Lance Armstrong’s Crucifiers Get Dropped
by Mitchell Belacone
April 2023
A couple of questions for those who condemn Lance Armstrong: have you ever been an integral part of raising close to half a billion dollars to aid people suffering from cancer? Did you get off your deathbed and win arguably the hardest sporting event in the world seven times consecutively? I ask because those are the two biggest differences between him and us. You should have chosen another whipping boy.
Take a gifted athlete in his early twenties who is made to realize the hard way that the only method to have a chance of winning in his chosen field was to do what almost all of the successful players were doing. Those were the unwritten rules of the game. The weaponry was often introduced and distributed by the older, wiser managers and medical professionals of their teams. Once on that path, there was no turning back without blighting or destroying your career.
Especially true for Lance, who had much to lose, starting with his wildly successful cancer charity where he parked $6,500,000 of his own money.
“Oh, but that doesn’t make him right.”
OK, but not nearly as wrong as his backseat crucifiers claim.
“But all his good was built on a lie.”
The United States was built on broken promises, murdering almost an entire race of people in the process. Practically all that’s left from that genocide are ironic jokes at Thanksgiving. More than two and a half million cancer survivors had been helped by Lance’s charity as of 2012 when he stepped down. Take a moment to compare those truths.
“But he was mean to people, he destroyed lives.”
“When the jig was up, we were sold a simplistic good versus evil storyline and then led to take bloodthirsty satisfaction in bringing the hero down.”
Can you show me in the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) rule book where it states that attaining a charm school diploma will reduce your penalty? He was protecting himself, his foundation and the many others who played the same game by the “real world” rules they were given. When the jig was up, we were sold a simplistic good versus evil storyline and then led to take bloodthirsty satisfaction in bringing the hero down.
“He almost destroyed the sport.”
The year before Lance started winning his Tours, the sport was in shambles thanks to the Festina affair. The whole Festina team was kicked out of the Tour de France for getting caught with drugs. People were arrested, other teams quit. During the race, the peloton twice got off their bikes and stopped the race in protest. Lance’s Cinderella story and subsequent victories resuscitated the sport and the Tour.
Indulge me, before I get to the principles.
When a corporation moves a factory overseas to raise its stock price a few cents—putting thousands out of work, terrorizing families and burdening others in the middle class to subsidize their peers—after one news story, that’s not a big deal for the press. Their corporate handlers are OK with it because that’s what they are: a corporation of the conglomerate, by the conglomerate, for the conglomerate, that shall not perish from the earth. Adios to us, but not to them.
The free press: free to answer to their corporate and political puppeteers. Donald Trump in large part owes his 2016 election win to the liberal press. He was the spectacle that sold advertising—thus, they kept his name front and centre and knowingly helped elect him. They might not have liked the result, but they had a bottom line to answer to. We understand: just do us all a favour and don’t spend years preaching morality about a young man that went off course in a far less harmful game.
If you work on Wall Street: kindly consider stifling your thoughts on Lance. You’re often trained to sell what’s best for your company, which is not necessarily what’s best for your client. You and your superiors survive by commissions, we get it. Every so often you get so greedy and deceitful you go bust, and the middle class is forced by your government to pay your bills and return you to your million-dollar salaries. Never mind the old ladies you took down with you that don’t get bailed out.
As to the Lawyers: nearing my seventh decade, I can only speak from personal experience. If I paid one that had my best interests at heart, I felt lucky to the extreme. In my sample group were a half dozen that worked for the highest bidder. I can’t go into more detail because it might force me to pay another law-bender to defend me, who in turn would likely betray me. So, to my small advocate circle, plead the Fifth on Lance, or may Shakespeare have his way with you. Henry VI: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
In Europe I recently paid a leading surgeon $20,000 for a procedure. Included were three days in the hospital, ten days with a physical therapist and a nurse who brought all the drugs I needed to my hotel room. My friend just had the same surgery in the U.S.A. as an outpatient, everything à la carte. The doctor and the hospital billed his insurance company $218,000. From my experience, surgeons sell what they do and knock what they don’t do. Doctors often drag the elderly back for more office visits than needed to collect more insurance. Fine, you’re a business, but don’t try to pass yourself off as more than that. And to those doctors described in this mass-bankrupting happy gang of thieves, please don’t share your diagnosis on how heartless and dishonest Lance Armstrong was. Yeah, Yeah, I know, but I’d have to hookup a truck battery to my laptop to have enough juice to give my opinion on health insurance companies.
If you are a politician in either US political party—I’ve learned to accept this truth—reality and the law are not part of your equation. Your existence and minions are little more than an exercise in rooting for the home team. You consistently put young men and women in harm’s way for the profit of a few. You are there to serve the special interests that put you there. I would advise shutting up, but that would be bad advice, because it would leave you with next to nothing else to do. We don’t need your referendum on Lance.
Hollywood has made numerous documentaries and films damning Armstrong. It doesn’t take a PhD in deductive reasoning, or even a Boy Scout merit badge in that skill, to figure out that no single entity has done more to promote gun violence than our heroes in the television and motion picture industry. “It’s only a movie” is your dodge, until the coin is flipped and you make a picture which you proclaim “important, socially relevant”. Then you strut and pose like you’re saving the world. I’d rather watch your brothers in arms, tobacco industry executives, yap on talk shows. Your collective douchebaggery, trying to act cute and silly while pimping yourselves, has run its course. For accuracy’s sake, rename the Oscars, “The Merchants of Death Awards”.
Of all the upside-down things in this world; these hollow-headed simpletons are the leading proponents and judge and jury of cancel culture. I believed that when Hollywood was making anti-McCarthyism movies (20 years after the fact), that if a guy like McCarthy ever showed up again, they would cave-in and rat even faster. I never could have dreamt they would be the new McCarthy. If hindsight is a radial keratotomy, I should have.
Thanks to founder Tarana Burke, it’s certain the “Me Too” Movement has had an overall positive effect. Sadly, as a foul bi-product, Hollywood hijacked it and helped turn a portion of it into a mass media-propagated home for killjoys who weaponize liars of the attention-needy and money-grubbing variety. Bye-bye to “innocent until proven guilty”. Those character assassins are labeled ‘brave’ and ‘heroes’. Whenever they take down an innocent, they typically get a pass. And they put a black hat on Armstrong? Pardon the religiously slanted editorial, but God help us all.
Our high-tech hero billionaires: find me a coffee shop without some internet surfer pecking away at the keyboard, proudly shining their backlit, fruit logo in your eyes. That cult was founded by a trendily-dressed hipster who grudgingly gave the mother of his daughter the money to feed her. Lance Armstrong brought half a billion dollars to Cancer victims. Steve Jobs bullied everyone from underlings to waiters to Whole Foods employees. Ask Dr. Joseph Wiesel, who holds a patent for a device that detects an irregular heartbeat, what he thinks of today’s Apple watch that detects irregular heartbeats. Or follow the court case.
Bill Gates, hero philanthropist. Well… never mind.
In the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys are no longer “America’s Team”, self-proclaimed or otherwise. The reason: most Americans bought and paid for the Denver Broncos on or around April 15th, 2022, which makes the Broncos “America’s Team”. Rob Walton of Walmart fame and his group bought the franchise for a record 4.65 billion dollars. Meanwhile, many Walmart workers are not paid a living wage, and American taxpayers are obliged to pay approximately 6.2 billion dollars per year in the form of welfare, food stamps, etc., to compensate their employees. To be clear, this has nothing to do with their profit from the 70-80% of Chinese inventory they hawk. Americans covered those subsidies directly out of their taxes. These billionaires really put the “free” in their free enterprise. The woke thing to do is rename the team. How’s about the Denver Sap-Makers? For the logo on the side of the helmet, put an extended arm holding a tin cup. Most media organisations idol worship these fat-cat skinflints and their ilk, which makes sense when you consider who owns them. Leave those billionaires in peace and deflect all that is evil on to the softer target; a kid who took the same drugs, but just rode his bike faster than the others. Mr. Walton, of one of the richest families in the world, what can you buy us next with our leftover 1.55 billion handout to you? Or keep the change and leave our perennially punked populace as it is.
At the time Lance Armstrong stepped down from The Lance Armstrong Foundation, the American Institute of Philanthropy Charity Watch gave the Foundation an A-, a higher rating than any other sports figure’s charity. How did they rate your charity? How did they rate my charity?
The whistleblower Floyd Landis, who profitably ratted out Lance, had his Tour de France victory taken away for the same reason as Lance. If Floyd could collect the seeds from that irony and convert them to cannabis seeds… well, his marijuana farm would make him richer than Pablo Escobar ever was.
Then there’s Tyler Hamilton, the goody two cleats who, when under the gun, used his dog’s death as a pity play. His (and many of his accused teammates’) honesty was forced, not volunteered. They could have stepped away the first time their morality was affronted, as opposed to when the threat of jail stared them in the face. If they haven’t yet, they should apologize to Lance, and then go away.
“I’m not sure everybody else would describe getting rid of syringes, and picking up and delivering drugs as “very, very little”.”
Emma O’Reilly was Lance’s masseuse who also served as a drug mule. After she spilled the beans to journalist David Walsh, there’s no doubting that Lance put her through hell. The big question: if she left the team over issues with Lance’s coach, Johan Bruyneel, and, as she described, had a great relationship with Lance and called him a buddy, why snitch? Was it to get back at Bruyneel and to hell with Lance, leaving him as collateral damage? In an interview for a public service broadcaster in Ireland, on the subject of her own culpability, she stated, “I did very, very little.” I’m not sure everybody else would describe getting rid of syringes, and picking up and delivering drugs as “very, very little”. Lance ratted on nobody.
Speaking of Johan Bruyneel, other than win more, what did he do that was so different from other team directors of that era to receive a lifetime ban from the UCI? I can think of only one thing: he coached the most successful and famous bike racer who did what almost all the other riders did. The UCI used to protect Armstrong and others from their misdeeds; they were, at the minimum, enablers. They also believed they were helping the sport by doing so. That was up until they jumped like rats from Armstrong’s sinking ship and then attacked him and Bruyneel when they reached shore.
Greg LeMond lost his bike brand and claimed all kinds of horrors as a result of trying to expose Armstrong. Which, on its hands and knees, begs the question: if they were friends as both stated, why, of all people, did LeMond take it upon himself to try to annihilate his friend and damage Trek in the process? Trek was the manufacturer of Lance’s bicycles as well as his own. Was he travelling the moral path and sticking up for the sport, or trying to reclaim his old throne as being the greatest American cyclist and sell more of his bikes to boot?
I followed and idolized LeMond since the day I sat in wool cycling shorts outside a bike shop and read about him in Velo News at the beginning of his career, when he beat a tough field, including a Russian Gold medalist, to win the 1981 Coors Classic. That reverence lasted until I heard him yapping about how it was impossible for Lance to be that good because he, LeMond, had a higher V02 max than Lance. The only thing that proved, scientifically and otherwise, was that Greg LeMond was not a great friend to have. What was he expecting from Lance in return anyhow? I’m guessing he saw the Tour de France stage where Armstrong was trying to gift the race to his breakaway companion and teammate. Lance told his friend: “Ride like you stole something.” Two Germans came from behind and rode his teammate down. The pair presented no danger to Armstrong in the overall standings. Out of anger and revenge, he risked his Tour by chasing them down through the curvy narrow streets of the finishing town to win the stage. Hey, Greg: you fucked with that Texas Bull, and you got his horns.
A few questions for his wife Kathy LeMond. In the documentary Slaying the Badger, you claim that Lance’s mom asked you, “How do I stop my son from being an asshole?” If that exchange really happened, do you think it possible Lance relayed a slight or an insult to his mom that he had offended you and Greg with, and she was humbling herself as compensation? Regardless of her motivation, the more important question is this: if Lance’s mom didn’t ride on the team bus, why did you throw her under it? Consider having your steerer tube checked.
“In all seven of Lance’s Tour victories, only one podium finisher (out of twenty-one finishers) was not tainted by a drug scandal.”
Betsy Andrue, Lance’s teammate’s wife. You made it clear that you and your family were greatly damaged by Lance. For what it’s worth, Lance admitted that and apologized for it. You won’t fully accept it, partly because he won’t fess up publicly to what you witnessed him telling his doctor from his hospital bed. Did you consider that maybe he had noble reasons as to why he didn’t reveal that publicly? Is it possible that he was protecting others who witnessed that too? Maybe he was willing to come clean, but not so far as to put others at legal risk. Maybe your tattletale tour, full of sound and fury, signifying what can befall people who try to make moral decisions for others, never would have happened if you let those folks carve their own path. Did it cross your mind that when Lance was in vehement denial mode, that he was also trying to shield the millions of cancer patients who took inspiration from his achievements? Your desire to see Frankie, and the race, become clean, was honorable. But did you expect the whole Armstrong winning train and the entire cycling culture to change just for your husband Frankie, without repercussions? Lance didn’t design the model for cycling teams at that time, he just ran a tight ship within the given framework. You claimed that your husband “didn’t take EPO for himself, because as a domestique (worker bee), he was never going to win the race.”
“It was for Lance.” Of all the convoluted cop-outs. Does that mean he wasn’t paid handsomely to train and race? Are you saying that your husband only rode his bike for the love of Lance? In a public forum that reached my television, you proclaimed that if your husband were to take performance enhancing drugs, you would have divorced him. If you were my wife, and threatened me like that to the world, I would inject an eight ball into my eyeball, if that’s all it took to drop you.
…That being said, and as you’ve read, I’ve been trying to point out the bad in most of us, but I feel compelled to reverse course for a moment. You were a major catalyst to the group that apparently cleaned up the sport. You weren’t trying to sell books. You weren’t angling to collect a government whistle blower payoff. You weren’t trying cover your own ass. You had no hidden agenda. You saw a danger to your husband and others and wanted to put a stop to it. In doing so, you attacked powerful forces head on. For that, the sport and especially the young men and women entering it, owe you a debt of gratitude. If there’s a hero in all of this, your emotionally honest self has my vote.
Eddy Merckx, “The Cannibal”, never tried to gift a race to a teammate and tested positive for banned substances three times. He is still recognized as the greatest cyclist of all time, and rightly so. He’s a beloved figure and a great asset for the sport. The average guy on the street wailing about Armstrong won’t know Merckx’s history, or who he even is. As Jacques Anquetil, five-time Tour de France winner said, “Leave me in peace; everybody takes dope.” Fausto Coppi admitted to taking “la bomba” (amphetamines) although at the time it was legal. In all seven of Lance’s Tour victories, only one podium finisher (21 finishers), Fernando Escartin, was not tainted by a drug scandal.
The British journalist David Walsh was on the job—and he did it well. It seems clear that Lance put him through hell also. Describing his ordeal, Walsh acts surprised, as if the baby Jesus just fell from the sky into his arms. He couldn’t have been so naïve as to think one of the most competitive athletes of our time, armed with a Texas-sized bank balance, would roll over dead for him. As bad as he had it, I temper my sympathy with this thought: often when Armstrong spoke in public regarding victims, it was to raise money for them; often, when David Walsh cried victim in public, it sold his books.
Mr. Walsh, you chose to take down a cancer victim well on his way to raising a billion dollars to help his fellow survivors. When Lance stepped down from his Foundation in 2012, the money it had raised helped 2,500,000 cancer patients. Bully for you and your movie deal, David Walsh. If I were asked, “Yes or no, did Lance’s end justify his means?”, I would suggest first asking that to the souls of the dead who might have suffered less, lived longer, or possibly still be alive had you, Mr. David Walsh, not helped dam the river of funds that was flowing their way. Clearly, you were in your moral right, Mr. Walsh. Although next time you gloat about your victory, consider taking a moment of silence beforehand.
“When Lance stepped down from his Foundation in 2012, the money it had raised helped 2,500,000 cancer patients.”
John Lennon. Iconic hero rock star, all-star peacenik, admitted wife beater, used the N-word in a song of his. Recreational drug promoter who put son number one on the top of his lifetime pay-no-mind list. His worldly solutions were comprised of simplistic ditties and staying in bed to end a war. Lennon left what’s now over a half a billion dollars to multimedia artist Yoko Ono. He had an airport named after him and five acres in Central Park dedicated to him. What’s Lance recognized for? Certainly not the half billion he raised to aid cancer victims or playing and dominating the bike racing game the way that almost all the others of his era played it. Imagine no possessions. Imagine no five apartments in the Dakota. Imagine no customized Rolls Royce, Ferrari, or Mercedes. Imagine all the people, if they could only think for themselves.
To the overflowing stream of people screwing relatives out of money: you were able to pull off your frauds mainly because you found the perfect marks; people who trusted, admired and loved you blindly. The victim is often defenseless as his moral compass keeps his tongue tied. For this slithering sub species, before you descend to Dante’s lowest rung of Hell reserved for traitors to family, please weigh in on Armstrong. It would only be natural for sanctimonious sociopaths to condemn him harsher than others. And the victims can pay it backwards and take their angst out on Armstrong too. Why not? It seems like the thing to do.
(Regarding sanctimonious and worse: other than trying to make new friends, I guess by now you know where I’m going with this. I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life, fortunately I normally didn’t have the initiative or drive to follow through on them. I don’t know what happened here. I guess I just had enough.)
Widely considered the best American football coach of all time, Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots has been caught cheating more than a few times. The consequences: fined but never docked a single game. American football players who are caught taking steroids for the first time get docked four games out of a seventeen-game season—in a sport where their strength often maims each other for life.
Major League Baseball’s all-time single season home run leaders: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa. Steroids, steroids and steroids. Not even an asterisk.
We have people who were born men, aided by a scalpel and a slew of drugs, dominating women in women’s sports—and we must accept it as fair play or be damned with horrific labels. That’s right; they’re not cheating, but Armstrong was. I’m normally open to discussion with people who hold a different opinion. In this case, I don’t want to be around people who would ask me to suspend reality so they can explain the fairness of this to me.
The good Lance did shouldn’t have served as a “get out of jail free card.” It didn’t. The courts had their say, he paid millions in fines, lost his sponsors, as well as his place in the sport, for now. The public got to vent on who they were programmed to vent on.
Give his victories back to him, or at worst put an asterisk next to them. If the latter is the choice, while they’re at it, have that same pipsqueak put one by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s names. Washington retired from burning a dozen Indian villages to become a gentleman farmer who cultivated a slave’s mouth for teeth to use as his own. Jefferson slept with a sixteen-year-old slave. By the nature of that union, it doesn’t appear she was in a good position to say; “Keep walking Tommy”. In today’s world, if justice were to be served, they would be in jail for arson and pedophilia. Seems like those crimes trump cheating in a bike race. As punishment for the actions of those ex-presidents, do we reverse the Declaration of Independence? Do we toss the Constitution? If you're still jumping on Armstrong’s case, you should consider ceasing to defend POTUS one and three with the different time and place rationalization.
If I ever have the honor of meeting Lance, the only thing I’ll ask him will be to gift me a signed picture of him on a couch staring at his seven yellow jerseys after they were supposedly taken away. That’s the Michelangelo of FU’s to the rigged, corrupt hypocrisy that designated him Everyman’s fall guy. I’d be proud to hang that photograph on my wall.
What Lance did for himself, on the bike, was beyond brilliant; what he did for millions of others should never be forgotten.
A shorter version of this article was published in Conquista Cycling Quarterly issue #24
Lance Armstrong’s Crucifiers Get Dropped: Other Cycling and non-Cycling Stories by Mitchell Belacone is available now on Amazon.
