Lance Armstrong on the BBC News

[landsurfer]

Watched the programme.
He admitted what he did.
"He bullied people"
You cannot bully an adult .. I believe.
After all, we are Adults , and make our decisions.
I don't understand why so many other fellow "dopers" where given amnesty as long as they told the tale against LA.
The dark side of cycling, but so many willing victims it appears.
Bullied , forced ... but they all took the money home to the bank.
" The Doping Period" ...1995 +

The "Elephant in the Room" was Lemond, dear god I hope a doping charge never arises against him.

Im not a fan of Armstrong ... or Pantani ...
But I think its time to move on and remember Roche, Lemond and the others that did it clean, and show some respect to the 2 Millars that at least did the right thing.

Somebody won those TDF's ... let the people of the time keep their jerseys ... but fill the gaps with real winners, ASO know who they are, have the balls to say it !!!
As LA said " no world war, so why the gap!"

Just a thought .

[661-Pete]

You cannot bully an adult .. I believe.

Sorry - come again?

[pwa]

Landsurfer

sorry, but you are wrong. You can bully an adult. I know of an example of this that is going on at the moment in a work place. Doping is bad enough, but this is worse.

[Cress1968]

I am quite concerned that people actually believe you cannot bully an adult!

[Vorpal]

"He bullied people"
You cannot bully an adult .. I believe.
After all, we are Adults , and make our decisions.

Many, many people are victims of bullies, even in adulthood. What do you think domestic violence is? Or harrassment of any sort? Violence isn't the only weapon that abusers use, and not all abusers are violent. There are many more subtle ways to bully people. And not everyone has the self-esteem and confidence to stand up to bullies.

[rmurphy195]

Watched the programme.

You cannot bully an adult .. I believe.

... but they all took the money home to the bank.

I've heard this from 2 types of person
A person who has a naive belief that provides a shaky foundation for comments they make ..
A person who is a bully and uses this to justify his/her actions to themselves

[Mark1978]

You cannot bully an adult .. I believe.

What?! You're not serious? If you are then that worries me on so many levels.

[iviehoff]

but fill the gaps with real winners, ASO know who they are, have the balls to say it !!!
As LA said " no world war, so why the gap!"

Because it's just ridiculous to think we can identify the highest placed non-cheating cyclist, and that it has any meaning if we did so.

Let us suppose we get accurate testimony as to all the, say 60% (since use of drugs was probably widespread before the testing got more serious), of riders who cheated in 199x were, which in itself is utterly implausible, because in many cases it is only the rider themselves that knows, but let's suppose we do. The reason it's meaningless is a bit like why they play the point again in tennis, once the linesman's call is found to be wrong. Because once you've taken out all the cheats, the guy who came 37th didn't know he had a real chance of winning and thus didn't try to overtake the guy who came 33rd, because at the time it seemed like it hardly mattered.

[landsurfer]

Possibly because ive never been bullied as an adult .....
People have tried but its not in my makeup to let it happen.....
Maybe im just odd ...
Sorry if i have offended anyone.

[pwa]

landsurfer

your gracious apology is accepted by me. By coincidence, last night my wife and I were discussing the case of someone we know who is being bullied by her manager who, we think, is trying to get her to leave. Armstrong's bullying was another example of work place bullying. He's a charmer, so he makes all the right noises having been caught, but I see him as he really is now. I don't care how good he was at pushing pedals around (with or without EPO). He was and is a very unpleasant person, not fit to be seen as a hero.

[Flite]

Someone attempted to bully me as an adult. I was a volunteer on a committee whose chairperson wanted to surround himself with younger, more malleable people. He spread malicious lies about my behaviour. I tried very hard to put things right from inside the organisation, but I found that as a volunteer I had no rights, so I left. So did the other two older volunteers on the committee when he started on them. It rankled to admit defeat, but I wasn't going to put up with his behaviour, and had no other sanction open to me.
I was fortunate in that I could just walk away. So it definitely can happen to adults

[TonyR]

Somebody won those TDF's ... let the people of the time keep their jerseys ... but fill the gaps with real winners, ASO know who they are, have the balls to say it !!!

Impossible to do. Someone produced a list of the top ten in each of the Armstrong years marking those who had subsequently been done for doping. What was left was a very small and suspect list. For example the new winner for 1999 would be Fernando Escartin who came third in the original order. But Italian court documents from 2004 showed he had received PEDs from Ferrari. So was he clean or not in 1999? And the lower down the order you go the less focus there was on whether they doped or not so who knows who the "real winners" were.

Personally I think it should be all or nothing - blank years for every winner shown to have doped at some point or all allowed to keep their wins including Armstrong. At the moment its neither one or the other.

[blackbike]

Bullying is what many people now call being asked to work hard and efficiently, and not to take lots of time off sick.

Of course, this doesn't mean the word loses any of its older meanings, just that language evolves.

[Valbrona]

Don't bother taking anyone's yellow or pink or whatever colour jersey away from them if you are not going to award it to the guy that came second ... or third ... or fourth ... or fifth ... etc. It looks stupid.

[pwa]

I don't think anyone physically takes away the jerseys, they just declare them void of meaning. 1999 had no TdF winner, nor 2000, 2001........ There is no practical alternative, for reasons already outlined. Those races were so corrupted that a winner cannot be declared.