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Lance Armstrong (pic courtesy Photosport International)Lance Armstrong should get his titles back, says former team-mate
A former team-mate of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong says the rider who cheated his way to seven Tour de France victories should get those titles back.
Scott Mercier and Armstrong were on the US team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
After a solid career on the North American circuit, Mercier joined the US Postal team, but left in 1997 after realising that the only way he could compete in Europe was to take performance-enhancing drugs.
He went on to run a restaurant with his father in Hawaii and then took a job as a financial advisor in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Armstrong joined US Postal the following year after recovering from cancer, and won his first Tour de France in 1999.
After a lengthy investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency, Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles in 2012.
But Mercier says Armstrong should be given a second chance.
"It's time to consider letting Lance out of 'time-out'," he told BBC Sport's Matt Slater.
"He is a polarising figure and always will be, but I believe he can be a catalyst for good; not just for cycling, but especially for those who suffer from cancer," he said.
In recent years Mercier and Armstrong have forged an unlikely friendship.
In a BBC interview last week Armstrong told Dan Roan that Mercier was a "great example" of someone who had left cycling with his integrity undamaged.
Armstrong said: "He's somebody I raced with before, during, and after. And he's one of my closest friends now, so Scott and I have these conversations all the time."
Mercier thinks American cyclists such as Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton have shouldered a disproportionate amount of the blame for the doping of a generation of cyclists.
Hamilton, he points out, was stripped of his 2004 Olympic gold medal after confessing to doping, but that medal went to Viatcheslav Ekimov, the Russian who had been one of Armstrong's right-hand-men at US Postal.
"This drug usage did not start with the Americans - it was part of the culture long before the Yankees invaded," Mercier said.
"The Europeans have gotten a far easier ride than our riders.
"It's time to be honest, it may be painful, but I believe honesty and transparency are the best path forward.
"In my mind, Tyler is the gold medallist from 2004 and Lance Armstrong the winner of seven Tours of France."
And he doesn't think Armstrong deserves to be more harshly punished for forcing his team-mates to use performance-enhancing drugs.
"No-one forced me to leave, I left of my own free will," he said, adding that Armstrong's sponsors cannot claim to be "victims" either because "they got their money's worth" in publicity.
Mercier seems to believe Armstrong has genuinely changed.
"I was never much of a Team Lance fan," he said.
"I knew he was lying and his arrogance and boorish behaviour made me cringe.
"However, my issue with him was never about his performance. He was, quite simply, the best of his generation and is one of the fiercest competitors the world has ever seen.
"He says if there was anything he could change, it would be the way he treated people. I believe him. I've seen the way he treats people today and it's with humility and grace."
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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58 comments
I've just done a quick none scientific survey of the forums comments: They''re all from blokes. As a non trained non practising psycholigist (can't be bothered with spell check one of those Dr.s Which read your mind). You all have wet dreams fantasising you are HIM. Rather than your humdrum lives.
Oh look Lance lying again, a leopard NEVER changes his spots
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/165537
Could we have a ban on the phrase "level playing field" please...?
When you compete in a sport you agree to play within the framework of the rules. You can do what you like within that framework, but if you are caught breaking the rules, you will be subject to the sanctions of the sport.
Lance Armstrong was not prosecuted because he was a bully or a nasty person. He was prosecuted because he broke the rules of the sport. I believe his punishment was exemplary because Travis Tygart and USADA did a good job and built a heavyweight case against him.
Many other offenders have escaped sanction or received lesser punishment because the authorities did not prosecute them with the same rigour (and of course everyone is aware of the suggestions that the UCI was negligent in its approach to doping or even conspired to help riders avoid prosecution). Suggesting that Armstrong should be "cut some slack" because other people have not been prosecuted effectively doesn't make a lot of sense.
This matters because the same rules apply to everyone in the sport, from elite pros down to weekend warriors riding local fish & chippers. I don't want to be competing in a sport where there is a tacit acceptance that drugs are just "part of the pro scene and everyone is doing it" because that attitude trickles down to non professional level. We'll never win the war, but fighting a good battle and imposing sanctions against convicted dopers sends an important message to everyone in the sport.
One of the biggest problems with cycling is the fans. There's still too much reverence for some of the "greats" who broke the rules (and were caught doing it). There's no need for a witch hunt, but we could do with less idolising and more critical thinking about how these people behaved, the effect they had on the sport, and the legacy they have passed on. You don't have to look too hard at recent doping offences to conclude that cycling still has a deep rooted problem.
A very good post! I've found the phrase 'level playing field' intensely annoying for the last couple of years and this is just why. The level playing field is abiding to the rules and the spirit of the rules (if every rule isn't 100% clear).
Lance knowingly broke these rules for years (amongst well documented other sins) and was happy to collect all the titles. But now he has the cheek to say "it's not fair" when he is punished for his cheating (which he vehemently denied of course) . Well Lance, it was "not fair" when you cheated and lied for years so how about properly addressing that? Where is the repentance in that?
You didn't get Dave Millar clamouring to get his World TT title back and have his ban reduced, despite (in contrast to LA) he admitted his crimes, took a long look at himself, took responsibility for his own actions, cleaned himself up and started working against the omerta by speaking out. This is what repentance looks like in my opinion (I know others have a different opinion of him).
Also, why does there "have to be a winner" for those years, as LA asserted in that recent BBC documentary? We seem to be getting on fine since they got rid of him as the winner. Finding the guy who finished 14th clean or whatever is a nonsense because the clean riders were not racing against other clean riders - any clean riders were just doing their jobs for their teams and not racing for the G.C. So, have no winner - fine by me. LA still just doesn't seem to 'get' how serious what he did was.
Boy...
Another gutted soul....worshipping athletic idols....so sad. So very sad...
either give him his titles back or strip every drug cheat of all of theirs.
I personally still think he is one of the best riders ever. Probably the most arrogant rider ever to grace the peloton and thus why he annoyed so many other riders and got his titles stripped.
But he cheated. So we will never really know and that is the point. He turned cycling into a nuclear arms race of doping (before that it was just guerrilla warfare - back street and uncoordinated). The biggest cheater gets the biggest punishment.
As mentioned above he does have the keys to his own redemption but actually he would rather just go on a PR fight rather than do the right thing. Lance Armstrong - sucky till the last. Would rather bully people than do something meaningful.
They do strip anyone of a title in any sport if found guilty of doping. Team sports is different but in athletics gold medals are removed - Ben Johnson the LA of athletics.
Best riders ever ? Not in the TDF where before the professional doping he was an also ran for GC with the occasional chance to win a stage.
The wonderful irony of all this is that Lance is right. It was and is unfair. You don't strip titles from one guy but leave others (Riis, Vinokourov) to carry on running teams. Or leave every other doper (way too many to mention) with their race victories and prize money.
Had they just left well alone, left him with his 7 Tour wins, given him a long ban and put an asterisk there to say "doper", he'd have quietly faded away.
But now, because it's Lance, because he's a fighter, he's back playing the game. He's right, he knows he's right. Now it's just a matter of convincing others that he's right.
It's an entertaining little game anyway, I'm quite enjoying the ongoing soap opera.
Not at all. All this is because Lance wanted to keep competing. That's the only reason he is doing all this now. He wants the Lance dope machine out there competing again.
Perhaps you should try adding something a little more cerebral to the debate that challenges thinking instead of stating the butt obvious... WIth comments like this you do not exactly come across as the deepest or brightest spoke in the wheel.
[Btw crazy-legs was quite insightful and has worked it out - doesn't mean he/she agrees with it any more than you or I but he/she has thought it through]
.
Take all the drugs away and he would of still won the TdF, maybe not 7 times but he would still of won multiple times, it's in his character.
Let's just take every dopers titles off them, wipe out the history of cycling why we are at it. He won that's it. No one says you have to like him.
I can't stand the Pantani hero worship, to me he was a whinging whining little woe is me diva, but it's ok he doped and used recreational drugs, because he had panache, and is Italien. Cheat cheat cheat. However he was a great bike rider and a champion.
No he wouldn't. Blood doping benefits most those with naturally lower hematocrit levels. Armstrong was one such, so by blood doping he gained more than those with naturally higher levels.
Before he doped he struggled to recover on long stage races. Blood doping gave him a significantly greater advantage than those (like Pantani) who had naturally high hematocrit levels.
They have let the records stand in athletics and especially the women's and look at the joke most of them are ...
Might I offer a compromise?
1) Let the records stand. Because even if you leave a blank we all know who crossed the line first and you have to state why the gap exists.
2) Where there is an admission of guilt/cheating or they are found guilty of cheating then alongside their name in the record should be a comment pointing this out.
for example.
Tour de Neverland
1902 Peter Pan 30h 52min 15sec Cheated-Use of Fairy dust
No gaps in the record and a name & shame for all time.
All dopers should have their titles taken away. No exceptions.
Oh the LA lover/PR machine is in full spin now. If found guilty of drugging you deserve to lose the title, so tough Lance.
why don;t you just crawl back into your hole you came from and leave the sport alone ?
LA just wants to compete in veteran events. I don't think he wants the titles back because I don't think he actually thinks they have been taken away from him. He believes he won them fair and square and no one is going to convince him otherwise. He probably doesn't read the road cc forum.
I think his biggest crime is taking up Golf. He should be ashamed
I think that's a good observation actually. If you were to ask me who the greatest TdF rider was I'd still say it was between LA and EM.
I think LA should get his titles back if only to give self-righteous twats a collective heart attack.
All the sock-puppet apologists come crawling out the woodwork - Lance is due in court and all his acolytes start reciting the case for the defence.
I guess many of these people has their heads so far up his ar$e they can't accept his role as the head of the snake?
Yes, others doped, but they didn't have the UCI in their pocket, conspire to bribe officials, use his wealth to procure 'preparation' that others couldn't afford, bully others who didn't kow-tow to him nor use charity donations to employ lawyers to threaten and censure anyone who spoke against him.
ABSOLUTELY.
And now for the Fan-Boy, panty-boy news and Statist alert!
Let the wailing begin...
Lance Armstrong should get his titles back?
Isn't it a bit like saying that a burglar should be given back the goods he stole after dong his time?
The only other people in contention for the titles were also on EPO. So if he stole them he was stealing them from someone who was also cheating and therefore trying to steal them from him.
I don't think anyone is arguing that LA is a great guy and that cheating was fine. It's more like since everyone was cheating the races were a far fairer contest than people like to admit.
Personally I don't like all this going back and changing history stuff. Every knows who won the Tdf on those 7 occasions and that EPO was used by all the main teams.
I think I see what you're saying.
You reckon that what he did was OK because he stole from other would-be thieves? And, if some people cheat, we should all cheat to keep it fair?
Yes
No
Again, read up on the retrospective EPO tests on the 1999 TDF samples - 12 positives from all samples taken in the tour that year, 6 of them from Armstrong tests.
I'm not saying cycling then was clean, but maybe enough people were running scared enough after Festina that things were being pulled right back....
That's because he had 4 stage victories and was the race leader for a while. You win more you get tested more. No one's interested in whether the Lantern Rouge is on PEDs.
Easy to argue they all doped in training and then cut back before crossing the French border and into potential jail time.
Still Fernando Escartín has a good reputation. If he's too high up the GC for your liking then I've not seen anything at all on Stéphane Heulot, and you've only got to go to 14th for him....
Obviously you can play this game for a long time. Ironically 1999 Lantern Rouge Jacky Durand did test positive retrospectively (not sure if it was from his 99 or 98 samples)
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