Lance Armstrong, the champion erased. What happened to him?

They forgot cycling and their favorite race over the years, but they will never be forgotten. The memory of parking in July will not stop either when it is the best month in the hardest sport. Because every July it exposes with more emphasis the winners of the Tour de France. This evokes all the winners since 1903, where Maurice Garin is the first and Tadej Pogacar the latter and the latest, the five of Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Indurain, but also warns of a restricted time in unconscious cycling but it happens, of existential emptiness. between 1999 and 2005, the Tours with no winner, as if the obvious remnant of a page of his history he had begun to torment.

There is no general view on the official website of the Tour of winners that shows the void, but, although hidden, the anomaly is still there: each classification of the indicated seven editions starts with the second type: Alex Zullethree times Jan Ullrich, Joseba Beloki, Andreas Klöden and Ivan Basso.

The simple and logical unknown, the erased champion, the one who never existed or so the powers of this sport consider it: Lance Armstrong. Even today the American means a violent clash of emotions. Leading, for some, is the flawless idol who buried a horrible cancer and rose to divo in the superhero category who looked at the world seven times from the top of the Champs-Elysées. At the wheel of his fame, him solid foundation to spread the global campaign against cancer. In the back, hidden and shown to the public in January 2013 for others, is the false champion there is no moral limit, built on lies and doping, silenced by the gag of coercion and threats to those who dared to sing.

The day Armstrong decided it was enough, that he could no longer keep quiet about it, he poured out his sins in a kind of public confession to the world listening to the journalist. Oprah Winfrey. Lance stopped playing the character, the one with “no, never, never” uttered several times in other interviews and even under oath right in front of American justice. The one who fires so much with a once harsh tone and arrogant look at his feeling of guilt caused by his skeptics and unbelievers, the unbelievers in the physical metamorphosis of a powerful classicomaniac – world champion and San Sebastian Classic champion data. of illness in 1996-, in unreachable climber derived from cancer. As brief and to the point are his responses as Winfrey’s questions:

-Did you use illicit substances or blood transfusions in all of your Tour achievements?

Yes.

-Is it possible to win the Tour without doping seven times in a row?

In my opinion, no.

The sunken face and glaring and fearful eyes, the depressing image of Lance stripped by force, removed three months before his UCI empire, is moving. Although he said nothing, he said it all, a striking contrast to how much he wanted to tell the world in 2004, when he went, in person and in public, to fix a personal matter in Simeon, exposed in a trial the instigator of all those who illegally entered Lance’s body, Dr. Michelle Ferrari, claiming he prescribed EPO and accusing Armstrong. The Italian, defeated by more than two and a half hours with the overall champion, jumped from the peloton to seek a breakaway and the Texan joined him. A few kilometers, roll, pat on the back, return to the peloton and bad smile at the camera with evil gestures of “shut up”.

“You made a big mistake, you should not testify against Dr. Ferrari and especially in suing me of defamation. I have no problem, I have time, money and I can destroy you whenever I want. Transalpine revealed a few years later that he told her in an ESPN documentary. Armstrong acted for much like in a mafia clan. The imposition of a law of silence on those who dared to reveal something of secret customs to the US Postal team led by Johan Bruyneel and the blood stamps, the initiation rite of the ‘Cosa Nostra’ performed behind the scenes included The blood transfusionalthough also included EPO and cortisone like another form of the American team’s sophisticated doping system. But one of his accomplices violated ‘Omertá’.

And Landis dropped it all

In my year after Armstrong, 2006, Floyd Landis extended American hegemony on the Tour but after a few days of wearing yellow in Paris he tested positive by triple the normal testosterone values ​​so that this ‘Grande Bouclé’ would land on Oscar Pereiro. In a provocative and long fictional story with a vengeful air, Landis’s attempts to keep the jersey are included a hacking attempt of the laboratory computer system that detected positive – by Chatenay -Malabry, to modify the results.

Armstrong didn’t know his 2009 restart would end. After serving a penalty, Landis, who was denied by all teams and 34 years old, sought a place from Armstrong in his new formation in 2010, the Radio Shack, pregnant then fight with Alberto counter in Astana. Lance’s refusal led to his countryman’s desire to sing, who was determined to be the informant who would pull Armstrong with him to nothing. He confessed what the Texan and his team have done over the years, and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) produced a devastating report with testimonies of more of Lance’s former colleagues – such as Hincapie, Leipheimer, Zabriskie and Hamilton-, in which the UCI followed to remove from the American its seven Tours. It was 2012 and in an October, certainly infamous month for Lance to be the same where he was diagnosed with cancer. Three months after the suspension, the truth came out, not remorse.

– Do you think you did something wrong? Winfrey asked her.

-No, and I know it’s scary.

Lance had no remorse for what he had done, yet another argument for those who had criminalized him, but that’s how he felt. In the nearly decade consumed since his confession, Armstrong has regretted not much but for shapes as noted in subsequent interviews with media such as the BBC and NBC. “What I did was not legal, but nothing can be changed. We did what we had to do to win. I want to change the person who made those things, maybe not the decisions, but the way he or she acts. The way he deals with people, the way he can’t stop fighting. This is unacceptable, unforgivable. ” insure.

Americans have always relied on doping as extensive ritual in the peloton of those people when terms like “hematocrit”, “biological passport” and other words related to doping. “It’s like saying we need to raise our tires or we need to carry water in drums. It’s part of the job. ” he said to Winfrey. In fact, some also think, Armstrong was nothing but a scapegoat who paid for everything.

gg.didomi.doWhenConsent(!window.didomiBypass, ‘c:instagram-tWmJgJpq’, function () {
var x = document.createElement(‘script’);
x.setAttribute(“type”,”text/javascript”);
x.setAttribute(“src”, “//www.instagram.com/embed.js”);
x.setAttribute(“charset”, “utf-8”);
$(“.instagram-media”).closest( “span” ).append(x);
});

Armstrong’s new life

Lance Armstrong has been reborn more than once. He did so after testicular cancer struck his body in 1996 and forced him to go through a process of chemotherapy and neurosurgery to remove a tumor in his head that also caused a metastasis. And after the world judged him in a televised trial before Winfrey. The former broker had to sell his mansion and squandered almost the entire wealth -over 100 million dollars-, between lawsuits, such as sponsors and the U.S. federal government, because the country’s mail service gave the team a name. He was banned for life and banned from participating in any Olympic sport, a restriction that took effect in 2013 when the International Swimming Federation (FINA) prevented him from participating in a trial.

Financially, Armstrong, now 50, has regained his health. The shares he bought from Uber in 2009 worth $ 100,000 reported millions in “an operation that saved my family”, as he himself admits and the American has other investments, as he did in the company Athletic Brewing, which makes non-alcoholic craft beer. Texan has also been in the news in recent years for establishment and directing two podcasts: THEMOVE, of cycling analysis, and The Forward, where he interviews personalities from a variety of fields. In addition, his best legacy, the Livestrong Foundation, continues to work. All this time, he was also seen in a meeting with Jan Ulrich, after helping the German overcome his psychiatric problems.

gg.didomi.doWhenConsent(!window.didomiBypass, ‘c:instagram-tWmJgJpq’, function () {
var x = document.createElement(‘script’);
x.setAttribute(“type”,”text/javascript”);
x.setAttribute(“src”, “//www.instagram.com/embed.js”);
x.setAttribute(“charset”, “utf-8”);
$(“.instagram-media”).closest( “span” ).append(x);
});

The proper functioning of the various spheres of your life also covers the most familiar and emotional. “I am proud to have rebuilt my life without the help of media or networks, I just owe it to my family and my audience. I feel calm on the street, people show an indifferent attitude towards me “, he reflects in an extensive interview given in October on the podcast of doctor Peter Attia. A conversation which broke down he’s already the fights that can arise with his teammates US PostalDespite the fact that many of them gave him as testimonies, they were left behind. Except in two cases.

“In that group, 95% of the runners were brothers and we were together again in the war, except for Floyd (Landis) and Tyler (Hamilton), who never were,” Lance said, sharing photos of others’ t elsewhere in the networks.composing him, constantly claiming the fight against cancer -he made an in-depth publication on Instagram on the day of the 25th anniversary of his diagnosis-, and most of all, enjoys sports. He has barely gained a little over six kilos since he retired. “I went out on a mountain bike. If I didn’t do sports I’d go crazy.” And he crushes himself in longing for the misery of his most beautiful day. “I have a policy not to bring the car when I ride my bike. If I had trained well for a week or two, I wouldn’t have thought I’d be 500 watts moving like I used to, but I might have reached 350. ”Nearly a decade later, Lance is still Armstrong, the born again, the one who suffers for pleasure, the one who has no regrets. Or almost nothing.