Book Review - Juliet Macur's

Cycle of Lies

Notice how I titled the piece Juliet Macur and not Lance Armstrong. That is because I am a bit tired of the subject. Yes, I watched a bootleg copy of the recent movie The Armstrong Lie. I was left numb and without energy after watching the movie. I also felt disappointed that nothing new was revealed, other than witnessing the movie director being manipulated like everyone else had been.

The author of Cycle of Lies, Juliet Macur (bio), is different. She is a highly respected NYT sports reporter since 2004, who has been paying attention to doping and legal issues in sports for a very long time. She studied and observed the destruction and finally has written a book. The result is that she actually has new stories and insight to share.

Read excerpts from Juliet Macur herself

This is the piece that Juliet Macur wrote for The New York Times highlighting her newly released book Cycle of Lies. It's free and worth a read: End of the Ride for Lance Armstrong, By Juliet Macur, NYT. Once you read this, you will probably want to read more.

Book Reviews

I am right there with you if you don't want to spend another dime on the Lance Armstrong topic, but at least you can read these two recent book reviews.

The Drug-Fueled Uphill Ride and Headlong Crash of a Secular Saint, By Mark Kram Jr., The New York Times.

Cycle of Lies review – Juliet Macur's unflattering portrait of Lance Armstrong, by Tim Lewis, The Observer.

Does anybody care about doping anymore?

It's all about the gas these days: Giant Shimano and MPCC call for Xenon gas ban, By CyclingNews.

Yes, the subject still lingers. I am personally more fascinated in the skinny drug and the use of drugs in local amateur races, but if you are interested in what is happening in the world of doping in the pro ranks, this is a good summary catch-up read by Joe Lindsay of the Boulder Report: A Partial History

Check out this tidbit of ancient doper history - Hamilton, Mayo, Armstrong, Ulrich - on Alpe d'Huez, 4km from the top in 2003 and going a little too fast. I was such a sucker.

"Betsy will kill me"

Many paths to truth

Hospital rooms have a way of simplifying life down to the very basics. There is no rest for the weary and there is no point in spending time on anything but the truth.

So why, when a man facing the hardest battle of his life - one for his life - would he lay in a hospital bed listing his history of medications to the doctor trying to save his life, and lie? It makes no sense. Unless he didn't lie, unless Lance Armstrong was telling the truth way back in 1996 when Betsy Andreu first spoke up to say she had personally heard Armstrong's truth. Lance Armstrong had doped, and left unfettered would continue to dope for years. 

Why in the world did anyone doubt that Betsy Andreu was telling the truth? Because they didn't, they knew she was right, but they attempted to dismiss Betsy, to silence her, to make her go away as if the truth would go away. I believe most people knew the truth at some point in the past 8-10 years. Ask yourself, did you know Lance Armstrong doped? Yes, you probably did. I did, I realized it in 2003 standing on Alpe d'Huez during Stage 8 of the Tour de France, the speed was simply not human. I later realized the sport was cleaning up when the riders began to arrive well behind the official estimated arrival times, we stood on the roads in France wondering "Where are they?".

Time will tell

It is interesting how each person involved in the recent doping admissions and denials walked the path toward truth in their own unique way. This is a story that touches every athlete and support staff member, every sponsor and family member, every journalist and fan. Some responded with honor, some with malice. Consider how these individuals must have made decisions, perhaps 4-6 times a day for years, to either continue the lie or struggle for freedom from that lie. It took a LOT of effort to lie. I ask the questions: What could have been if Lance Armstrong had never been allowed to cause so much damage to the sport of cycling and to so many individuals? And could Armstrong have been effective in the fight against Cancer acting as an honest man and athlete?

Cancer is ugly enough

I would like to see some other faces step forward to be the face in the fight against cancer. I would like to see some other men in charge of the UCI. I would like to see new leaders of the teams (bye bye Johan and Matt White). I wonder if we will see a continuing trend as riders rightly voice their frustration and anger over the semi-oppression they have managed and reasoned with in private. Those who did not dope were as much victims as those who did dope (Thank you Fabain for speaking up). 

The USADA has given approval for riders to now demand better for themselves and expect better from each other.

Frankie Andreu's wife Betsy was strong enough to doggedly speak out against doping, and adamantly tell her husband that she would not tolerate his involvement in doping. "Besty will kill me" was a stand-out phrase in Daniel Coyle's book The Secret Race, with Tyler Hamilton. Betsy will kill me ; we should all have someone in our lives strong enough to have our back and fight for our best interest. 

Last August I sat in the press room of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge at the Limelight Lodge is Aspen, Stage 3 had just concluded and behind me on a table sat Frankie Andreu, swinging his legs, he was nonchalantly scanning the room of working journalists. I turned and said, "How was your day Frankie?"  "Good," he smiled broadly, "no complaints," he added with a deep breath, as if foreseeing a bright new beginning. It was August 22nd and the next day the big news that Lance Armstrong would give up the fight and not contest the overwhelming evidence of charges by USADA would hit the news. Frankie Andreu knew that every journalist in the room was about to undergo a major refocus. He also knew that an enormous burden was about to be lifted from his family. His wife Betsy would finally be vindicated. I will always remember the look in Frankie's eyes and his statement of no complaints. He meant it, he was ready for the next chapter.

We will be okay

We will get through this you know. We will do it better next time. But the stories are not over yet. I have missed out on writing so many thoughts during these past weeks as I have spent very long hours with my Mother daily sitting in a hospital room in California. She will come home soon, but I learned nothing else much matters when it comes down to simple decisions of life and family. We all learn these lessons in different ways and at different times. I can also happily report that my oldest brother made it through a tough second battle with Hodgkins Lymphoma and is gaining strength daily. We all hate cancer but I want to see a new representative of hope and honesty for a disease where in the end all we really have are friends and family, and perhaps honesty.  

Update: After 34 days in the hospital my Mother finally returned home. 

From the Front Page of the Observer in the UK

and perhaps humor -

Sorry I have been away, I have missed writing, I trust you have had plenty to read in the headlines of late as story after story has been released. Thanks for hanging in there, someday we'll all look back and say, yay, I hung in there through the doping days ... and I am still a fan of cycling.

Related reading: 
Statement From USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart Regarding The U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team Doping Conspiracy, Ocober 10, 2012, (also read the Appendices) 
Case closed: Armstrong doped, by Bonnie D. Ford (exceptionally well writen)
Betsy Andreu: No longer a voice in the wilderness, By Daniel Benson, CyclingNews
The Explainer: I’m shocked, shocked, I say, By Charles Pelkey for Red Kite Prayer
After the Fire By Joe Lindsey 

To learn more about anabolic steroids and blood doping, their history, use and adverse side effects, please read: Performance Enhancing Drugs: History, Medical Effects & Policy, Yu-Hsuan Lee, Harvard, 2006.

For updates and excellent links to stories that will keep you in the know, please follow on Twitter: @TheRaceRadio and ‏@edbud68 , both review and disseminate headline cycling news.

News, Stories and Movies

A movie about Bradley Wiggins?

I've been reading a lot lately, taking in the news about Lance Armstrong and The Repenters (now there is a title for a movie, or a band). I appreciated Joe Lindsey's recent reminder that we are all allowed to form our own opinions but not our own facts. Like many of you, I have been busy finding the facts to support my own opinions, isn't that how this works?
 

In the end I have discovered - nothing. We already knew this!

• Power corrupts
• Power and money can buy success
• Doping pays
• Cheaters point fingers
• Each man is responsible for his own behavior
• Medical Science advances quickly
• The truth will eventually come out
• Bad people don't always get their due
• Knowledge will give you power, but character earns respect
• Journalism exposes truth, courts determine truth
• It is not cool to give your time to something only to be deceived
• People forgive 
• Everyone likes a happy ending

Feeling a little foolish that I should have known 
  

My opinions mostly center around certain key ideas. These include 1) we knew much of this a long time ago, but people who lie are motivated to keep a lie going - a long time, 2) this is the tip of the iceberg, after a long lie, increasing degrees of truth come out, 3) doping pays, and 4) even though I knew, I still feel foolish to learn the extent and depth of cheating.
 

1) Hindsight is 20/20. History makes sense looking back. If you read this conversation between Frankie Andreu and Jonathan Vaughters printed in 2006, you will realize we already knew all this a long time ago, long before Vaughters wrote his NYT confession. But liars wasted our time and made life miserable for those who attempted to tell the truth, destroying careers in their wake. Read: CBS Sports, In-Depth: Cycle of denial: Implicated on the Internet (from 2006).
 

2) It's only the tip of the iceberg. Be prepared for rolling seas for the next 2-years as some facts are locked-up due to pending court cases and Organization tug-of-wars. This will take some time to shake-out, unless Vaughters continues to out everyone in the name of his No Man is an Island campaign. We also have Vaughters to thank for complicating the course to correction by spreading the level the playing field theory which only served to give the uniformed an easy excuse to latch onto to proclaim that no one did wrong because everyone did wrong. Following this theory two wrongs make a right even when some were more wrong than others. Personal opinions are welcomed, but if you find yourself using the level playing field excuse or the he never tested positive explanation then you haven't read the news since initially making up your mind that you would never accept that Lance Armstrong doped.
 

3) Money money money. Anyone else frustrated to see dopers making the bucks? They made money then, they paid money, they make money now. They received contracts to race, they received jobs after they raced, they receive money for books written and movies made. Those who did not dope did not. How many people read Gregg Germer's confession that he did not dope? How many people read and paid for The Secret Race, Tyler Hamilton's confession that he did dope?

4) Ignorance was bliss.

Movies have a happy ending
 

Books may not always have a happy ending or make you feel good, but movies like happy endings. After years of talk about making a movie about Lance Armstrong, his story proved to be a tough one even by Hollywood standards. How quickly we shift gears onto the newest guy on the top of the podium. That guy is Bradley Wiggins. This morning VeloNation.com wrote that Hollywood (the notion that movies come from Hollywood is like saying extra virgin olive oil only comes from Italy - it's a label) is moving forward on a movie about Bradley Wiggins because, “Bradley is a larger-than-life personality and his story really appeals to movie executives.”

 
Bradley Wiggins is larger than life? 
 

How did I miss this fact? Bradley Wiggins seems like a pretty normal guy to me. He even mentioned his Mom while standing on the podium of the 2012 Tour de France. The only person larger than life in cycling is Mario Cipollini and that is because he has built his (Bond) brand around the image. And maybe The Badger (Bernard Hinault), anyone who at the age of 58, instinctively throws (video) an invading person off the stage at the Tour de France is larger than life, and whose reaction to the entire Lance Armstrong affair also happens to have been, “I couldn't give a damn.” 

Does this look like a larger than life individual?

Bradley Wiggins

The news is that British actor Rhys Ifans could play Wiggins in the movie. What do you think?

Rhys Ifans

Rhys Ifans was the zany actor in Notting Hill. The only problem is that Ifans is 45-years old. Anyone want a job as a cycling stunt-man double, and happen to look like Bradley Wiggins and Rhys Ifans?   

Rhys Ifans in the movie Notting Hill, or is it Bradley Wiggins?

After a couple weeks of lousy news about our fragile sport of cycling, the hard races up north in Canada and the fun of the Tour of Britain were fairly good distractions. I welcome the World Championships next week, 15-23 September 2012, in Limburg, Netherlands. How can a fan not get excited about riders representing their countries and themselves to really prove who is the fastest on a bike.  

This jersey IS larger than life
 

This week someone else wil be wearing this jersey...

Current World Champion Road - Mark Cavendish

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