I understand the worship. If he hadn’t doped, then winning 7 times in a row would have meant a supreme dedication to hard work and strong will. That’s something folks look up to.
Heck, I know where you can find binders full of idolizeable women with natural breasts !!
Context, please? I sthis still about the fact that he used PED once, way back when? Or has a search of his property turned up a stack of dead hookers or something? WTF has Cartooniverse all a-twitter?
This is a part of the reason for my O.P. I don’t have cancer. I’ve not had cancer. So, from an outsider’s viewpoint, I hear it’s a real fucker. To work through it and continue to be at the top of your sport is to me laudable.
Turns out, it was nothing of the sort.
ETA: Ogre, he was juicing the quality of his red blood cells as well as the quantity. Subtle, but quite…uh…empowering.
How was he accomplishing that, and what’s the evidence?
If he hadn’t have doped, and he hadn’t have won 7 times in a row, how likely would he have been to create the LiveStrong charity in the first place?
Seems to me it was his very actions that helped people.
There is a very long and detailed thread in the Game Room right now that should answer all of your questions.
And I haven’t read the Game Room thread, but Ogre might want to check thisout too.
Cheated at bike racing.
Raised over $470 million dollars for cancer research.
Yeah, I saw that this morning, and I also read a summary of the USADA’s report. I’m not a competitive cyclist, and I don’t follow cycling, but they banned him on the strength of testimony, right? Doesn’t anyone find that extremely suspicious?
Seriously. Whole thread. Very detailed. Many questions answered.
Sigh. So you already knew the context and the backstory, but you just want to discuss it further. Why not just say that instead of blinking all wide-eyed like, “Higuys! What’s all this about doping, then?”
He didn’t “sucker” anyone. In a sport where everyone was obviously doping, only the willfully ignorant would believe that the dominant competitor was the one guy who was clean.
Anyway, this Pitting makes no fucking sense unless he was skimming Livestrong donations or something.
“I want my donation back!”
“We’ve already spent it on drug trials.”
“Your chairman was cheating!”
Nah, what I find suspicious is the number of witnesses that cut deals in exchange for testimony.
LA almost certainly did what virtually all the other top competitiors did at the time, albeit more successfully. The governing body should simply invalidate all those races and erase them from the record. Instead they’re trying to make LA the scapegoat for their own egregious and long standing incompetence. The real crime is pretending that this wide spread cheating wasn’t an understood part of the process.
Dedication to riding round France on a bike faster than anybody else. Why could he not have dedicated all his effort and willpower to something actually useful?
Because riding a bike really fast is all that he’s good at? Is everyone but teachers aned firefighters useless in your world?
Agree 100%.
He was hardly the only guy doping and there’s a reason the policing of it is so lax.
Beyond that, the OP seems to be saying that if he’d doped but NOT raised money for cancer research, that would have been better.
Wasn’t this deuce diagnosed with cancer nearly 20 years ago? When you are the type of person who can muster up super hero strength to train to the top of **anything **in this world, that has residual effect on your character. It makes you a killer who doesn’t give up, in general…not just in particular to biking or football or tennis.
You end up doing a lot of ‘useful’ things that most people don’t think you can do, or don’t think they themselves would be able to do until they see you do it on a grand scale. It isn’t that hard to understand why people look up to athletes.
I wish he’d done something like start a cancer foundation that raised $470 million for cancer research. That would have been useful.
Riding a bike is just stupid, though.
There’re varying degrees of useful. Professional athletes are entertainers; so they do serve a purpose by providing diversion for those who enjoy the sport. Are they vital to a thriving society? I don’t think so. No more, anyway, than clowns, mimes, and accordian players.