Hold onto your hats, ladies:
What a dish! "Jean Vois" as he's known in France, when he was very young and very blond.
Even earlier, here he is looking slight scary in his German National Team kit:
Or he could possibly be delivering the post, I'm not quite sure.
Will this be the shortest blog entry ever made? Will I be able to resist making a comment about Lance Armstrong? No, and No.
Poor old Lance is under fire again: and I'd like to make the following point. OK the following two points.
Point One - I am not a Lance Armstrong fan. I've read two of his books, and he is amazing, and possibly the strongest person alive today (not in the weightlifting sense!).But I'm not particularly a fan, so don't send me hate mail.
Point Two: some people and some cycling press are making a big deal out of the fact that Armstrong always says something like "500 tests and never once positive". They say that "never been tested positive" is not the same as "never did drugs".
Well, they are right, it's not the same, but remember that Armstrong had cancer, he had four rounds of chemotherapy, which is about the worst thing you can do to a human body. As part of his recovery, he was put on EPO: everyone knows that, he's never tried to hide it, it's part of the medical regime. When it was no longer necessary to keep him alive, he stopped using it. It was months before he was riding and racing again.
But for the rest of his life he can NEVER make that statement "I've never done drugs". If he did, he'd have to same something like "I have never taked PEDs except for that time during and after chemotherapy but before I started racing again." Not as catchy as "never once positive", is it?
Furthermore, Armstrong has certainly investigated every legally allowable chemical/natural remedy/regime that might help: he says quite openly in one of his books that he had/has been taking some extract of calves' liver or something equally delicious-sounding ("not", as the kids say) which may or may not be banned at some point in the future.
So his statement of his drug position would have to include "and I have never taken a banned substance while it was actually banned" and people just love pulling that sort of statement to pieces, don't they?
Personally, bearing in mind he's now retired from pro cycling, I think it's time to let the whole thing drop. I know that the US government is concerned about the all the money they put into US Postal, and Certain People (Landis, I mean you) are trying to suggest that the US people have a right to know if their taxes have been used to support someone who may have got some of their victories under the influence of PEDs. But Landis only suggested this when he was unable to "get back" at Armstrong in any other way. All his other attempts to put the blame on Armstrong for his, Landis', use of drugs have failed miserably, so he decided to prod the US Government into doing it for him. What a weasel, eh? Well, that's my view.
And as for Contador: against my better judgement, I am now forcing myself to hope that he is cleared, so that Our Glorious Leader (*pause for fanfare of trumpets*) can kick his bony little butt good and proper later on this year. So there! And thanks Susanne, for that inspiring thought.
Now, do we have any less-than familiar pics of Our Glorious Leader to end on? How about this one:
Headphone guy is saying "So, I hear that you're seeing Coug?" "No, no," replies Andy "I don't know where these rumours start, we're just friends. See, you've made me sneeze now."
0 comments:
Post a Comment