A bit more than a day ago, Lance Armstrong tweeted:
And yes, this will be [my] final Tour de France. It’s been a great ride. Looking forward to 3 great weeks.
Really? I have a hard time believing that über-competitor Armstrong will call it quits after this Tour. If he keeps racing his bike, the Tour will beckon him next year the way heroin beckons a junkie to come and get a fix. The Tour is in Armstrong’s blood. It’s his life force, I suspect. Without the Tour, he’s what? Just your average run-of-the-mill celebrity cancer crusader who had (?) a penchant for snogging nubile young things.
I can imagine circumstances where Armstrong might not compete next year. But each of the scenarios I come up with has to do with an investigation into some alleged doping practices on the US Postal Service and Discovery pro cycling teams. An investigation that’s being done by Jeff Novitzky of BALCO fame. (No, not Falco, who also did not write the lyric “Rock me, Victor Conte.”)
Juliet Macur, of The New York Times, pointed out in an article published yesterday:
An even longer and perhaps more difficult task [than this year’s “grueling 2,263-mile journey” that is the Tour de France] is now in the hands of antidoping officials and federal investigators who seek to build a fraud case against Lance Armstrong and a group of his associates suspected of being involved in systematic doping.
In short, it will take a long time to build a case, and whatever the results of the investigation are, it won’t be complete before the Tour ends a few weeks from now. And there’s no guarantee that they will find enough evidence to bring a legal case against Armstrong or anyone else.
Getting back to this year’s Grande Boucle, I’m not going to predict who might or might now win the 2010 edition of le Tour, which begins on Saturday in Rotterdam. But it certainly wouldn’t surprise me too terribly much to see Armstrong sharing the podium with Alberto Contador again this year.
And if he accomplishes that, the pressure will be on to race cycling’s biggest event next year. RadioShack will be wanting to see some return on their investment, and the PR they get with Armstrong in the Tour is the return they want to see. If Armstrong doesn’t manage to beat Contador, I expect he might want another shot at the Spaniard in a year’s time. Unless he gets caught up in some sort of scandal, like, oh I don’t know, doping or something like that. Up to now, though, those kinds of accusations have rolled off Lance like water off a duck’s back.
I’m more inclined to believe that Lance is either motivating himself, or engaging in a bit of psychological warfare with his opponents when he says this year is his last. To paraphrase Sam Abt, cycling journalist extraordinaire, Armstrong likes mind games the way most people like a nice cup of coffee in the morning. (Hat tip to cyclingfansanon for the quote.) Perhaps this should be Lance Armstrong’s theme song:
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Rock Racing team owner, and all-around cycling bad boy, Michael Ball got a visit from the Feds a few days back. Seems they were interested in having a bit of a look around Ball’s house. As the New York Daily News reported:
FDA investigator Jeff Novitzky, who directed the BALCO steroid probe, helped obtain the search warrant on Ball’s home in Los Angeles, according to sources. The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Central District of California, which is standing behind Novitzky’s probe, declined to comment on the case.
The story goes on to say:
In an interview with The News on May 26, Ball commended Landis for confessing to doping and for coming forward with information on others, and declared he was “150%” certain that the government’s drug probe wouldn’t touch his own team.
“Floyd is in a better place,” Ball said. “Someone needed to come clean who was on the inside, who had lived it.”
Ball said in that interview that he had not been contacted by any federal or anti-doping investigators.
Looks like he’s heard from them now. O to have been a fly on the wall observing that search. I wonder what they found? And I wonder if/when we will find out?
A pre-Tour surprise?
Over the past few days, I’ve seen some chatter on Twitter suggesting that the Wall Street Journal has some sort of blockbuster article coming out just before the Tour. One in which Lance Armstrong figures prominently. One rumor had it that the article would have already hit by now. So far, nothing. I’m guessing things will stay that way, unless the reporter who first broke the story about Floyd Landis coming clean happens to have some inside information. Which is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. But I rather doubt it. I’m guessing that the next few days will pass, and Lance will be among the starters in Rotterdam. The Tour’s the thing. And as of Saturday, it’s on.
Oh the WSJ may just wait until Friday before it blows everything up (if it can), who knows? And I do hope this will be LA’s LAST TdF. He deserves to go into an uneasy retirement IMO, creep….
str
Depending on what tune certain birdies are singing to the Feds, I expect that whenever Armstrong really retires from the sport, it will be a very uneasy retirement.
I reckon LA is starting to feel the heat. He might be an egomaniac and a psychopath, but the combination of WADA overseers at the the tour this year (which might “neutralize” any knowledge of when the testers are coming) plus the ongoing federal investigation are compelling reasons to get out of cycling, perhaps even for people like him.
Clever as always, he veils it in sentiment—been a great ride, blah blah blah. I am waiting for more excuses about him needing to spend more time with his kids or something similar.
Nope, he will cash out of the peloton this year, and before the federal investigation gets too hot he will have ~12 months to garnish appearance fees and other income before his image gets tarnished in America.
Anyway, cynical as I sound, I am still looking forward to the tour start this weekend.
Kind Regards,
Jonathan
Jonathan,
Lance certainly is a clever one. He’s mastered the media and PR in a way that few athletes have ever done. You may well be right. Maybe the kitchen is getting too hot even for the likes of Armstrong.
I’m sure he will be able to feather his financial nest a bit more before things start to get really ugly. No doubt he’ll have enough socked away somewhere so that he won’t need to worry about earning a living once the stuff has really hit the fan.
All that said, like you, I’m still looking forward to this year’s Tour.
Some good articles he-ah:
Superhuman performance could betray sport drug cheats from newscientist.com: http://goo.gl/LxZh
And here is one from SI that takes a big swing at LA by saying his blood profile from last year is a perfect example of what to look for in an “unnatural” profile: http://goo.gl/dulK It also has the disclaiming that dehydration can affect levels.. (as apparently the writer doesn’t want LA to block his twitter account).
On that.. I’ve read a few twittererers lately.. Vaughters being one.. that say LA is getting block happy for anybody that makes an unfavorable tweet.. Vaughters blocked, perhaps for the soft pedaling comments..
one wonders.. is that just more of a “control” mind game he plays? If someone else comes out and backs up Landis’s crazy accusations as being.. real?! and all the tweeters start flaming a Mr. LA.. will he block the whole world of twitter? its exciting, nobody knows what will happen next.. 🙂
Oh.. and this nugget from Bill Strickland
@TrueBS Just heard my third No-RadioShack-in-Tour rumor. Two came from same source, this one was different.
update on my final sentence posted.. Strickland did another update that says he has verified with “better” sources that shack is indeed racing.. will be fun to see Horner race.. and all the drama.. so good!
There’s a lesson in that somewhere. (Like, don’t put anything out in any form until you’re certain of your information, perhaps?)
I would be surprised to see RS withdraw after going to all the trouble of getting over there, etc. The Lance vs. Alberto show, version 2.0 will be interesting, as will a whole lot of other plots, subplots and drama.
And it will be fun to see Chris Horner racing, to be sure.
Undoubtedly, there is an upper limit to human performance. But where does that limit lie and how do we determine it? Is it even possible to say “This is the best a human can do clean?” And does the fact that some humans achieve high levels of performance via chemistry mean that it would be impossible for an athlete with equal natural ability to achieve that high level with an equally high level of training?
I would guess that in the 1930’s, people just might have said that levels of performance that clean athletes can achieve today were improbable if not impossible.
That being said, I think that some performances might form something like “probable cause” for further investigation.
But let us not forget that, while some doper just may be blazing up Alpl d’Huez Harley style at 450 watts, there may be any number of lesser ability riders, still doped, and yet only putting out 350 watts.
WHY would you not believe? Hell, he’s probably only STILL racing now because he wasn’t able to win last year & after what went down, he’s more than motivated to crush the lying, sniveling jerk that did. And I hope he does. GO LANCE! LIVESTRONG!
And as for the ASO keeping Lance & the Shackers out of the Tour – oh sure, the economy keeps going up in flames all over the globe, the Euro is on life support, the French so-called fans barely showed up at ALL for Paris-Nice & the Dauphine which shows just how much they now care about the sport in general & the ASO is going to barr the ONE guy GUARANTEED to keep the race front & center on multiple continents & media? Oh yeah. Absolutely.
As as for the “fraud” case against Lance. What a FARCE. The only REAL fraud was committed by FRAUD LANDIS. When are they going to indict that piece of SHIT? Now THERE is a real CREEP.
Susie,
I’m sure that the competitive fires burn deeply within the enigma that is Lance Armstrong. No doubt he continues to race in hopes he will win the Tour again. And if nothing prevents him, I would expect him to continue. Especially if he doesn’t beat Contador in this rematch.
I also can’t imagine the ASO wanting to keep one of the bigger draws, and a potential cash cow, away. That just makes no sense — especially from an economic point of view.
As for Floyd, he may have lied when he denied using PEDs, but he did use the money for what he said he would. Doubtless, if he’d told the truth back then, many (most? all?) would not have donated. The fraud, if it was fraud (and I’ve heard some lawyers tell me that though Landis lied, a fraud case against him would most likely fail), would have been in the sales pitch.
On the other hand, Landis’ lying then doesn’t mean he’s lying now. If others corroborate what he’s said, Lance and a bunch of others could be in real trouble.
What would be the bigger fraud: lying to raise funds to fight an anti-doping charge, or lying about being dope-free and garnering millions upon millions of sponsorships and endorsement deals, and then winning at least a few of seven straight Tours de France with the benefit of PEDs?
For me the jury is still out on whether Armstrong used PEDs, but if it’s proved to be true, he would be a way bigger fraud than Landis. And that would be a real shame, given all the good he’s done for the fight against cancer.
When I first began to follow cycling – it wasn’t that long ago, somewhere in the Pyrenees of the 2004 Tour de France – it was immediately apparent to me that I had better root for every cyclist in the professional peloton if I didn’t want to be miserable almost all the time. As a philosophy I recommend it.
But it gets harder every year to get excited about the Tour. It’s not boredom, I still like the scenery, there are plenty of interesting riders to follow, Phil and Paul are as charming as ever, and I’m certainly not dismayed by the issue of performance-enhancing drugs (if I were, I would have quit watching in, oh, 1896 or so). I think it’s chiefly the people. As soccer attracts hooligans, so cycling attracts the virtual pitchfork-and-torches crowd.
I don’t know when that started, or why. I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t the extraordinarily contentious personalities running the cycling organizations who gave the hoi polloi the idea that this kind of behavior is acceptable. If you ask me, Dick Pound has a lot to answer for. I ignore this bad behavior as much as I can, but if you read the cycling news you can’t avoid it entirely, because cycling journalists who can’t think of any better hook for a story will keep bringing it up.
The odd thing is, I sometimes go to actual bike races, and when I do, either as a volunteer marshal or an amateur photographer, I end up talking to lots of people, and in all that time I have only met one person who would fall into the category I describe. It was a guy who had been rude about Floyd Landis, and who was relentlessly hitting on me, although I was pretty busy directing pedestrians at a street crossing. I pointed out several better places for him to have a view of the race but he did not take the hint. He then complained because a delivery van driver came up and interrupted his one-sided conversation to ask me to call 911 for a store patron who had fallen and hit his head. (It’s the most useful thing I’ve ever done at a bike race. I was delighted to help out. That was a day when I definitely earned the free t-shirt and box lunch.) So yes, there is at least one person like that.
Now I think of that guy every time I look at this site. Until the second half of May, I used to enjoy the discussions very much, whether or not I participated. Then it turned into the kind of Can-You-Top-This contest in vulgarity you can get on every other cycling site. I mean, there’s a limit, and I’ve reached mine.
Just came across this at Cyclingnews:
Landis allegations continue to rumble on. The Wall Street Journal are set to publish an article tomorrow in which the disgraced 2006 Tour de France winner goes into details about his relationship with Armstrong and the doping practices he encountered.
Kimmage believes that the allegations, coupled with the federal involvement in the US could have heavy implications for Armstrong.
“I do feel that things have changed for him and that the tide has turned, even the general public. People have listened to Landis and what he’s said and this is the turning point now.”
Cyclingnews attempted to speak to Armstrong at yesterday’s Tour de France teams presentation but he refused to talk with us.
Mike,
Thanks. Figures this would blow up while I’m traveling. 😉 We’ll see if the article is posted online, or whether it’s only in the print version. If it’s online, hopefully it will be outside the WSJ’s pay wall.
they posted the big one:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704911704575326753200584006.html
“Extrinsic evidence of a prior inconsistent statement by a witness is not admissible unless the witness is afforded an opportunity to explain or deny the same and the opposite party is afforded an opportunity to interrogate the witness thereon, or the interests of justice otherwise require. This provision does not apply to admissions of a party-opponent as defined in rule 801(d)(2).”
– FRE 613(b)
I have no idea why this seems relevant or important to me right now. I’m hammered.
Well, well, well. Looks like there’s fireworks before the Fourth of July.