Lance Armstrong – a hero now fallen

Lance Armstrong at the 2005 Tour de France. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well – looks like it’s official then …..Lance Armstrong (along with others) has been instrumental in the establishment and long term running of a major team’s long term drug doping regime.

I believed the best of him….even posted up support for him in the belief that it was easier to believe “conspiracy” stories than to cope with the loss of an early hero in my life.

Even wickipedia has documented his downfall already as follows:-

Lance Edward Armstrong (born Lance Edward Gunderson, September 18, 1971) is a retired American professional road racing cyclist. In 2012 he was banned from professional cycling for life and disqualified from all his results since August 1998, for using and trafficking performance-enhancing drugs.^[4] Before being stripped of the titles, he was best known for winning the Tour de France seven consecutive times, from 1999 to 2005, after having testicular cancer.

On February 16, 2011, he announced his retirement from competitive cycling, while facing a US federal investigation into doping allegations. In June 2012, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) charged Armstrong with having used illicit performance-enhancing drugs,^[5] and in August they announced a lifetime ban from competition as well as the stripping of all titles since August 1998. The USADA report called Armstrong a “serial cheat who led the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”. On October 22, 2012, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the sport’s governing body, endorsed USADA’s verdict and confirmed both the lifetime ban and the stripping of titles.^[6]

The USADA’s reasoned decision can be found here – http://d3epuodzu3wuis.cloudfront.net/ReasonedDecision.pdf

Related articles

• Stradalli Cycle Believes in Redemption as it Offers Lance Armstrong Consultancy Role (prweb.com)
• I Think Lance Armstrong Should Have Been Allowed to Keep His Medals (http://alateralplunge.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/i-think-lance-armstrong-should-have-been-allowed-to-keep-his-medals/)
• I Hate Lance Armstrong (blogs.dallasobserver.com)
• The “epic downfall” of Lance Armstrong (everydayredflags.wordpress.com)
• Lance Armstrong and America’s growing culture of psychopathic liars (sgtreport.com)
• ‘Lance Armstrong was my hero but now he’s wrecked cycling’ (standard.co.uk)
• ARMSTRONG REPORT: ‘The sordid findings’… (telegraph.co.uk)
• Insurance Firm to Lance: We Want Our $7.5M (newser.com)
• List of Sponsors that have Dropped Lance Armstrong (livingstrongandhappy.blogspot.com)