Lance Armstrong admits doping during cycling career

[SuperMillionaire]

Lance Armstrong Interview: Cyclist Confesses Doping To Oprah (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/lance-armstrong-interview-doping-oprah_n_2500456.html)

Oprah Walks A High Wire In Lance Armstrong Interview (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/18/oprah-winfrey-armstrong-confession_n_2501357.html)

For years, Lance Armstrong denied using performance-enhancing drugs to win seven Tour de France titles and a bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics, but in 2012, he was stripped of his seven titles and his bronze medal, and in January 2013, he confessed to Oprah Winfrey in an interview that he indeed used several performance-enhancing drugs.

With his legacy forever tarnished, the only thing he can do now is to persuade others to not dope like he did.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Everyone in sports is cheating.

[Mirage]

I'm not!

[Shorty]

Did he confess to doping when he won all of those medals? If not, taking them all away is a bit excessive. (I didn't care enough to read the interview.)

[Chris]

That Oprah interview was one of those "Well, duh!" moments.

[Mirage]

Did he confess to doping when he won all of those medals? If not, taking them all away is a bit excessive. (I didn't care enough to read the interview.)

Some performance enhancing substances can give long term effects long after you stop taking them. For example, if you take steroids to get bigger muscles, then lose some of that muscle mass after you stopped taking them, the body has an easier time getting some of that muscle mass back even after you stopped taking steroids.

[Shorty]

I did not take that into consideration.

Still, though. Being stripped of all of that is a bit much.

[Del Murder]

I never understood what the big deal over this stuff was. It's not like he wasn't a great athlete even without the drugs. I mean, if I took that crap I wouldn't be able get up off my couch and win a Tour de France or hit 700 home runs.

[Old Manus]

Which makes it all the more unfair on the dozens of competitors who built their whole careers around winning those medals without cheating, but never made it because of him and had to retire.

He's a disgrace to sport.

[maybee]

And they always said at the beginning of old video games and cartoons that winners don't use drugs. I feel lied too. Sorta.

Because he won.... but in the end he became a big giant looser.

[Pheesh]

I will never be able to watch Dodgeball again because of this.

[Quindiana Jones]

If I was his competitor, I'd probably accuse him of drug taking too.

[Mirage]

I never understood what the big deal over this stuff was. It's not like he wasn't a great athlete even without the drugs. I mean, if I took that crap I wouldn't be able get up off my couch and win a Tour de France or hit 700 home runs.

Yeah, but many of his competitors were great athletes too, but they lost to him, very possibly because a lot of those weren't using banned performance enhancing substances.

[Del Murder]

I thought the first 10 place finishers were all doping or something like that.

[escobert]

Yeah basically everyone is cycling was doping. There were a few who weren't but most were.


I think everyone's had a pretty good idea he had for several years now.

[Mirage]

I thought the first 10 place finishers were all doping or something like that.

Well if all those ten didn't use illegal performance enhancers, maybe they wouldn't all be the ten fastest ones. Some might still have been among the ten best, but who knows?

[Del Murder]

No one really knows. In any case, he was still very talented, but without the doping he probably would not have become the superstar that he was. Personally I think all this stuff should just be leagalized, but I guess it wasn't back then so he's a bad person for trying to get away with it.

Why is this a story now? Why not when he was winning these things? What changed?

[Mirage]

No one really knows. In any case, he was still very talented, but without the doping he probably would not have become the superstar that he was. Personally I think all this stuff should just be leagalized, but I guess it wasn't back then so he's a bad person for trying to get away with it.

Why is this a story now? Why not when he was winning these things? What changed?

I think he kinda officially admitted to it recently. Or at least in a greater degree than he had done earlier.

And it is true that no one really knows, but the point of these competitions is kind of to find out who is the best under X rules, so if some of them break those rules, there's not really any other choice but to take the medals back.

[Madame Adequate]

I sincerely doubt there is a single professional athlete on the entire planet who isn't using drugs. You either use them or you don't win. Just make it a regulated and open part of sports.

[Mirage]

Well I disagree with you, although I would probably agree that it is a lot more common in sports (or divisions/leagues) where you earn a smurfton of money than it is in sports where you only make a reasonable amount.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I thought the first 10 place finishers were all doping or something like that.
I heard it was like the first 23 finishers.


I sincerely doubt there is a single professional athlete on the entire planet who isn't using drugs. You either use them or you don't win. Just make it a regulated and open part of sports.

That's what I'm saying.

[Old Manus]

I sincerely doubt there is a single professional athlete on the entire planet who isn't using drugs. You either use them or you don't win. Just make it a regulated and open part of sports.What absolute nonsense.

[SuperMillionaire]

I sincerely doubt there is a single professional athlete on the entire planet who isn't using drugs. You either use them or you don't win. Just make it a regulated and open part of sports.

Why would you want to openly allow the legal use of steroids in sports?

[Mirage]

Why not? It'd be fun.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I sincerely doubt there is a single professional athlete on the entire planet who isn't using drugs. You either use them or you don't win. Just make it a regulated and open part of sports.

Why would you want to openly allow the legal use of steroids in sports?

Why not?

[SuperMillionaire]

And what exactly would be the point or allowing it?

[Shiny]

Since the majority of professional athletes use it anyway there isn't really a point in restricting it as they will always find ways to go around the system to use it like they have been doing for years.

The thing is though when the majority of athletes are using steroids, when you win against them this still makes you the best if you beat them even if you also used steroids. So the whole, "he didn't deserve his trophies" thing that some people are saying doesn't really make any sense.

[Del Murder]

I think that as long as the drug itself isn't illegal in the country you are performing in, and it doesn't put your immediate health and safety or the immediate health and safety of those around you at risk, then it should be free game to use for a competition. In all sports.

The only real concern is not the 'purity of the game' but the long-term health risks of doing these drugs and how that may affect younger people who look up to athletes as heroes and want to be like them.

[Pheesh]

Yeah, considering how seriously sports in America are taken at the collegiate and even high-school level, I see no way to stop kids as young as 14/15 from taking steroids, if you're allowing all the guys that they're aspiring to be like from doing it.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Yeah, considering how seriously sports in America are taken at the collegiate and even high-school level, I see no way to stop kids as young as 14/15 from taking steroids, if you're allowing all the guys that they're aspiring to be like from doing it.

Well unless we're going to disallow celebrities from drinking or doing drugs (or at least cease all mention of the fact), then I don't see that as a reason against.

[Pheesh]

Eh, I just think there's a difference between a kid smoking a joint or whatever cause his life is boring and a coach telling his players to take steroids or they'll be dropped from the team. Plus, drugs technically are illegal, and alcohol is illegal for minors, so if steroids were made legal for sports players/general public then that wouldn't really be a precedent anymore.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Well a grown man telling a teenager to take steroids is pretty fucking terrible. I don't think anyone would be okay with that because they're okay with professional athletes doing it by choice.