I mean modern cyclists are on just as much shit as Lance Armstrong was, maybe even more with modern drugs. It was especially obvious just after COVID, when they started smashing a bunch of records.
This is just Lance Armstrong being a hyper competitive arsehole. There are many such cases of him saying and doing similar things
They’re putting MDMA in the modern cyclist’s chemical slurry
How dare they have good sportsmanship! Why can’t people be less professional!
Love to hear about whats wrong with modern athletes psychology from the world’s most famous cheater.
i looked up his age (52) because he looks rough in that photo. and his wikipedia photo popped up and is too funny to not share
even reading the full interview where he admits it’s “cool” that competitors are friendlier, he comes across as emotionally dysregulated and unable to emotionally connect with guys who aren’t fueled by toxic competition. which, i mean, steroids lmao. way to play to type, i guess.
it reminds me of how John McEnroe was controversial on the very polite tennis court for being verbally abusive and whatnot towards umpires and ultimately used that notoriety to become a sport commentator, write some books, and have many appearances in media poking fun at himself. but i think that’s the difference between some guy who gets heated + talks shit during high pressure/elite play vs a guy who jacks himself up on roids.
Any time I think about Lance Armstrong, I think about all the fuckin articles written about him jerking him off for his GROUNDBREAKING training program and GENETIC FREAK SUPERLEGS, and him entertaining these journalists telling them about his amazing routine etc. Meanwhile he’s just injecting steroids and pretending to be superman.
because he looks rough in that photo
dude spent a lot of time in the sun
Note to white people: don’t go outside. Ever.
Or if it’s really unavoidable, moisturize
Sunblock
I sometimes think of how between biking and gardening back in the day, I really tanned like a lizard. I was out in the sun for several hours a day, but I was always hunched over. Thankfully I got Slavic ancestry, so I tan pretty well by white standards.
Yeah all that growth hormone the USPS pumped him full of really made him age faster.
Damn postal mafia injecting our cyclists with HGH
The United States postal service?
Weird
He looks better than most 52yo that I know tbf
he definitely looks like a 52 year old that has health problems, like a lifetime of a poverty diet, smoking tobacco, and generally overworked without routine doctor visits. he doesn’t look like a literal multimillionaire former elite endurance athlete, with a personal chef and lots of time for cardio and recovery… unless he had some cosmetic work done to his face that is giving me mickey rourke vibes. he looks 62 to me.
I mean, also spending literal months cycling out in the sun is terrible for your skin, and it shows.
health problems, like a lifetime of a poverty diet, smoking tobacco, and generally overworked without routine doctor visits
That describes most people around 52 I know. Also the most likely explanotion on why he looks so weird is simply sun damage from cycling outside. For example Rafael Nadal is 35-40 and looks like a god most of the time but every time the camera zooms in on his face he looks 65
For real though, Lance Armstrong cheated in an era when EVERYBODY was cheating, and in my mind that means he’s still the GOAT cyclist.
Everybody is still cheating today as well.
Yeah, but part of the competition is not getting caught, which he was not the GOAT at.
Competitive environments can produce incredibly different behaviours in competitors. It’s entirely social.
When it’s accepted that asshole behaviour is the behaviour of the community then that becomes dominant. When it’s not accepted and instead ostracised or affects their ability to compete then being nicey nicey becomes dominant.
I’ve seen complete and total assholes conform to becoming nicey nicey on account of a push by leadership (tournament operators mainly) to make environments nicer in order to drive up participation and increase attendee retention. Those very assholes complained about it in much the same way Armstrong is here before they ultimately conformed to it and now prefer it themselves.
I remember looking really hard for the clip but not being able to find it, but in Mr Olympia, Chris Bumstead, the classic men’s physique division champion from 2019-2023, was decidedly not an asshole. He was all “people get mad at me because I do what I have to do and don’t make it into a whole philosophy.”
UFC’s top athletes come in a rainbow of attitudes from successwinners to “look at me now” to “I’m a criminal” to “I did it for my country” to “I’m here to entertain.”
I don’t know if it counts, but speedrunners celebrate each other because it’s a community effort to discover new glitches and push the game to its limits. It takes more than just the WR holder to get the time the WR achieves. It might be a lack of prestige because nobody outside the community will let you finish the sentence that you’re the best Majora’s Mask any% speedrunner before their eyes glaze over. You have to really like the game.
BJJ’s Gordon Ryan, accomplished no gi grappler, is kind of an asshole and likes to shitpost and troll. I haven’t seen much of him, but I don’t see a lot of E.S Posthumus - Arise videos compiling him and his monologues.
Maybe it’s when you command millions of dollars (NBA and NFL) or when you’re part of the Olympics (cycling and boxing) that you start to sniff your own farts.
Lol, wild. I’ve been getting into pro strongman lately (the Arnold US and UK both happened in the last two weeks) where it’s an often undiscussed thing that they all, men and women, take PEDs. Via their social media, there is nothing but support of the competitors from the competitors and audience. I’ve read that this is common in amateur strongman and strongwoman too.
So I don’t think it’s a roid thing. It just seems like a Lance Armstrong is a jerk thing.
Considering that the US made a big stink about steroids because the soviets figured out how to use them for their athletes I’m sure that they also pushed a ‘If you take the commie drug you’ll turn into a lowly aggressive beast’ during the cold war.
I think part of the reason it is undiscussed is because it is illegal. I’m not so sure there’d be as much of a stigma about being honest if there was no threat of it tanking your career and leading to a jail cell. As it is they (especially the influencers) are certainly very disingenuous about it.
TIL, I figured it was something of a legal gray area. Funnily enough, World’s Strongest Man tests for party drugs but not PEDs, as can be seen when Mariusz Pudzianowski popped for something (either cocaine or cannabis) back in 2004. I think it’d be interesting to see how things would shake out if WSM or strongman in general did start testing for PEDs. It’d have to be a new class like how powerlifting does it though to keep the records straight.
My understanding is that there is still a lot of PED use in tested competitions for a lot of things, and this drives the designer-drug approach of staying ahead of the test panels among other tactics.
Sometimes these “clean” comp people push weird purity ideas - they’re already manipulative enough to dope and say they don’t, and sometimes they’re talking to the more gullible audiences (as people who know they are watching dopers might as well watch the untested competitions). I’ve only dipped my toes in these scenes but from what I’ve seen there is a lot of exploitation going on in some circles.
I’d like to see the drugs decriminalized, the stigmas about them ended, more research done on them, and the top competitions openly acknowledging use. If people realize how “enhanced” their influencers are (including all of Hollywood), I think they would be a lot more supportive on trans health issues and other health initiatives. I think a lot of perceptions would change.
Hell yeah, Arnold 🫱🫲 Carl meme but it’s bodybuilders, strongman, powerlifters, Olympic folks, etc, and pre-transition folks all hoping for decriminalized PEDs. Greg Doucette, even though I’m not sure about him when he talks about trans folks in sports, gave me a rhetorical arrow when he talked about cis hormone replacement and bald therapy as gender affirmation care. I’ve never considered that framing before that.
TIL: I would not recognize Lance Armstrong if I saw him in person
For real. He looks like a generic
Such a piece of shit.
Yeah, you gotta be pretty emotionally disregulsted to push yourself as hard as he did. That is a big part of what it takes to be the best of the best.
Michael Jordan, despite being possibly the greatest athlete of all time, is an absolutely miserable person. He spent his HOF trashing the people who thought he wouldn’t make it. He is competitive to the degree that it ruins his life. But also probably made him great.
In one of the Steve Prefontaine movies, they show a scene where a girl he likes brings a bunch of little kids to the track (I think she’s a teacher). He starts playfully running with them. As they get towards the finish line, one little kid darts ahead of him. He immediately starts sprinting to make sure he crosses the finish line first. Teacher asks him why he did that and he said he cannot let anyone - even a small child - cross the line before him.
Has he always been a chud or did his alarm clock finally go off?
his brain is probably just melted from all that pig’s blood
Egh, I would bet the steroids…
Is it just me or are alot of chuds going for the Trumped up orange-face lately?
I think you’re now noticing the other idiots that think it looks good.
Have to say they should’ve left the g at the end for the tweet because you can just insert another f word in there that fits but holds a very different implication.
I don’t really care about steroid use in sports. It’s just not fair that certain people get genetic advantages, so if you want to make up for not being tall or having a certain body build, go for it. We allow it in other areas of life, so why not in sports. The whole “it’s unfair whaaaa” thing sounds like some moralistic capitalist bullshit anyways. They always use their advantages, but lecture the rest of us to “play fair”
I’m begging you to spend a single extra minute thinking about this.
It’s just not fair that certain people get genetic advantages, so if you want to make up for not being tall or having a certain body build, go for it.
If doping is allowed, then it’s not a plucky little guy compensating for genetic disadvantages against people with optimal builds who are clean, it’s the little guy now needing to compete with guys who both have good builds and are also doping, because doping would effectively become mandatory to be competitive. The upstart doesn’t get any leveling tool, just another thing he needs to do, this one at the expense of his long term health.
capitalist bullshit
If anything is capitalist bullshit, it would be needing to, on top of everything else, constantly dope to the limit of your health and have a fucking medical team monitor you to optimize your intake and counterbalance complications as they arise.
“it’s unfair whaaaa”
Yes, breaking the rules is unfair.
No investigation no right to speak you are just going off of vibes here.
If doping is allowed, then it’s not a plucky little guy compensating for genetic disadvantages against people with optimal builds who are clean, it’s the little guy now needing to compete with guys who both have good builds and are also doping, because doping would effectively become mandatory to be competitive. The upstart doesn’t get any leveling tool, just another thing he needs to do, this one at the expense of his long term health.
Newsflash the plucky little guy cannot compete in most sports there’s a reason why certain nations are able to dominate certain sports and that’s because their countries are able to maintain coaches and training programs to be able to get the most out of a person or do you think that for example slavs are only able to produce for example weightlifters but no swimmers? No it’s because during the cold war the soviet union and other countries in its sphere had the most sophisticated coaches and training programs. And here’s another we can nowadays make a pretty well educated guess that PEDs make up for around 10% higher performance, again this is in strength sports so oly weightlifting, shot put etc., and when we have to hear some american weightlifter complain about doping when they could not even compare to the chinese or russian, iranian etc. weightlifters if we lower their numbers.
Which brings me to the history of doping because guess what during the cold war the USA and the USSR also had a little thing about competing in medals, both nations were doping but it only became a problem when the soviets just absolutely dumpstered the USA which then promptly went ‘IOC waaah the soviets are very mean they are doing the unfair’. It’s why there’s even to this day a ton of just shitty information out there.
Yes, breaking the rules is unfair.
Muh rules based sports order
What you are saying there does not contradict what I said. Obviously existing sports stand on top of capitalist bullshit, but doping presents yet another level, and again one that significantly harms the long-term health of athletes (and obviously the capitalists barely care about that – only to use retired athletes as mascots at best – but we should care).
Muh rules based sports order
Alright, I’ll just bring a nine to a basketball game and tell the other team to surrender. By some metrics, I’m now a better player than Lebron. You can’t have games without rules, games are essentially an expression of players interacting with each other in an environment mediated by the rules. Trying to equate this to, what? imperial hegemony? is anarcho-bedtime-ism.
Obviously the rules should be interrogated and changed as deemed appropriate, but when you play a game, you’re agreeing to abide by the rules of the game for that game. Being upset that someone cheated a game is a totally reasonable reaction.
Dang doping harms long-term health of athletes? Can we look at all the things that also harm to long-term health of athletes? Like the list of things that wreck athletes bodies is extremely long and PEDs at least when it comes to strength sport is minimal there’s a ton of other things that do way more harm which you’d know if you were into strength sports but you aren’t you don’t care about sports and that’s fine but then don’t talk again no investigation no right to speak. Why is everyone extremely concerned about an athletes health when it comes to PEDs but no for example body weight or even practices of making weight, why do you if we come to it care about PEDs but not for example the extremely short time to recovery in sports like basketball after injuries that then have long term effects on those athletes? Again it’s all vibes and you picked it up because some yanks were mad that their coked up athletes lost against soviet athletes that were using early steroids. And don’t get me started on the transphobia that came with all this bullshit.
Alright, I’ll just bring a nine to a basketball game and tell the other team to surrender. By some metrics, I’m now a better player than Lebron. You can’t have games without rules, games are essentially an expression of players interacting with each other in an environment mediated by the rules. Trying to equate this to, what? imperial hegemony? is anarcho-bedtime-ism.
fucking reddit tier take seriously, I guess it’s better than doing a petersonian ‘women wearing blush is like cum’ but fucking do better
Being upset that someone cheated a game is a totally reasonable reaction.
You know who is always being upset about people ‘cheating’ by taking PEDs? Fucking yanks that go on why some no name us oly weightlifter can’t win because sterons when he can’t even put up respectable numbers but it’s not because the us sucks no it’s because of the evil SEE SEE PEE and the sneaky rus
The people that always waltz into this conversation are people that either don’t know shit like you because I’m convinced by the amount of shit takes I’ve seen you have that you just don’t touch grass at all, or chauvinistic westerners that think that by virtue of being westerners they should win every sport contest. It’s a conversation I’ve had over and over and over the years and it’s silly that ‘Waaahhh it’s unfair’ and ‘Damn this is really dangerous’ is coming from yanks that literally badgered the IOC to change the rules in THEIR FAVOUR and who just love all kinds of bloodsports that just destroy other peoples bodies. Sincerely fuck off.
Dang doping harms long-term health of athletes? Can we look at all the things that also harm to long-term health of athletes? Like the list of things that wreck athletes bodies is extremely long and PEDs at least when it comes to strength sport is minimal there’s a ton of other things that do way more harm which you’d know if you were into strength sports but you aren’t you don’t care about sports and that’s fine but then don’t talk again no investigation no right to speak. Why is everyone extremely concerned about an athletes health when it comes to PEDs but no for example body weight or even practices of making weight, why do you if we come to it care about PEDs but not for example the extremely short time to recovery in sports like basketball after injuries that then have long term effects on those athletes? Again it’s all vibes and you picked it up because some yanks were mad that their coked up athletes lost against soviet athletes that were using early steroids. And don’t get me started on the transphobia that came with all this bullshit.
“Why aren’t you talking about all these other things that aren’t the subject of the conversation!?!?” Because the subject is PEDs, come on. In other threads I’ve agreed, say, that American football should either be wildly revised or banned because the current practice is sadistic, but we aren’t talking about football here! I also agree that making weight represents serious problems, but they are difficult structural problems with how divisions work and not the relatively simple problem of having someone piss and testing it for evidence.
As someone with some personal experience in it, I have mixed opinions on martial arts (pun not intended), but I figure there at least getting the shit beat out of you is sort of what the sport fundamentally is – and therefore plainly what you’re signing up for – instead of being a side-effect. idk, I’m biased, so even here I usually just read along without saying anything.
I do indeed not give a shit about lifting, but that’s why I didn’t talk about it.
fucking reddit tier take seriously, I guess it’s better than doing a petersonian ‘women wearing blush is like cum’ but fucking do better
“I don’t know how to contradict this, so I’ll just free-associate an insult”. There is no game without rules.
You know who is always being upset about people ‘cheating’ by taking PEDs? Fucking yanks that go on why some no name us oly weightlifter can’t win because sterons when he can’t even put up respectable numbers but it’s not because the us sucks no it’s because of the evil SEE SEE PEE and the sneaky rus
My only opinion on weightlifting is that it’s cool that people from the DPRK seem to do so well in it. Again, you seem to be dragging in a bunch of tangential bugbears to have a tantrum about, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t put that all on me.
What the fuck does “sports without rules” look like to you.
That fucking “no investigation no right to speak” is annoying as it is that’s before its paired with the dumbest shit I’ve read in a week.
Awesome, now every single sport is “who can shoot the other person in the head first”
It’s just a way for the smaller less athletic people to level the playing field.
if this is what you got from that comment then i dunno dude, like come on how dense are you I laid out that all the ‘controversy’ about PEDs stems quite literally from the fact that the USA got beaten at the olympics by the soviets and then after that pushed the IOC to introduce this rule.
I’ll repeat it again the rules weren’t put up because of the IOC was concerned about the health of athletes, the rules were put up because the USA didn’t win enough medals. Talking about it is quite literally a one for one ‘muh rules based order’ because the rules served and to this day continue to serve western interest, it’s the same reason why certain sports are olympic and some are not and why some have like 10 disciplines and some have only one. Again this is not new stuff we just now know about. The influence of the USA on decisions that the IOC has made and is making like nowadays with transgender athletes is incredibly well known and someone going ‘well the rules’ sets me off because it is clear that person does not know as much and generally just falls back to yankee vibes.
That’s literally the point since I guess this shit is hard saying ‘breaking the rules’ is just lazy and I gave it the same energy. Yanks wrote up ‘that specific rule’ because they were losing face, it is not just something like ‘three strikes you are out’ it was as a reaction to the USA not winning enough. So yeah fuck that rule, and fuck going ‘Muh rules’
I’ve seen some dumb over corrections when reflexsively just jumping to whatever the opposite of America says is right but “America doesn’t like steroids because the soviets invented them so any attempt to create a level playing field is bougesie obsession with rules” is by far the dumbest most trivial example of that thinking I’ve ever seen.
Again if we’re saying “fuck the rules” how do you have any sort of competition. This is like trying to have a conversation with somebody where the other person refuses to agree to the idea that words have meanings.
If you don’t give a shit about rules and following rules makes you a bad socialist or something (again can’t even follow your convoluted logic) are you just against the idea of friendly competition.
Because that’s why you have rules in sports, it’s like the fundamental basis for being able to have any sort of competition.
“Were going to have a foot race but since this person runs all the time and this person never exercises were gonna have one run 10 meters and the other run 100 so they finish at the same time, gotta love sports.”
Is your ideal form of sports no matter who competes everybody ties because one person winning and another person losing is western decadence?
How the fuck do you get that from this, like huh? Seriously are you ok? To most people that practice a sport or that are really into a specific sport PEDs are a thing that pretty much every athlete uses. And ‘the rules’ only get brought up by dipshits, like look at Lance here guy doped and so did everyone else, this isn’t news lmao. I’m not saying fuck the rules I’m saying fuck that very specific rule because guess what that rule is why dipshit yanks, which ima guess me saying that sent you into a fit, use to explain why the US can’t compete against the Russians, Iranians, Georgians, Chinese etc etc. it is something I’ve seen 5 years ago over and over and over again.
you don’t have to have an opinion about everything. if you don’t know what you’re talking about it’s ok to just not say anything
Death to America
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Steroids don’t make up for anything, almost all pro athletes use performance enhancing drugs(PEDs) and evade current testing protocols. The testing just prevents athletes from going crazy and taking a ton of drugs. This is very important for the long term health of athletes, going completely open on a drug policy would be disastrous, right now it’s basically an arms race between WADA and the athletes. The athletes that are the best currently, are the best because of genetic advantages+taking PEDS. PEDs do not equalise the field when almost all athletes are on them. It’s not a moralistic argument, it’s just how it is. Genetics will always play a massive role in top level sports. There is no way around that. If everyone is doping and evading drug tests, the genetic component becomes the main differential. For instance, all of Usain Bolt’s competition has failed drug tests. Bolt still won most races, and I don’t think he was completely clean either.
And that’s not even getting into athletes genetic response to PEDs. Some people are hyper responders to certain drugs and steroids just because of their genetics, while others barely respond. Bodybuilding is a sport where you see this a ton. Some people just blow up after taking certain substances. Again, all because of genetics. Sports competivenes is always going to be highly dependent on genetics, even if we allow athletes to use whatever drugs they want. Then the genetic response to PEDs just becomes a bigger factor than it was before. Those that can genetically handle being juiced to the gills without dying will just win everything.
It seems that drugs are, with some exceptions, bad
Counterpoint: do you really want all the sports heros to be roid raging morons?
there’s so much to unpack here. the whole “just allow everything” is, with respect, incredibly dangerous and unfair.
it’s dangerous because of how fucking dangerous these drugs are. case after case of athletes dying in their sleep, cancer, overdosing, roid raging, tainted blood doping, etc.
it’s unfair because drug use doesn’t affect us all equally. for example, if my natural hematocrit is 35 and yours is 45, EPO or other blood doping will give me a HUGE advantage over you. there’s no way you’ll be able to compete with me. i’ve got tons of extra room to juice my veins with red blood that you don’t. the same for insulin, cortico, HGH, etc.
The whole “it’s unfair whaaaa” thing sounds like some moralistic capitalist bullshit anyways.
counterpoint: the “just allow it” sounds like rightwing libertarian nonsense. we have rules and regulations for very, very good reasons.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Which is it? Are you lonely, alienated, and hyper-competitive or are you glad that people bond over their common pursuit of athletics? It’s cycling: you dress up in your colorful spandex and ride your little machines over beautiful landscapes. It’s a silly little sport. We’re all doing silly little sports. It’s fun
lance armstrong let marco pantani take the win up mont ventoux wtf is he blabbling about here?
