dizlexik wrote:
kai_ wrote:
I've never excused the behaviour of anyone who cheated so I've certainly never given Millar a free pass. I've not given my opinion on the behaviour of other cyclists because this discussion is about Armstrong, but the only people who are absolved of responsibility entirely in this circumstance are those who didn't engage in doping at all. My comments in this thread have also been mostly about the actions of Armstrong beyond the doping to improve performance. I see the actual doping part as the least of all his transgressions.
However, to say that Armstrong made no difference to it all is something I do disagree with you about. He used his wins based on doping to court fame and then used that fame to protect himself from being caught. He picked and chose people to compete who were prepared to dope and forced out those who weren't. He sued people who told the truth to protect his lies. That wasn't just participating in a culture of doping, that was propagating that culture. Whether or not it became bigger and more prevalent with Armstrong's involvement or whether it wouldn't have gotten to the same point as it did is not something that can be statistically proven, but I personally think that when factoring in how much he controlled the situation and how much influence he had he was involved in making it bigger than it had been.
The people involved in the governing bodies who assisted his coverup and those who aided in developing the program that allowed it to happen with him and his teams on such a grand scale are equally responsible. But the other riders can IMO be distinguished in terms of the gravity. When they were caught they didn't use the means that Armstrong did to try to get out of it and instead threw up their hands and said "Yes OK I did it". They didn't have his authority over who rode. They didn't court the fame after their wins in the way that he did so that they had the power to suppress people who chose to speak out. In a lot of cases they didn't actively pursue doping in the way that Armstrong did. Their influence was much, much less.
I think you overstate the influence of Armstrong to other riders beyond his team. All kinds of bullying and suing everyone was another matter. This what made him douche, something more than casual cheater, but saying that he denied any clean rider from dozens of other team chance to compete has absolutely no grounds. You weren't robbed by him either as asphalt world try to suggest. Whatever mattered at Tour was already cheated and would have been cheated without Armstrong and actually was cheated before and after. He encouraged riders to cheat, but they were doing it outside Armstrong ring and before his 7 wins.
My point about no difference was that stricter anti doping measures would have been introduced anyway. WADA was created in 1999, but what really changed attitude towards doping was 1988 100 m final in Seul. The sport isn't cleaner because one doping ring was destroyed. In fact Armstrong was caught, because of the new rules, not the other way around.
I think you underestimate Armstrong's influence on the Tour de France.
Armstrong was winning everything and, being a competitive sport, people wanted to beat him. So when team owners were looking for cyclists to compete in their teams against him they would have chosen cyclists who were good enough, and chances are to show that potential those cyclists would have been cheating as well and a lot of clean cyclists would have been denied the opportunity. Of course, as I have said, those owners and cyclists bear their responsibility, but I'm point out Armstrong's influence. And I've never said that Armstrong denied
every clean rider the chance, but that his behaviour and the situation he had going on would have had a snowball effect.
When Bassons tried to speak out Armstrong went out of his way to push other cyclists to isolate him. Again, I am not absolving those other riders, but Armstrong was by that stage extremely influential. By suing and slandering people who spoke out against him in other circumstances he was putting other individuals in an extremely difficult position. I agree that those who didn't stand up to him were cowards, but I can also appreciate that when looking at the ramifications of doing so (being called an alcoholic prostitute, a crazy bitch, spending money to defend oneself against him filing lawsuits, and being isolated oneself) it's not exactly going to make it easy to be that brave.
By becoming as powerful as he did by cheating, Armstrong also became a figure that needed to be protected. He was a hero to the sport, to his supporters, to the general public in a lot of ways. And being a hero actually does come with it a lot of responsibility because of the loyalty and adulation it inspires. The death threats received by people would not have come directly from Armstrong, but they were done for him as the hero who needed to be protected. Now again, the people who made those threats are responsible. However, I have never heard Armstrong say it was wrong that that happened, that he didn't like people doing that in his name or for him.
So yes the cheating existed in spite of Armstrong, but would it have been so rampant and so all-encompassing? I agree however that anti-doping measures would have been introduced regardless and that they were what caught Armstrong out. But it is also possible that they would have been done sooner had Armstrong not been around and needing protecting,
if members of the UCI were involved in the matter.
I've never said I was robbed because I never supported Armstrong. However, he did indeed rob people. The book he wrote in which he claims he was clean, the story of a a hero who stood above and beyond all the dirtiness, was actually a work of fiction. He defrauded or stole from people, depending on how you wish to view that. There have been cases where a person has passed a story off as true only for it to be revealed to not be and publishers have offered the money back (Forbidden Love is one example). But in any case, it is not so much the financial robbing that is the problem - it's the emotional robbing and the sense of emptiness that has to be dealt with upon discovering that something you believed in isn't true.
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