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news
Lance Armstrong Photo by Maryse Alberti, Courtesy of Sony Pictures ClassicsLance Armstrong the ‘perfect winner’ of the Tour de France, says Sir Bradley Wiggins
Sir Bradley Wiggins insists that disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong epitomises the “perfect winner” of the Tour de France envisioned by the race’s founder, Henri Desgrange.
Armstrong won seven successive editions of the race between 1999 and 2005, but was stripped of those titles in 2012 – the year Wiggins became the first Briton to win it – after being banned for life for doping.
The Texan was also disqualified from his third place in his comeback Tour de France in 2009, which saw Wiggins elevated to third place on the podium.
The Sunday Times reports that Wiggins made his comments in his book Icons, published this week and in which he gives his views on 21 stars of the sport, and acknowledged that his opinion could make him appear a “cycling heretic.”
“Look away now if you’re easily offended,” wrote Wiggins, who spoke of being inspired as a 13-year-old in by a meaty-looking American” who “looked an absolute beast on the bike.” The year, 1993, was when Armstrong won the road world championship.
Wiggins, who turned pro with the ill-fated Linda McCartney Racing Team in 2001, wrote of his first meeting with Armstrong: “It was during a bike race and he came up and rode alongside me. He said, ‘How you doin’ there, Wiggo?’ or words to that effect, and smiled at me. I felt 10ft tall because . . . well, because he was Lance Armstrong. Am I allowed to say that, or does it make me some sort of cycling heretic?”
The 38-year-old, who has himself been at the centre of allegations regarding doping regarding his use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) allowing him to take otherwise banned drugs ahead of key races including the 2012 Tour de France, argues in the chapter about Armstrong that winners of the yellow jersey should not be subjected to usual standards.
He said: “I feel privileged to be a member of this group of nutters; we are not what you might call ‘normal’ people, but ‘normal’ certainly doesn’t win you the Tour.
“Legend has it that Henri Desgrange, the father of the Tour, envisaged a ‘perfect winner’ … the ideal Tour de France would have one finisher, a type of super-athlete who would not only defeat his opponents but also whatever nature might throw at him.”
Maintaining that the winner of the yellow jersey “is always a very special, very driven human being, he continued: “Therein lies the paradox of Lance’s having being stripped. His opponents didn’t necessarily like him, but ... sure as hell respected him.”
He added that he saw Armstrong as “the archetypal Tour de France cyclist and he was precisely the sort of winner Desgrange had in mind 120 years ago”.
Wiggins isn’t the only British Tour de France winner to have a book published in the coming week, with Geraint Thomas’s first-hand account of his victory this year set to hit the bookshelves.
The Welshman rode alongside Wiggins during the 2010 and 2011 editions of the race, but was absent in 2012 as he concentrated on helping Team GB successfully defend the Olympic team pursuit title.
Both were in the quartet that had won the event at Beijing in 2008, but in his new book The Tour de France According to G, Thomas revealed that he has had minimal contact with his former team-mate in recent years.
“He messaged me after winning on Alpe d’Huez and I wasn’t sure if he had just been drinking, to be honest,” he told Telegraph Sport ahead of the publication of his book.
“It was nice. He was a guy I’ve always looked up to because he was doing what I wanted to do. But I’ve barely spoken to him in the last few years.”
After details of Wiggins’ TUEs – issued as a result of his asthma and hay fever – were published by Russian hackers following the Rio 2016 Olympics, Thomas told road.cc that he had never had one himself and called for rules surrounding their issue to be tightened up, as well as saying, “If you’ve got asthma, go and work in an office or something.”
> Interview: Geraint Thomas on TUEs, disc brakes and more
It’s a theme he returns to in his interview with the Telegraph, where he said they should only be granted in cases in which an athlete has diabetes or an equally serious condition.
He said: “If you have asthma and a pump can’t control it and you need something stronger, then you are not cut out to be a professional athlete.
“I may want to be a basketball player, but I’m only six foot,” he added.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- ktache 3 hours 11 min ago
The small frame, the aggressive posture, lots of standover height.
- mctrials23 4 hours 7 min ago
As i've said before, the police should be sued for a lot of money when someone they have knowingly ignored has gone on to commit a serious crime....
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'Bad parking' blocks firefighters multiple times on same emergency call-out...
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Cambridgeshire boy, 13, crashes Audi into garden wall after taking it from home...
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Good stuff. Now do it on cycleway C9 through Hammersmith to Chiswick.
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It's technically allowed but it's not known as "London's Orbital Car Park" for nothing.
- Dogless 6 hours 21 min ago
You're defending bombing hospitals and refugee camps and starving children.
- mattw 9 hours 1 min ago
Used car salesman is a complete attention-seeking plank....
- tubasti 9 hours 18 min ago
I don't know if they're any better, but they's certainly become more boring.
- FionaJJ 9 hours 45 min ago
At risk of being cynical, and stereotyping the police, it's so they don't have to leave the comfort of their panda cars and pursue on foot when...
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21 comments
I don't have a problem with hearing this at all. That doesn't necessarily mean I agree with it. What depresses me about the social media-driven world is everything's black and white and fear and dread of the Twitterati drives a great deal of what is getting said and therefore heard.
Wiggins is incapable of being pushed around by this faux moral outrage and thank god. His comments suggest not just an understanding that you can formulate an argument that describes Armstrong this way while still holding a particular view on drugs, but also that you should be unafraid to do so. The immediate rush to condemn by some of the comments on here is predictable and tedious.
Incidentally I also approve of Thomas's comment on asthmatics whose condition is serious enough to mean they need drug treatment beyond a simple inhaler (although personally I'd question that too). In this case I agree with it, but even if I didn't, I'm impressed by his preparedness to state his view so clearly. Like Wiggins, this exposes him to the risk of cheap outrage by anonymous social media bores looking for something to be outraged by.
Bradley Wiggins is obviously keen to voice his opinion on some pretty touchy subjects, only, and also listening to him on the ITV Tour coverage, he doesn't get his point/argument over very well and it all becomes a bit 'rambling'. In the era of 'Generation Offended/Upset' you then just leave yourself wide open to criticism. Bit like 'drawing the short strawer' in a debating competition (do schools still have debating societies) and having to 'defend the indefensible'; achievable but you had to be good. Debating would probably have students sprinting to the 'safe space' wailing with their hands over their ears.
Cycling has been dirty since it's birth. What was it, the 3rd TdF they DQed someone for taking rides on a train? Cheating (and doping) is hardwired into the sport. Money has changed hands, riders took drugs and gamed the system since the start of the TdF.
All that being said, Armstrong is a amazing example of the worst of humanity. So whatever he gets bothers me little.
What angered me (and still does) is all of those that defended Lance during his racing days as clean, when he got caught in his very first TdF win. High on the list of offenders are the cycling "journalists" who refused to report the truth. Anyone with a lick of cycling knowledge (this does preclude many of the new fans LA attracted) knew he was dirty as sin.
No they suspected he was dirty as sin but had no actual smoking gun. Plus the fact that LA could and would refuse interviews (which in turn cost magazines and websites readership), sue (which cost magazines and websites a lot of hard cash) and he would win those cases therefore he was right, he spoke the truth. According to the law, he was right.
The lie rolled round - EVERYONE was part of it whether knowingly (soigneurs, team-mates, DS, doctors), unknowingly (many of the readers, the new breed of cyclists who were inspired by this story) or the ones caught in the middle - the ones who kind of suspected but couldn't say for certain like some of the journalists and some of the "established fans of the sport" (for want of a better phrase) and (very probably) many of the sponsors.
eg, Trek were never going to give him up, even if they did know for certain - LA was singlehandedly responsible for a significant percentage of their sales!
It's oh so easy "just to condemn LA". However, apart from the appaling way he treated some people to protect himself, he was the best sherif in town/of the peloton since Hinault, a fantastic leader, meticulous planning, preperation and training plus an incredible will to win at all cost. He might even have been the most intelligent doper. If you think for one minute that he was the only rider to dope you're ignorant. Doesn't winning at all cost designate a true yellow jersey?
This is obviously news to me. Would you mind giving the names of anyone else that was doping?
Wiggins trying to get himself noticed.
Got a book to sell hasn't he
No, he's got a point.
The Tour was in crisis. Bjarne Riis (Mr 60%) won in 96, Ullrich in 97 and then it all exploded in 1998 with the Festina affair and Marco Pantani ends up the winner (haha!) after half the teams are expelled or quit in protest.
It desperately needed an overhaul and then along comes a charismatic English-speaking "hero" with a great story of cancer survival and the media fall in love with it and the Tour is saved and suddenly it has exposure all across the USA (a market it had tried for years to break into with almost zero success, even when Lemond was winning).
The media largely created him - they put him on this pedestal, they made him the hero, and once you're there you end up living the lie in ever more of a public gaze. The Tour, the UCI and the public all NEEDED Lance to be the hero, the saviour of the Tour dragging it out from the days of mass drug busts, the entire peloton on EPO.
To be fair though, Lance could have turned the whole thing round - he had the personality and forcefulness to have blown the lid on the entire thing, driven the peloton to compete clean - what Wiggins says is true in the extent that Lance was respected by the whole peloton, he WAS The Boss. Maybe not liked but certainly the patron of the bunch. Problem was though that he went the other way and, in competing dirty himself, he essentially created another era of mass doping - just slightly better hidden than before.
And admit it - you all bought the books, watched the Tours, read the magazines. You (plural - I include myself in this) were all part of the lie, all part of the big Armstrong story.
Sensible stuff there. You are quite right to point out this is what Brad thought of Lance as he grew up. Up to the peak of Livestrong when Lance had been on his winning streak for a little while (It's Not About The Bike came out in May 2001 just before his third Tour
win,) a lot of people liked him at the time. Remember the wheat field? Look who he was racing and beating, not the most charismatic characters.The Sunday Times or Road.cc are being selective. The book is out, did he not talk about what he felt when all the allegation and court cases started? Or when he raced LA, or after Oprah? A bit of balance and context is nice, but doesn't get the clicks.
And why was he called Mr 60%?
Mr 60% was due to his high hermaticrit levels I think. He was rumoured to have levels of 60% and the 'normal' level was 50% (I think).
Mr 60% becaue he doped his haematocrit (allegedly) to 60%. Normal is around mid to lat 30's, exceptional is 48 - 50%. The UCI adopted an upper limit of 50% (if your red blood cell count was above 50% then you couldn't race) due to the potential for heart attacks, as, generally speaking, the higher your haematocrit goes, the thicker your blood becomes, and there is a tendency for people with artificially elevated levels to die of heart attacks in their sleep.
So it seems.
If it's as tedious as the 'My' series then you'd have to pay me to read it.
I was never a believer. After the fallout from Lemond's comments about Lance I knew there was a problem and then the fuss about L.A. Confidentiel proved it, even though we couldn't read it. But for me the doping isn't the problem, it's that he was an outstandingly devious, manipulating, obnoxious, bullying, lying c**t.
The truth is a bitter pill for those who wanted to believe in miracles but it's far worse for those whose lives he deliberately made almost unbearable. I can't admire someone like that.
Bollocks! He was a bike racer, not the Messiah.
If you think a single rider could turn around that cesspool your are delusional. While its true Lance got himself into that situation, and was more than happy to exploit the fame, the truth of the situation was that he was the best doper among a sea of dopers. The moment he turned clean someone else would continue doping and take over #1. In the peloton, and media, only #1 is The Boss, the rest are hanger-on’s with little influence. This doesn't forgive or condone Lance's decisions, especially the bullying, but you are delusional if you think a single person can right that sinking ship.
Look, its intellectually simplistic and lazy to single out one rider to be the pariah. Lance was a symptom of a systemic problem. People higher up on the food chain were complicit, because in brought in the $$. He made a great story for media (both before and after) that are biased toward sensationalism over objective reasoning, and it fulfilled societies desire for stories of "super-heros" overcoming impossible odds.
You were more than happy to delude yourself that someone could come back from an aggressive cancer and quickly become the top of the world without any special help? Why because this fullfilled your expectations for a "super-hero" without any crtical thinking. Yes, you were exploited, but you also set yourself up.
We all have a part to play in this bullshit.
Someone who speaks their own mind not PC bland stuff.
Go Wiggo.
Noramally, I disagree with Wiggins the putz.
On this occasion he is exactly right.
Bravo Armstrong!
WTF is wrong with him? Someone shut him up.
Yeah, remember the story of that one rider who fixed his own bike in a blacksmiths, but Desgrange disqualified him for the outside assistance of a boy pumping the bellows to keep the fire hot. Or that time a guy pressured his entire team into joining his doping programme, so they could pace him to the foot of the final climb, but Henri disapproved of him getting someone else to call one of their wives a crazy bitch for whistleblowing. Or the bloke who got his sponsors to destroy the business of another past champion who criticized his working with unethical doctors, intimidated journalists, and bribed the UCI, but handed over those tasks completely to lawyers instead of taking a glee in doing a lot of the bullying personally. The Father of the Tour would not have been nearly as impressed by that as he would if he had lived to see Lance Armstrong do all those things, and more, then heroically appear on Oprah to shed crocodile tears, all alone.
Christ, Wiggins is a dumbass.
I know I don't read football or gymnastic sites to compare, but is there something particular about cycling that requires its champions to place foot in mouth quite so frequently?
Oh dear.