to move up and down
Poor Lindsey Vonn: The Council of Fashion Designers of America awards must have whizzed by for the Olympic champion skier, considering testers from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency escorted her to the women’s bathroom for an impromptu sample. Probably not very fun while wearing a custom gown.
“We appreciate her professionalism and for accommodating this process, which at times can be inconvenient,” USADA spokeswoman Annie Skinner said. (Photo: Brad Barket/Invision/Associated Press)
Bruce Arthur: There was no contrition and nothing much that qualified as real. This was Lance Armstrong, unable to hide himself, no matter how hard he tried
This was Lance Armstrong, even if he tried to be someone else. He did try, of course: he looked back on his younger self on the podium of the Tour de France, telling people he was sorry for them because they couldn’t believe in miracles, and he pretended to shudder. He tried to act like he regretted some of the things he had done. It was, at long last, impossible to believe.
Armstrong’s two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey will conclude Friday night, and it will be fascinating to see what Lance Armstrong has left, because this part revealed him in a way he surely didn’t intend. From the start it was apparent — there was a list in his head of truths he could tell and truths he could not, and you could see him parsing them in real time. He could say he took performance-enhancing drugs while winning seven Tour de Frances, but he had to insist that he was clean during his comeback in 2009 and 2010, despite evidence to the contrary. He could take some measure of responsibility, but he could not say he was in charge, or that he forced or directed any teammates to use, despite evidence to the contrary, given under oath. He could say he had called Betsy Andreu, but he could not say he had sued Emma O’Reilly. (Oprah.com)
Lance Armstrong stripped of all seven Tour de France titles, banned from cycling for life after doping report
Cycling’s governing body agreed Monday to strip Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and ban him for life, following a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused him of leading a massive doping program on his teams.
UCI President Pat McQuaid announced that the federation accepted the USADA’s report on Armstrong and would not appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The decision clears the way for Tour de France organizers to officially remove Armstrong’s name from the record books, erasing his consecutive victories from 1999-2005. (Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
Lance Armstrong: A legend under siege
Another knot was added to the ever-tightening noose around Lance Armstrong’s neck on Sunday night. In a lengthy interview with 60 Minutes, Tyler Hamilton, yet another former teammate and old Armstrong ally, offered a damning portrait of an alleged doping culture that pervaded the United States Postal Service cycling team that Mr. Armstrong first led to victory at the 1999 Tour de France.
Far from being an innocent, the seven-time Tour winner and cancer survivor is cast as the team’s Drug-Cheat-in-Chief.
“He obviously was the biggest rider on the team,” Mr. Hamilton says in the interview. “He helped call the shots. Yes, he doped himself, like everybody else…. He was the leader of the team and he expected, going into the 1999 Tour, which was the first Tour he won, that we were going to do everything we could to help him win.”
And winning during a drug-riddled sport’s most drug-addled age meant riding dirty. (Photo: Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)
