OFFICIAL 2025 Tour de France thread

HesCalledDyer said:

PJ_Soul said:

HesCalledDyer said:

Alli, watch the video I posted above with Joe Rogan & Peter Attia.  Lance Armstrong didn't taint the Tour de France.  It was going on long before him and much more out of control before he ever came along.  He's no more scum than any of the other hundred and fifty racers who were running those same tours and all doing the same thing.  Lance won those tours and he sleeps perfectly well down the hall from where his 7 Maillots Jaune are displayed.

Lance is only scum in the public eye because the UCF and USADA made him the scapegoat.  He should be looked at as a legend.

I know all about it - I developed a great interest in the whole topic when it all went down and did my research. The reason I think Lance in particular ruined it all is not specifically because of the doping, because yes, so many others were doing it too and everyone knew it, but because of everything that he did after he finally got busted. Him personally. THAT is what makes him the king of the scumbags to me, and the whole livestrong thing just makes it that much worse to me. As far as him being scapegoated goes... I couldn't care less. When you're doing something you know is wrong and lying through your teeth constantly without any guilt, I think your right to not be scapegoated goes right out the window, frankly. I am completely unforgiving about doping, and don't give a shit what happens to anyone who is caught, no matter how many others are doing it. I fucking LOVE it when people are caught doping! And the more they are raked through the coals for it, the more I enjoy it. Serves them right.

Serious question - and I'm not trying to be facetious or combative - but do you honestly expect these guys to go out every day and destroy their bodies to the utmost unhealthy extreme without taking anything to help speed their recovery and to get their bodies functioning at normal levels again, in order to go do the same thing the next day?  To do what they do, they are sacrificing their health and threatening to shorten their own lives. I'm a little baffled that you'd express gratitude when they're "caught" getting a blood transfusion or taking a drug to ease the pain and help their bones & muscles recover to normal, healthy levels. I'll agree on one thing - it serves them right.  It serves them right for wanting to be healthy again and increase their life's longevity.  If the cost of that is being banned from sport or stripped of titles, at least they have their lives to live afterwards.

One of the biggest misconceptions on the planet is that blood doping, EPO, steroids, etc give you more strength, more power, or some physical advantage over everyone else during competition.  That's simply not true.  The term "performance enhancing drug" is a bit of a misnomer.  They don't really do anything to directly enhance your actual performance.  If it were that easy, we'd all just rub some cream on our asses and hit 75 home runs.  What those things do is allow an athlete to recover faster, so they can continue training, practicing to get better without having a physiological hangover (for lack of better word), that's the advantage you get.  The indirect result of that is the possibility of an improvement in performance (you still have to be strong enough, skilled enough, & disciplined enough to perform at that level in the first place).  And when done under the strict, safe supervision of a medical doctor, strength & training physicians, physical therapists, etc, like Lance and US Postal/Discovery teams did (and those before, along side, & after him) I really don't see the problem with it.  It has been medically proven that running the Tour de France "on dope" is much, much healthier and safer than not.

I can grant you the personal behavior - the lies, the cover-ups, letting people down, etc.  (Though Floyd Landis really is way more of a scumbag in that respect.)  But I can't really see how anyone could be mad at an athlete for not wanting to destroy their body to the point that they threaten life longevity.  So-called PEDs have come a long way since the days of just injecting anabolic steroids in your thigh or snorting uppers.  They are safer, healthier, without the side effects of the drugs used in the early stages of doping, and they will continue to get even safer & healthier as more research is done, the more doctors learn about the human body and its functions, and the more focused the drugs become on specific functions.

Just look at my heart medication.  In the 1920s I would have been told to drink a tincture of peppermint, lavendar, & ginkgo root to treat stroke.  Today we know that is completely ineffective and through research we have better drugs to help me recover.  Am I cheating or doping because I want to live longer and thus take drugs under the supervision of several doctors?  My body has failed and drugs that enhance the performance of my circulatory & pulmonary systems (directly, at that) have helped me recover and live longer.  The only difference is that governing bodies, whether it's a state run government or a sporting association, has deemed one okay and one not.  The function of either is really no different in the grand scheme of life.