The fact that this miserable excuse for a man still thinks like this, indicates that even the life ban is too light a penalty! He has ruined so many other lives, and he wants to be forgiven??? WTF???
What a fuckwit!
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Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong hopes his lifetime ban will be overturned so he can compete again.
I love the concept of just using natural resources, wherever possible.
And of course, I have a love of yachting, so this really appeals to me. What an incredible speed has been achieved here! And without using any global warming energy!!!
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AAP
Australian Paul Larsen has claimed a new sailing speed record, skimming a custom-built craft through African waters.
In calm Namibian conditions, Victorian-born Larsen, 42, on Sunday achieved an average 59.39 knots over 500 metres, overtaking the previous 55.65-knot record set in 2010 by a kite surfer.
A World Sailing Speed Record Council representative was on hand at Walvis Bay, where Larsen repeatedly broke the world record over a number of days, culminating in Sunday’s fastest attempt.
“On the day it was so calm we were wondering if it was even worth going out, but in this craft speed is determined by power versus drag and on this occasion it just all came together,” an overjoyed Larsen told AAP by phone from Namibia.
Sailing the second incarnation of his 40-foot-long and 40-foot-wide carbon fibre Vestas Sailrocket, Larsen said the record comes after a decade of attempts, inspired by a childhood fascination.
“From playing around with floating ice cream container lids in rural Victoria, I just developed this fascination with aerodynamics and hydrodynamics: experimenting with wind and water power,” said Larsen, who grew up at Healesville in the Yarra Valley.
The engineering degree dropout has worked with a professional team to build and modify the unique Sailrocket, which was manufactured on the Isle of Wight.
“By putting the sail right over one side and angling it, there’s no overturning levers … it doesn’t matter how much wind blows onto the boat, it won’t tip over … so those forces instead generate a huge amount of drive and power,” he said.
“I’m achieving 2.5-times the wind speed with this boat.”
Footage of a helmeted Larsen reaching speeds in excess of 63 knots in the bright orange craft end in jubilation as he and his team realise they have finally smashed the record.
But the challenge won’t end for the Australian, who is now based at Weymouth on England’s southwest coast.
“I’ve always loved sailing (and) always been fascinated by what you could possibly do with a boat. This can mean so much for the future of design and racing.”
© 2012 AAP
I no longer give a single solitary f*** who wins the next Le Tour, or Giro, or La Vuelta!
But I will continue to watch these events, purely, and simply, to appreciate, and admittedly, be awed, about the beautiful countryside of Europe. I love the historical narratives that the commentators make, on some of the countryside, and many of the historic buildings that the drug cheats ride through, or pass, but that are still nearby.
But as far as who wins a stage, or a mountain climb, I no longer give a sh**. And more’s the pity, because the clean rider’s suffer for this. They are the real heroes, but as with most heroes, their efforts, and achievements, will go unnoticed.
It is for these people, the innocents, that my heart breaks!
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Is there a sport more rotten with drug abuse than pro cycling? Maybe weightlifting. Or heroin running. Yeah, drugs are probably more common in heroin running than professional cycling. So that’s a starting point for the sport’s comeback, I suppose.
On the other hand, does cycling even need to make a comeback? The various international bodies that run the sport seem to be having one of their perennial dope fiend hunts at the moment but really, who are they fooling? The sport’s been so rotten for so long that the stink of it never, ever goes away. It can’t. As soon as one scandal clears, another one breaks.
The sport’s been so rotten for so long that the stink of it never, ever goes away
I’m gonna suggest something a little left field now, and I’m not being entirely stupid about it. A little, but not entirely stupid.
Perhaps cycling could become a demonstration sport at the next Olympics. The first sport to demo what happens when we just give up and let rip with the drugs. Let the dopers have their way. These guys are never going away, because the pressures that drive them or entice them to load up with the chemicals or monkey gland extracts or whatever are never going away. As long as someone thinks they can beat the tests, they’ll try, and as long as everyone knows that , the incentive to cheat is amplified.
So why not just say, bugger it. Let ‘em dope.
The results on the road or track or wherever can only improve, and the occasional sight of some steroidal fiend coming off their pushy as their monstrously disfigured heart explodes out through their mouth can only serve as a cautionary tale to the rest of us.
Seriously. Why do we bother getting worked up over this stuff any more? Why invest so much time and capital in trying to beat the cheats? Just let them cheat openly. In all sports. Let the Chinese pharmaceutical industry go head to head with the US and European multinationals. Would it make the spectacle of competition any less spectacular? It would be no more unfair than a team turning up with a radical new piece of equipment based on some quantum leap in materials science.
I for one find myself struggling to give much of a toss about any sport letting the dopers run free. And if there remains a large enough cohort of athletes who don’t fancy becoming a human drug cabinet, well, they can compete in their own, amateur league.
This stuff is never going away. Not while there’s so much money at stake.
The lives, and achievements, of genuine athletes, this evil man, and his lying and cheating conspirators and co-horts, have destroyed, beggars description!
There can be no man-made penalty severe enough, to punish this man! All I can hope is, that Karma will punish him to the fullest extent! And I would not wish it on him, but should the forces that be, decide to punish him, for his abuse of the second chance of life he was given, then I would not shed, one, single, solitary, tear, for the death of this disgusting man!
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Lance Armstrong announces he is to step down as chairman of the Livestrong cancer-fighting charity.Photo: Getty Images
Lance Armstrong says he is stepping down as chairman of his Livestrong cancer-fighting charity so the group can focus on its mission instead of the doping allegations surrounding the former cycling champion.
The move came a week after the US Anti-Doping Agency released a massive report detailing accusations of widespread doping by Armstrong and his teams when he won the Tour de France seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005.
The document’s purpose was to show why USADA has banned him from cycling for life and ordered 14 years of his career results erased – including those Tour titles.
It contains sworn statements from 26 witnesses, including 11 former teammates.
Armstrong, who was not paid a salary as chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, will remain on its 15-member board.
His duties leading the board will be turned over to vice-chairman Jeff Garvey, who was founding chairman in 1997.
“This organisation, its mission and its supporters are incredibly dear to my heart,” Armstrong said in a statement.
“Today therefore, to spare the foundation any negative effects as a result of controversy surrounding my cycling career, I will conclude my chairmanship.”
Foundation spokeswoman Katherine McLane said the decision turns over the foundation’s big-picture strategic planning to Garvey.
Armstrong strongly denies doping, but did not fight USADA accusations through arbitration, saying he thinks the process is unfair.
Armstrong’s inspiring story of not only recovering from testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain but then winning the world’s best-known bike race helped his foundation grow from a small operation in Texas into one of the most popular charities in the country.
Armstrong drew legions of fans – and donations – and insisted he was drug free at a time when doping was rampant in professional cycling.
In 2004, the foundation introduced the yellow “Livestrong” bracelets, selling more than 80 million and creating a global symbol for cancer awareness and survivorship.
“As my cancer treatment was drawing to an end, I created a foundation to serve people affected by cancer. It has been a great privilege to help grow it from a dream into an organisation that today has served 2.5 million people and helped spur a cultural shift in how the world views cancer survivors,” Armstrong said.
As chairman, Armstrong did not run the foundation’s day-to-day operations, which are handled by Livestrong president and chief executive Doug Ulman.
Armstrong’s statement said he will remain a visible advocate for cancer issues, and he is expected to speak at Friday night’s 15th anniversary gala for Livestrong in Austin.
“My family and I have devoted our lives to the work of the foundation and that will not change. We plan to continue our service to the foundation and the cancer community. We will remain active advocates for cancer survivors and engaged supporters of the fight against cancer,” Armstrong said.
The foundation reported a spike in contributions in late August in the days immediately after Armstrong announced he would no longer fight doping charges and officials moved to erase his Tour victories.
Daniel Borochoff of CharityWatch said last week it may take some time for donors to digest the allegations against Armstrong.
“Individuals that admire and support an individual who is later found out to be severely tarnished, don’t want to admit it, don’t want to admit that they’ve been duped,” Borochoff said. “People, though, do need to trust a charity to be able to support it.”
AP
There can no longer be any doubt that Lance Armstrong has been the biggest cheat, sport has ever known. And I am happy to say, to people I spoke to, all those many years ago, both friends, and acquaintances,saying that Armstrong was not all he appeared to be, I TOLD YOU SO!!!
But what amazes me, is that people, in all sports, but especially cycling, still keep cheating! Every year, in Le Tour, more and more cheats are exposed.
Are the world’s elite cyclists, really such stupid people? Are they really so incredibly, and utterly stupid people? And, as a result, why would one want to watch a sport, whose participants contain absolute idiots.
And never knowing, if the winner this year, will be found to have cheated, in tests conducted in subsequent years. And who can believe again, that a stage winner, is clean. And that he has deserved his victory.
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Australian cyclist named in drug case
The GreenEDGE team’s Matt White. Photo: Supplied
EXCLUSIVE
THE head of Australia’s new cycling team, Matt White, has been named in the United States Anti-Doping Agency investigation into Lance Armstrong as a drug user by one of his former teammates central to the inquiry.
White, who rode on the Armstrong-led US Postal Services team from 2001 to 2003, is now the head sports director of Orica-GreenEDGE cycling team. He is also Cycling Australia’s professional co-ordinator and a national selector. And as part of his Cycling Australia position, he was men’s road team sports director at the London Olympics.
The 38-year-old Sydneysider was named in USADA’s ”reasoned decision” document from evidence submitted by another ex-USPS teammate, American Floyd Landis.
Landis, who tested positive for excessive testosterone levels in the 2006 Tour de France that he initially won, only to lose the title and get a two-year ban, names White in a copied email in the USADA dossier.
His name is in an ”exhibit” to Landis’ affidavit that adjoins its 202-page ”reasoned decision” for the handing down of a life ban to Armstrong and stripping all his results since August 1998.
In point 35 of Landis’ 14-page affidavit, he describes how the then USPS head sports director, Johan Bruyneel, ”initiated a separate conversation over the phone with me on how to use Human Growth Hormone [HGH]” during a training block for the 2003 Vuelta a Espana.
Landis recalls how he bought HGH and Andriol, an oral testosterone, from team ”trainer” Jose Marti, who lived in Valencia, Spain, and along with Bruyneel and doctor Luis Garcia del Moral were three of five former Armstrong associates also charged by USADA. Landis says: ”I then spent substantial time training with fellow USPS team members ‘Rider-9′ and Michael Barry and shared, and discussed, the use of HGH, testosterone and EPO with them while training.”
Barry, a Canadian, has admitted to doping and, while now retired, was banned by USADA on Wednesday for six months and stripped of his results from May 13, 2003 to July 31, 2006.
The redaction of a name and insertion of ”Rider-9” is to keep that person’s identity anonymous. But it becomes clear in ”Exhibit B” of Landis’ affidavit in a copied document titled ”Forwarded conversation”, sent from Landis to an anonymous recipient on April 30, 2010.
On page 2 of that document, the last two lines of the first paragraph that again refer to 2003 are almost verbatim to what Landis said in his affidavit. They read: ”While training for that Vuelta, I spent a good deal of time training with Matthew White and Michael Barry and shared the testosterone and EPO that we had and discussed the use thereof while training.”
White is not the only Australian named in USADA’s ”reasoned decision” into its case against Armstrong, Bruyneel, del Moral, Marti, Dr Pedro Celaya and Italian trainer Michele Ferrari.
Other Australians named include Queensland’s Allan Davis and the ACT’s Michael Rogers. Davis, now a member of Orica-GreenEDGE, has been named in evidence pertaining to the 2006 Operation Puerto sting in Spain. While he was later cleared by a Spanish court, the USADA dossier names Davis in Appendix K, among riders connected to Dr Eufamiano Fuentes.
Rogers, who rides for the British Sky team, was named in American rider Levi Leipheimer’s affidavit as one of several cyclists who attended training camps in 2005 at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, with Ferrari. But Rogers told The Age that during his association with Ferrari while on the T-Mobile team, he was never offered drugs. Attempts to contact White were unsuccessful.
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