Dopingly Yours, Lance Armstrong

A lot of people, not just cycling fans, may never forgive Lance Armstrong for what he's done. Personally, I can forgive Armstrong for using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), but not about his suing, attacking, and name calling the people who opted to break out from his doped camp and tell the truth. I mean a lot of athletes out there are using PEDs, but they're not as vindictive and cocky as The Boss, as he is called in the cycling circuit. The nickname fits him well, in my opinion, considering his attitude.  His nickname Mellow Johnny,  however, is a great misnomer because for a man who's got no balls, this guy's does not allow anyone to eat nothing but dust. 

Armstrong's downfall is no surprise to me. I used to ghostwrite articles and blogs for sites endorsing the use of performance enhancing drugs, and Armstrong's name constantly come up when I searched for athletes suspected of using banned substances. The allegations of doping hounded him incessantly during his stellar career, and I thought retiring was his best decision. But he couldn't stay away from the limelight. His comeback in 2009 was the greatest of his follies, dumping Sheryl Crow was his second.

Now he was forced to "come clean" because of United States Anti-Doping Agency's accusations against the him for trafficking and use of PEDs, and the subsequent actions and reactions from sports institutions and fans treating him a pariah. And he decided to "come clean" on a TV interview with no other than Miss O as the interviewer. Armstrong's decision to do his confession on a TV broadcast is of suspect of course. This guy has nothing to lose because he's already been stripped of all the titles and honor he'd earned - including his seven Tour De France titles and his 2000 Summer Olympics bronze medal. 

Lance Armstrong : Doped and determined 

What he was aiming for is to garner sympathy from the public, which I think he failed to accomplish because he didn't seem contrite and apologetic (despite his profuse apologies to the people he sued and used) during his interview with Oprah. I was disappointed because it was not a tell-all confession as I had hoped because there were questions thrown at him that he refused to answer such as the one on his former masseuse Emma O'Reilly. O'Reilly testified that she overheard Armstrong during a post-race massage session urgently talking about testing positive for cortisone. In one of his defensive tactics, Armstrong declared:  "(O'Reilly was) pissed. Pissed at me, pissed at Johan (Bruyneel). Really pissed at Johan. Pissed at the team. Afraid that we were going to out her as a… as a whore, or whatever. I don't know."

Armstrong touted himself as a fighter. His fight with cancer has been chronicled and was considered by many as a miracle, further propelling his popularity in and out of the sports arena.  But now his tale of triumph against the Big C is also under scrutiny. Did his use of anabolic steroids induce the disease? Erythropoetin or EPO is now the drug of choice of dopers in cycling but during the 1980s up to 1990s, steroids were used to enhance athletic performance in this sporting contest.  Steroids are known to cause adverse side effects which include testicular atrophy. Steroid abuse is also linked to psychiatric side effects called "roid rage", which is hypomania and aggression. Roid rage is yet to be scientifically proven because of lack of definitive studies on this behavioral issue which took flight in wrestler Chris Benoit double murder-suicide case in 2007.