ultyguy wrote:Saw it a while ago. My take away had little to do with cycling. I think the root question was if he had done more good than bad. Regardless of how it was done or how he enriched himself, he did bring hope to a lot of people....of course there was a big price for that and cycling is still picking up the bill. That's not to say that cycling wasn't already dirty, he just exploited and leveraged it in new ways. It's so similar to the banking crisis in my eyes. Take now, pay later.
One interesting tidbit from the movie was Bruyneel and Riis talking from the cars about how they had to get rid of Wiggo.
+1
whether his 'con' might be at least partially forgiven through his charity work, or contributing to pro cycling's growth, remains that sort of question one has to find his own answer for himself.
my take is, he didn't kill nobody on the bike. sure, there were victims of other kind - like broken careers for instance. regarding that matter the important question for me is: how unparalleled Armstong's quasi-Machiavellic strategy was at that time. now that we 'quietly know' about systematic doping within other teams, such as Telecom, ONCE or Rabobank, what are the odds they didn't operate in the same, or even worse manner than the USPS. that their team managers, or stars (Ullrich, Vinokurov, Dekker, Rasmussen..) didn't intimidate people all along the way, didn't get rid of cyclists unwilling to dope, and so on, and so on. it's solely the Armstrong figure and media exposure that brought this sort of attention to what's behind the curtains of USPS.
so there's another strong analogy to the banking crisis - few people got senteced, one or two banks collapsed, but does that leave us with a sense of justice? does that explain the mechanisms behind the whole case? finally, did we learn any lesson and introduced a firm policy or law securing us and our future from similar events? i'd say not at all.
bikerjulio wrote:more thoughts:
They couldn't get Greg to talk?? or any of his exes? or Tyler? or Floyd? (would liked to have seen that).
i'm sure they have. Floyd was mentioned, so was Tyler, both as a disgraced athletete. Greg - his tale of "he did, i didn't (dope)" doesn't really fit into the big picture here, does it. especially given the part where the narrator goes back to show how cyclists used to dope themselves with beer...
bikerjulio wrote:
The whole Livestrong Foundation part was skimmed over. ie where the money really went, how much LA was paid etc. All we got was LA in the hospital, and a little girl being told that the money went to cancer patients - with no rebuttal or follow-up.
On the good side I liked the Alberto vs Lance bits. If I was Alberto I'd have been pretty pissed too at that situation.
this isn't a movie about the Livestrong foundation. i'm sure if you are interested particularly in their books, there are open records availible showing how much they spend on what.
about Contador - sure he didn't feel at home in Astana with Lance onboard. but that stage, where he delibrately went against team orders to gain few seconds on rather harmless Schlecks, rather than help securing 1st and 3rd spot for himself and Lance, made him loose points, at least in my book