Lance Armstrong Not In JAIL

There is an implication in the article quoted below that Armstrong could have his lifetime ban from cycling reduced. I’m sorry. I don’t understand. He cheated on a colossal and unprecedented scale. As far as I can tell he did everything to win but assassinate his opponents. He’s a serial liar and a wrongdoer. He has committed fraud and lied to every kind of media source and government agency imaginable, so why is he walking around free?

This is just a strange country.

Look at him, unembarassed, doing the talk shows, and apparently working on negotiating a return to cycling.

Lance Armstrong is a walking, talking repudiation of business ethics. He is a symbol of what’s wrong on in America – the focus on winning at all costs, a focus on the short term over the long term, a corporate flack approach to the truth as opposed to honesty, and last and most horrible, if you have enough money: you don’t pay penalties, you just walk.

What does this say to the millions of Americans involved in sports? What does it say to my college students? It says playing by the rules is for suckers. And the more that message is pounded into the population as the media still focus on this failed windbag, the more we will see outright fraud and lying institutionalized as part of this society’s beliefs.

James Pilant

James Pilant

Lance Armstrong’s promise to come clean ‘a little late’, says Usada chief | Sport | theguardian.com

Tygart, attending the World Conference on Doping in Sport, said the American had been given chances to tell his side of the story but had declined.\”We invited him to come in June 2012 at the same time as we invited other athletes guilty of doping. He was the only one of the 11 that refused our offer,\” he said.\”We attempted to meet again in December and in January and February this year and so far he\’s refused to come in and be truthful and answer all the questions under oath just like all the other athletes have done, so at this point we are going forward.\”We are hopeful that we\’ll get to the bottom of a deep culture of doping that took over the sport and give clean athletes final hope that they can compete successfully without having to use dangerous performance-enhancing drugs.\”Cycling\’s governing body said only Usada could consider any reduction of Armstrong\’s life ban from the sport.

via Lance Armstrong’s promise to come clean ‘a little late’, says Usada chief | Sport | theguardian.com.

From around the web.

From the web site, Lance Armstrong, Doping News.

http://lancearmstrongdoping.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/lance-armstrong-admits-to-doping-allegations/

The highly-decorated cyclist said he did not believe that doping program on the US Postal Service team was the biggest in the history of sport as claimed by the United States Anti-Doping Agency. He remarked the doping program couldn’t be compared to others in the past like the state-sponsored doping program in the former East Germany. Lance Armstrong denied that the world governing body of cycling covered up a positive drug test from the 2001 Tour of Switzerland. He added that he didn’t use banned drugs when he returned from retirement and raced in the 2009 and 2010 Tour de France. The cyclist went on to add that it was humanly impossible to win the Tour a record seven times without doping. Armstrong said his history of testicular cancer somehow justified his favored “cocktail” of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone.

Armstrong added that he did bullied people who did not go along with the “narrative” constructed by him. He added that some of those most hurt including his former teammate Frankie Andreu and his wife, Betsy, may never forgive him. Armstrong denied forcing teammates to dope but said they may have felt the pressure to follow his doping practices. The cyclist remarked anti-doping officials would have never caught up with him had he not come out of retirement in 2009. The eminent cyclist of his times said he was concerned when accusations by former teammate Floyd Landis against him sparked a US federal criminal probe in 2010. He added that he would be happy to play a role in a “truth and reconciliation” period in cycling and would be the first man in the door if invited and remarked he had “no moral platform” from which to pursue a clean-up of cycling.