Lance Armstrong Can Still Live Strong

Lance Armstrong Can Still Live Strong
Lance Armstrong has thrown in the towel with the air of a martyr. He has announced that he will not fight the USADA on doping charges,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], not because he is admitting guilt, but because "enough is enough" and he is just the victim of an "unconstitutional witch-hunt."
The USADA has said piously that it's a "sad day for all of us who love sport and our athletic heroes" and said it will ban him for life and strip him of his seven Tour de France titles,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
After the 2000 Sydney Olympics,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Jones was America's hero. She'd won five medals in track and field. She was showcased in an IMAX film called Top Speed. She became one of the first female millionaires in track and field. When she finally pleaded guilty in 2007 to lying about using steroids she lost everything. She was sentenced to six months in prison. The bank foreclosed on her mansion. She had to sell off her mother's house to raise money. "Being number one and being Marion Jones meant nothing in prison," she said on the Piers Morgan television show earlier this year.
Armstrong might lose his seven titles but he seems confident that he is in little danger of losing anything else. In his book he is still number one and he is still Lance Armstrong, the great white hope of cancer survivors everywhere. "I know who won those seven Tours, my teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours," he said in his statement.
By calling it quits instead of risking being found guilty in court or in arbitration, he can play more sinned against than sinning. He talked about being "the fittest 40-year old on the planet" and the work he plans to do with his foundation and its milestone of raising $500 million.
That's not chump change for an athlete who is quitting a fight under a cloud,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]. But Armstrong is obviously gambling on the fact that drugs and doping have become so commonplace these days that the public is increasingly blasé about them,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
Now if Armstrong had been caught in a sex scandal -- that might have been far more serious for his future endorsements, his foundation and his stature as one of cycling's all-time greats. Tiger Woods found that out the hard way. His endorsements career came to a screeching grand slam of a halt after his extramarital affairs hit the tabloids. More than a dozen women claimed to have had affairs with him. Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a tree. His wife left him.
Mind you, none of this had anything to do with his golf. But AT Accenture, Gatorade, Gillette all dropped him like a hot potato. Woods who had a goody-goody image in public and played a genteel sport had been caught in the cardinal advertising sin -- of not being the wholesome family man he professed to be. He became endorsement dog food.
Will the same thing happen to Lance Armstrong? After all, the charges against him relate directly to his sport. Will the Livestrong collection of shoes and apparel be retired? Will all those yellow rubber bands become collectors' items? Nike has already said it will stick by Armstrong. Rovell guesses that donations to his foundation will go down but "Armstrong won't lose the people who he told to live strong, who he inspired to fight on when they had lost their hair,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], when chemo had ravaged their bodies just like it had invaded his." His advertisers are more likely to remember that in 2007, when he was already in the last lap of his cycling career, he became the spokesman for a small caffeine-free energy drinks company. In three years its sales had grown five-fold and it raised $23 million in funding according to CNBC.
The public has become so inured to doping stories now that it pretty much assumes every athlete takes something or the other in the race to the top. Its legality seem to be more a matter of technicality and timing than any great moral failure. Athletes have blamed everything for failing drug tests. Tyler Hamilton who accused Armstrong of doping said his red blood cell boost was because of a twin who died in utero and somehow contributed some blood cells to him before dying. Another Tour de France winner,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Alberto Contador, said the clenbuterol in his blood came from a steak that came from a cow that must have been dosed with it.
For the public it's just an alphabet soup of polysyllabic chemical names. In locker rooms all over the world,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], everyone is discussing supplements and the line between which chemical combination is legal and which is not seems fuzzy to most of us who are not pros. The London Olympics tested athletes for 240 banned substances. That number will probably rise by the time Rio happens as the cat and mouse game between the athletes and the sports bodies continues. Fewer athletes tested positive for doping at the Beijing Olympics than at Athens. But that was regarded more as proof of sophisticated drugs rather than less doping. The "win at all costs" approach to sports that USADA head Travis Tygart lamented is now par for the course.
Armstrong will probably still live strong. Or at least strong enough because for most of us what has changed is the meaning of cheating. The accusation of performance enhancement drugs doesn't really sound like cheating anymore. The first as several posters have pointed out, who would you give them to, other than the doper who came in second, third or fourth? Secondly, the ICU is not dominated by the USA,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so the schizoid puritanism which grips our culture is unlikely to have much clout there. As the analysis of both drugs and the physiological effects of drugs gets better, doping becomes more difficult. For years the pharmacologists doing the doping were always two steps ahead of the tester, which is why several known dopers never failed a test. However, with the recent incredible improvement in analytical techniques,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and the ability to measure metabolomes, and then use programs to monitor their change for anything which may be drug related, the boot will be on the other foot for a few years. Cycling by and large has cleaned up now, but I do not see any great desire to reopen the past. Probably, not a Tour winner from post WWI until the last couple of years would be safe from having their title stripped. We also know what kind of power a human can put out during a race, and for the last couple of years nobody has outputted 6+ watts/kilo. So, I think that bygones will be left as bygones, and efforts will be best put to making it is as difficult as possible for doping to make a comeback.
It's true. Our society has elevated these athletes to such high position that it doesn't matter what they do. I feel sorry for those athletes that are trying to do things the correct way, without altering the bodies chemistry but the reality is everyone's probably using some kind of chemical aid to help with training and endurance. Many of the dietary supplements sold on American television probably would cross the line to what is considered "doping". If you start ruling out athletes because of doping you're left with nobody but the kids Little League teams.
I would still like to see an article on this that has bothered to contact the actual awarding organization for comment. Untill I hear something from them, the US needs to shut its profanity hole. as usual.
Am so offended my tax dollars were spent on this witch hunt,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]. As for the ten team mates who were willing to testify,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]. where was their character and honesty when this supposedly went on ? Oh right,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]. they were riding in Lances' slipstream where thay will forever remain. Why haven't their sneaky backstabbing names been released?
Lance will always be a hero to millions of cancer survivors . He will always be a legend to those of us who watched him "dance ' up the mountains in France . The USADA should be ashamed for wallowing in this drama when there has never been ONE drug test that was positive,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
I think its piddly news about Lance and other professional atheletes. I'm leaning towards the idea of certain drugs that they use be "controlled". A drug cannot subsume a person's genes- hence the referential term "enhance". A drug cannot work on form or carve the additional days and years of practice and study of one's ability and degree of sophistication. Yes, the use of the drugs is "unfair", but due to contraband status the degree of enhancement is like a rumor. But,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], those who are elite in their sport have far more than medicinal edge. I say that that elite athlete is only in the top tier because they worked longer and harder and had mastery of their mind and phenomenal coaching. Yes, muscles and oxygen contribute with drugs, but here is the silent question. How many also took drugs to enhance their performance and how many of these are just one of the pack, and not a phenomena?
相关的主题文章：

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

http://www.semper.fora.pl/public-questions-to-our-ally,1/great-sources-for-cheap-golfing-supplies,2101.html#3773

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

The post has been approved 0 times