It seems that Lance Armstrong has turned his back on cycling. He has better things to do now. When asked about the Landis doping decision, he said
“I’d love to answer the question but unfortunately I’m out of that business. I’m here to fight cancer. I haven’t looked online. I still love the bike and ride all the time but on the competitive side I’m just not engaged.” Found via Biking Bis
I agree fighting cancer is more important than cycling but it gave him the platform to fight cancer. A lot of the LAF fund-raisers involve cycling. He isn’t at the top end of competition but that’s what partly feeds recreational cycling. He should use his champion status to help the sport but he’s not.
He’s not out of that business. He just doesn’t want to answer the tough questions about the state the sport is in. Several of his teammates have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. He used a doctor that was associated with doping. I believe there are doping issues but as we’ve seen with the Landis case, the anti-doping bureaucracy is also corrupt. Cycling isn’t the only sport with doping problems, other sports have them too.
Update: Lance has now made a comment on the Landis verdict.
“When you are giving someone the death penalty, which they essentially did, you cannot tolerate shoddy work, which they clearly did. I don’t understand that type of rationale. I don’t understand the verdict.
More about his comments at Biking Bis.
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Tags: cycling, Floyd Landis, Lance Armstrong
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If he answers questions like that, then it just brings the attention back to him, and people start to publicly speculate about him doping again. I can see why he’d try to avoid that.
Did he dope? I don’t know. I think he probably did, for the very reasons you pointed out. Just the same though, I hope he never gets busted, as he is doing very good work for cancer, and if he ever got exposed for doping, it could bring a lot of that good work to a halt.