Cycling

Australian Rohan Dennis takes the lead in the Dauphiné after the team time trial. The more fancied time trial teams such as Astana, Movistar & Orica could'nt match BMC.

Sky again shit in the TTTs. Need to sort it out fast for the Tour.

Meanwhile, Lance continues to be a qunt:

Armstrong: I’m Voldemort, the one they want to pretend never lived
MATT DICKINSON THE TIMES JUNE 11, 2015 11:25AM

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Sport wants to forget about Lance Armstrong, make him vanish, not just expunge him from the record books but have him disappear like he never existed. The American knows it, feels it. “Who’s that character in Harry Potter that they can’t talk about?” he says. “Voldemort? The one everybody wants to pretend never lived.” That’s now Armstrong’s role.

One writer noted recently that cycling would never get over Armstrong. There are spasms of panic whenever anyone so much as mentions He Who Must Not Be Named.

It is as though putting Armstrong in a box, locking it and throwing away the key can make cycling feel better about itself and its black past but, really, how do you erase a story that big? You cannot just wish it away when it remains, as Armstrong says with ill-judged pride, more humongous even than Sepp Blatter’s downfall.

“Much bigger,” he says. “F***ing massive. I mean, nobody in the world thinks that that f***er [Blatter] is a really good guy. But for 15 years everybody in the world thought that Lance Armstrong was a really good guy. ‘That cancer guy, he’s our guy.’ So it’s bigger even than Fifa.”

His descent was epic, but while we know so many of the sordid details — the injections, transfusions, lying, cheating, bullying — it is a sign that the sport is still struggling to come to terms with the magnitude of the Armstrong scandal when even a charity bike ride provokes anxiety.

Is Armstrong so toxic that just cycling for a few days around France with Geoff Thomas, the former England footballer and fellow cancer survivor, is more of him than people can handle? Is he really such a dangerous contaminant that we cannot bear to see him riding for a good cause?

First, though, you might want to know how disgrace looks on Armstrong. On the surface, he seems remarkably well on it.

He is sitting in a large family house in the billionaire mountain resort of Aspen, Colorado, where you won’t get much change from $10 million for any home. He is just back from a game of golf. Anna Hansen, his long-time partner and mother of his two youngest children, is baking cookies. The sound of kids laughing echoes through the house.

He still has his rich friends and on a bike ride through Pitkin County (where, irony of ironies, he is honorary deputy sheriff with the pointy badge to prove it), he points out Roman Abramovich’s mansion. The Chelsea owner is an occasional party guest.

Ignominy does not look too tough as he pulls another bottle of expensive wine from the cellar. He reckons that so far he is down $20 million in legal battles and damages, but he has recouped plenty by selling a home in Hawaii and still owns two houses, the other in Austin, with expensive art on the walls.

He has a lifestyle most would envy yet you do not have to scratch too far below the surface, or see him down several afternoon beers, to notice that his toxic status eats away at him.

He was The Man. Superman. The guy who smashed cancer, then climbed to the sporting summit on one testicle. The world revolved around him. Now?

After three years of endless legal meetings that have visibly aged him, Voldemort finds himself in therapy, talking of finding a better version of himself. It sounds as incongruous as it did from the lips of Tiger Woods, another fallen icon seemingly born not to be a nice guy but a hubristic winner.

The old, invincible Armstrong would have dismissed counselling as a crutch for cry babies. Now he has to pour out his heart about how he came to act like such a monster.

“We can all be better people,” he says. “And God knows I could. I mean, I was a complete d*** for a long time. I led a life that for 20-30 years everybody just stood around and said ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’, and then there was another ‘yeah’ and then a whole bunch more ‘yeahs’.

“Then you add in success and victories and money and fame and momentum. That is no way to learn how to handle personal interactions.

“I’ve been doing it [counselling] on and off for a while. More and more lately, actually. The most important thing in life — your personal wellbeing, your relationship with your loved ones — are you just going to ignore it because somebody might think you are some sort of wimp?”

He says that he is learning about contrition, especially for those believers and fans “who defended me and ended up looking like a fool ... Listen, if you could walk the world and face to face apologise I would.”

But the therapist evidently still has a bit of work to do given that, pushed on his main regret, Armstrong instantly returns to his comeback in 2009 rather than doping or human damage. He regrets being caught.

Perhaps counselling also helps him to face up to rejection, which must have been a novel experience when he was first disgraced but has now become depressingly familiar.

A pattern has emerged in which he takes a call from a project, often a charity. Then it goes quiet. Then he hears that a trustee or director or sponsor has been spooked by mention of Armstrong’s name. He never hears from that organisation again.

Even his own charity, Livestrong, forced him out and, while he says he wants to return, “that might take longer than any of it”.

The knock-backs have been hard to take, he says. It is why he expresses “gratitude” to Thomas for sticking by him and following through on his invitation to ride several stages of the Tour route in July, one day ahead of the real race, despite the inevitable criticism.

“Most people don’t have the guts to ride that out,” Armstrong said. “And Geoff, that’s a courageous thing.”

An unlikely friendship has formed, even if Armstrong does refer to Thomas’s old team as “Silver Palace”. The former footballer remains convinced that the benefits comfortably outweigh any unease about Armstrong’s involvement.

One rider pulled out, as did one sponsor, but he says that heightened global awareness is helping to reach the fundraising target of £1 million. There are those who fear the American using the ride for his own PR purposes, but Thomas insists that he is the one using Armstrong’s infamy for his cause.

The plan is for Armstrong to ride two or three stages, still to be confirmed, but not Alpe d’Huez. That mountain road has been deemed too volatile, but Armstrong says he thinks the reaction on the streets will surprise many people in its warmth.

“People think I have this bitter relationship with France, with its people. I like going there. I love it,” he says. “And I don’t know if certain people might they be concerned that, God forbid, the reaction is positive?”

Brian Cookson, the UCI president, has been among the most outspoken critics but, sitting side by side, footballer and cyclist ask what sport really has to fear now from Armstrong?

He has a life ban and it is not as though anyone, apart from him, is petitioning for it to be dropped. He accepts that he will never be back in cycling and does not seem too bothered. He barely rides his bike, does not watch many races on television.

Is he out of love with the sport he dominated? “That’s a little dramatic,” he replies, before adding: “Yes, more or less.”

He would like his banned lifted so that, at 43, he could compete in ironman triathlon races, but you suspect it is as much a matter of pride.

“The world was told I was the biggest fraud in the history of sport and I don’t think that’s true. I know that’s not true,” he says.

Armstrong is still bitter about his status as sport’s pariah, his sense that he is carrying the can for cycling’s EPO era when an unrepentant doper such as Alexander Vinokourov can run a leading team. He thinks he won those seven Tours de France, declines to accept that the burden should rest so heavily on his shoulders. “Why don’t you blame a perfect drug, because you should,” he says.

“We had a drug that was totally undetectable, unbelievably beneficial, and most would say, if monitored by a doctor, totally safe. What were we all gonna do? Trust me. We’re all in.”

It sounds like the therapist still has much work to do getting him to accept responsibility, but Armstrong is right to say that the sport remains full of double standards: redemption for some, benefit of the doubt for others; a free pass for some famous dopers who avoided detection, arch-villainy for him.

Of course, the magnitude of his story, and his lies, dwarfed any other, which brings us back to cycling still trying to come to terms with Armstrong, the damage he inflicted, the rise and fall, the ultimate cautionary tale in sport.

We can try to ignore it, pretend it does not exist, but Thomas thinks we should try to use it for something better. “It’s all about survivors,” he says. “I think Lance has the power to help me achieve what I want to do with the cancer network. We can’t change what’s gone in the past, but we can change the future.”

Some may hate it but, on the streets of France this summer, Voldemort returns.

(Geoff Thomas is riding the Tour de France for Cure Leukaemia. onedayahead.co.uk; justgiving.com/Geoff-Thomas-2015)

The Times

interesting article, thanks JGK

once an asshole always an asshole

Armstrong isn't completely wrong. But he was in the a position of being cyclist and manager of a team. Only Vinokourov was similar. But the allegations against Vino are of an equally, if not even more, serious nature.

In 2003, Andrey Kirilev died in the Paris-Nice after a crash. Kirilev's widow alleges that Vinokourov paid money to the riders to allow for him to win the race as a tribute to Kirilev. The case against him in the 2010 Liege Bastogne Liege is even stronger. Buying help from other teams was common in cycling, but not buying classic wins as in 2010. And all this apart from his drug taking and his team's continuing toeing the line of OTT doping.

Both deserve to spend time behind bars... never mind the FIFA alleged corruption, these guys forced youngsters to either risk their lives or give up their careers.

When I first got into Le Tour etc. I loved watching Vino's crazy attacks, taking on Armstrong, Ullrich etc. on climbs and descents, and even gatecrashing the sprinters' party on the Champs Elysees... I was more disappointed to see him uncovered as a doper than anyone else of that era. I know, barely anyone must have been clean. But they shouldn't be involved in the sport going forward. Don't just make one scapegoat, ban anyone who took part in the Tours of 1996-2005 from future involvement in cycling and annul all those Tours completely - stages, jerseys, GC positions where they still currently exist. Just put that decade in the record books as "not held".

Nibali takes the lead in the Dauphiné with Valverde 30s back & Froome a long 1.21 adrift.

And Froome won the final stage. van Garderen finished second and retook the overall lead. Brilliant race thus far.

beamer wrote:Both deserve to spend time behind bars... never mind the FIFA alleged corruption, these guys forced youngsters to either risk their lives or give up their careers.

When I first got into Le Tour etc. I loved watching Vino's crazy attacks, taking on Armstrong, Ullrich etc. on climbs and descents, and even gatecrashing the sprinters' party on the Champs Elysees... I was more disappointed to see him uncovered as a doper than anyone else of that era. I know, barely anyone must have been clean. But they shouldn't be involved in the sport going forward. Don't just make one scapegoat, ban anyone who took part in the Tours of 1996-2005 from future involvement in cycling and annul all those Tours completely - stages, jerseys, GC positions where they still currently exist. Just put that decade in the record books as "not held".

Yeah, Vino was one of my favourites too. Rasmussen was another.... mainly for their crazy attacks. Good choices. I'd extend that date back to 1991/2. Anyone who was anyone was doped then. This is favourite for its brazenness.

Froome sends a timely warning for the TdF with a late charge to win both the final stage and the Dauphiné. He looked out of contention just a couple of days ago.

Ouch

thats nasty. looks like he wasnt braking at all

Matt Brammeier suffered broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and a punctured lung.

Big Dog wrote:

Matt Brammeier suffered broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and a punctured lung.

And how's the car?

JGK wrote:

Big Dog wrote:
Matt Brammeier suffered broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and a punctured lung.

And how's the car?

still in shock and undergoing therapy

Ethics? The Gall! wrote:

JGK wrote:

Big Dog wrote:
Matt Brammeier suffered broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and a punctured lung.

And how's the car?

still in shock and undergoing therapy

That's one obstruction out of the way, at least...

Could've been a hell of a lot worse without that obstacle.

Jaysus - didn't realise that the Vuelta has started. Seems that we've only just finished the Tour.

Italy's Vincenzo Nibali (Team Astana) has been thrown out of the Vuelta a Espana for clinging to his team car in order to return inside the peloton after being involved in a collective crash in Stage 2. The video is very obvious. The team car pulls along side & Nibali suddenly has a gap of over 200m a few seconds later. I'm amazed he thought he could get away with it. The driver of the car was also thrown out.

PEDs - Performance Enhancing Drivers

Esteban Chaves from Orica Greenedge leads the Vuelta after stage two.

Good to see Sagan finally get a stage win. Chaves still retains the red jersey.

Big Dog wrote:Italy's Vincenzo Nibali (Team Astana) has been thrown out of the Vuelta a Espana for clinging to his team car in order to return inside the peloton after being involved in a collective crash in Stage 2. The video is very obvious. The team car pulls along side & Nibali suddenly has a gap of over 200m a few seconds later. I'm amazed he thought he could get away with it. The driver of the car was also thrown out.

Astana cheating. Who would have thunk it.

Nice stage win to young Aussie Caleb Ewan. He even left Sagan in his wake in the sprint for the line.

taipan wrote:

Big Dog wrote:Italy's Vincenzo Nibali (Team Astana) has been thrown out of the Vuelta a Espana for clinging to his team car in order to return inside the peloton after being involved in a collective crash in Stage 2. The video is very obvious. The team car pulls along side & Nibali suddenly has a gap of over 200m a few seconds later. I'm amazed he thought he could get away with it. The driver of the car was also thrown out.

Astana cheating. Who would have thunk it.

22nd of August

"We haven't seen each other since the Tour. There are lots of incidents in races, and what happens in the race stays in the race," Nibali said, adding: "At the time, I preferred not to mention it, but in 2010 Froome was excluded from the Giro for being towed by a car…"

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/nibali-and-aru-show-united-front-ahead-of-vuelta-a-espaa/