

Sad....what a messages this send out to children...cheating is fine, just don't get caught....

Laura

 

[Jiro]

shame that he's being coerced into making a confession.

 

[Lau2046]

shame that he's being coerced into making a confession.

I don't feel sorry for him...a real man wouldn't need to be pushed...he'd just do the right thing...if for no other reason than to set an example for his children.

Laura