Lance disses AC!

You're a hating hate-filled hater who only shows love for cancer.

Take your hate to here www.haters.com

gtm said:

Roche not a great??? What?? Anyone who can win a grand tour is a 'great' (let alone 2 in one year & the world championship to boot)

An outstanding cyclist whose career was sadly curtailed by injury...

... and an inability to figure out which way to put his watch on, which lead to him missing the start of the team time trial in the 91 Tour.

Since someone brought up Roche in a thread about how much of a cnut Lance was towards Alberto and Alberto attacking Lance, lets not forget than in the 87 Giro, Roche would attack and take the pink jersey from his teammate, Roberto Viscentini, who won the Giro the previous year. There wasn't really anyone in the race who could challenge Visentini but Roche attacked which forced Visentini and the rest of their team to chase Roche down. Riding on an Italian team, in Italy, infront of The Tifosi and you take the jersey off an Italian rider who's supposed to be your team leader... Nice! The only thing left to show the ultimate disrespect would be to have your picture taken in a back alley humping Roberto's wife over the back of a dumpster. Of course, Roche won the Giro but shredded his team en-route to victory and changed teams at the end of the year... Nothing like teamwork aye?

honestly, no this does not smack of being a teamplayer. and so what? roche wanted to win and seized the opportunity. given he had the carrera team [censored] at him, his accomplishment at organising an ersatz team on the road makes his willfully isolating himself all the more amazing. and then to follow that with the tour? and then the worlds? anybody willing to gamble it all on a desperate bid for immortality by getting the win? this racing spirit is what is missing in the tour de france for quite some time.

swampy1970 said:

... and an inability to figure out which way to put his watch on, which lead to him missing the start of the team time trial in the 91 Tour.

Since someone brought up Roche in a thread about how much of a cnut Lance was towards Alberto and Alberto attacking Lance, lets not forget than in the 87 Giro, Roche would attack and take the pink jersey from his teammate, Roberto Viscentini, who won the Giro the previous year. There wasn't really anyone in the race who could challenge Visentini but Roche attacked which forced Visentini and the rest of their team to chase Roche down. Riding on an Italian team, in Italy, infront of The Tifosi and you take the jersey off an Italian rider who's supposed to be your team leader... Nice! The only thing left to show the ultimate disrespect would be to have your picture taken in a back alley humping Roberto's wife over the back of a dumpster. Of course, Roche won the Giro but shredded his team en-route to victory and changed teams at the end of the year... Nothing like teamwork aye?

I love it when cyclists forget their watches - remember Pedro Delgardo??

Chapeau to Roche for debagging an Italian in his own back yard.- you've got to admire his cheek 😄

lucybears said:

Eurosport Awards
Tour de France - Blazin' Saddles: Retroactive Tour Awards - Yahoo! Eurosport UK
The High-School Biggest Bully Award: Lance Armstrong (pictured), who despite his worthy intentions in the global fight against cancer, proved to be both nasty and oppressive at times. One side showed the Texan getting chummy with virtually everyone in the peloton (and Hollywood) while another saw the 37-year-old terrorize his team leader with a series of undermining interviews and posts on Twitter.
Worst Professionals: Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel for spitefully upstaging both Contador and Astana with information of their new RadioShack outfit before the race had even finished. No doubt, had the American been in yellow at the time, the focus would have been somewhat different.

Now changed to "The Shack".

Here we go again! I've respected Armstrong's cycling prowess (although skeptically) for years, but never respected him as a person. I've watched Lance year after year build teams and sponsors around him to ensure dominance in the one Grand Tour that mattered most to him, and rightly so. I've always been accused of not understanding how professional cycling really works and not understanding that the best [censored] on the team has to act like a [censored] and burn whoever he has to so that he can win. Victory at all costs. I've always been guilty of wanting the nice guy to finish first. After his seven victories, I finally understood that if Lance wanted to win a race like the TDF, then he couldn't give a [censored] about what people thought of him and he had to do anything to make sure he dominated everyone else in the race including his team mates.

Now a young Spaniard comes along as the team's number one, and in my opinion has to put his severe stamp of authority on the race because he knows his Holiness Lance and his minion Bruyneel are going to steal the race out from under him. Why the hell are all these Lance fanatics crying about what Contador "did" to Lance and his team mates? Did he do any worse than Lance did for those seven years? Anybody remember Lance selfishly reining back Fillipo Simeoni in a breakaway in the 2006 tour because the kid had the audacity to testify against Dr. Ferrari, Lance's former doctor? He's been a bully in the peleton for the past decade. His tactics haven't changed, with the exception that maybe he's finally come up against someone who can punch back a lot harder than he can.

Some Armstrong facts and observations.

Facts:
He has one testicle, don't have personal knowledge of this but seems to be an accepted fact.

He didn't leave his wife after she nursed him back from cancer.
They met at a cancer fundraiser after.

Never tested positive for dope during regular testing. Outside of regular testing is another matter.

Recovered from some really bad cancer and won the Tour 7 times.

Is a really good tactician when it somes to multi stage races.

Observations:
Probably not the nicest guy in the peloton.

Beat the best in the world clean and they were doping. (insert sarcastic eyes rolling)

Seems to have a lot of influence within the inner circle of pro cycling.

Trains hard but seems to disappear every year for couple of weeks to parts unknown. If training the hardest won the race everytime Zabel would be the worlds geatest.

Hates like hell to lose to anybody.

swampy1970 said:

... and an inability to figure out which way to put his watch on, which lead to him missing the start of the team time trial in the 91 Tour.

Since someone brought up Roche in a thread about how much of a cnut Lance was towards Alberto and Alberto attacking Lance, lets not forget than in the 87 Giro, Roche would attack and take the pink jersey from his teammate, Roberto Viscentini, who won the Giro the previous year. There wasn't really anyone in the race who could challenge Visentini but Roche attacked which forced Visentini and the rest of their team to chase Roche down. Riding on an Italian team, in Italy, infront of The Tifosi and you take the jersey off an Italian rider who's supposed to be your team leader... Nice! The only thing left to show the ultimate disrespect would be to have your picture taken in a back alley humping Roberto's wife over the back of a dumpster. Of course, Roche won the Giro but shredded his team en-route to victory and changed teams at the end of the year... Nothing like teamwork aye?

Roche was of the view that Viscentini should never have been team leader for any race.
Carrera nominated Viscentini (Viscentini is Italian) as team leader for the 87 Giro and the deal was that roche would be team leader for 87 TDF.
Roche disagreed with that decision for Giro and road his own race.
This caused the team to virtually implode - guys like Bontempi refused to help Roche.

Was Roche right?
Hindsight would suggest so - but at the time his move could only be described as being divisive.

jhuskey said:

Some Armstrong facts and observations.

Facts:
He has one testicle, don't have personal knowledge of this but seems to be an accepted fact.

He didn't leave his wife after she nursed him back from cancer.
They met at a cancer fundraiser after.

Never tested positive for dope during regular testing. Outside of regular testing is another matter.

Recovered from some really bad cancer and won the Tour 7 times.

Is a really good tactician when it somes to multi stage races.

Observations:
Probably not the nicest guy in the peloton.

Beat the best in the world clean and they were doping. (insert sarcastic eyes rolling)

Seems to have a lot of influence within the inner circle of pro cycling.

Trains hard but seems to disappear every year for couple of weeks to parts unknown. If training the hardest won the race everytime Zabel would be the worlds geatest.

Hates like hell to lose to anybody.

Kudos for keeping your facts and observations separate. I have to agree with everything you note except for one of your observations. Lots of guys in previous tours have never tested positive for doping. Does that mean they were all racing clean? Ask Bjarne Riis. Your assumption that Armstrong competed 'clean' while the best of the rest were doping is ludicrous. If you know something the rest of us don't, you should sell your info to one of the tabloids.

I'm not saying Lance was doping (insert sarcastic eyes rolling),but let's not pretend to know who was and who wasn't. I don't think anyone is going to know.

lance_armstrong said:

Kudos for keeping your facts and observations separate. I have to agree with everything you note except for one of your observations. Lots of guys in previous tours have never tested positive for doping. Does that mean they were all racing clean? Ask Bjarne Riis. Your assumption that Armstrong competed 'clean' while the best of the rest were doping is ludicrous. If you know something the rest of us don't, you should sell your info to one of the tabloids.

I'm not saying Lance was doping (insert sarcastic eyes rolling),but let's not pretend to know who was and who wasn't. I don't think anyone is going to know.

That was sarcasm if you didn't catch it. Ergo the eyes rolling.

jhuskey said:

That was sarcasm if you didn't catch it. Ergo the eyes rolling.

I humbly stand corrected.

Lim, can you get Steve to change the text beside my name from "on" to "right on"?😄

limerickman said:

Roche was of the view that Viscentini should never have been team leader for any race.
Carrera nominated Viscentini (Viscentini is Italian) as team leader for the 87 Giro and the deal was that roche would be team leader for 87 TDF.
Roche disagreed with that decision for Giro and road his own race.
This caused the team to virtually implode - guys like Bontempi refused to help Roche.

Was Roche right?
Hindsight would suggest so - but at the time his move could only be described as being divisive.

Figure at that time Viscentini was the only one of them to have previously won a major tour. He was also the defending Giro champion (winner in 86 which is probably why he was nominated team lead for the 87 Giro) and was more than half way through that years Giro and comfortably able to match the attacks from leaders of the other teams and was sitting pretty in pink. He'd also won a couple of stages in that years Giro too...

... Roche on the other hand had done nothing since the Tour de France two years earlier due to his horrific crash at the start of 86. He had to get help for Millar and a few other english speaking riders in the peloton.

Thinking about it, it's a little surprising that all Roche got was being spat at lots and angry comments from the Tifosi, you would have thought that there would have been one guy out of the hundreds of thousands that line the route on those really steep and narrow climbs woulda picked up Roche on his bike and thrown him off the cliff... Then again, a lot of Italians do stand about knee high to a grasshopper :p

swampy1970 said:

Thinking about it, it's a little surprising that all Roche got was being spat at lots and angry comments from the Tifosi, you would have thought that there would have been one guy out of the hundreds of thousands that line the route on those really steep and narrow climbs woulda picked up Roche on his bike and thrown him off the cliff... Then again, a lot of Italians do stand about knee high to a grasshopper :p

They were frightened of Robert Millar's mullet. Any decent minded Italian wouldn't want to be within 10 feet of anything so uncool😄

swampy1970 said:

Figure at that time Viscentini was the only one of them to have previously won a major tour. He was also the defending Giro champion (winner in 86 which is probably why he was nominated team lead for the 87 Giro) and was more than half way through that years Giro and comfortably able to match the attacks from leaders of the other teams and was sitting pretty in pink. He'd also won a couple of stages in that years Giro too...

... Roche on the other hand had done nothing since the Tour de France two years earlier due to his horrific crash at the start of 86. He had to get help for Millar and a few other english speaking riders in the peloton.

Thinking about it, it's a little surprising that all Roche got was being spat at lots and angry comments from the Tifosi, you would have thought that there would have been one guy out of the hundreds of thousands that line the route on those really steep and narrow climbs woulda picked up Roche on his bike and thrown him off the cliff... Then again, a lot of Italians do stand about knee high to a grasshopper :p

That is a very far point re. Viscentini.
He was defending Giro champion - therefore he should have been accorded support from his team.
I remember reading somwhere that roche made his decision to go his on way after Viscentini's ITT performance (if I recall correctly).

Yes, the Italian tifosi were very annoyed with SR and his tactic.
And he was lucky that something more serious did not happen to him.

Kudos to R.Millar : I know they raced together at ACBB and Peuguot.
The fact that they were on opposite team in that Giro, Millar wnt out of his way to help his old team mate.
Roche always speaks warmly of R.Millar.

gtm said:

they were frightened of robert millar's mullet. Any decent minded italian wouldn't want to be within 10 feet of anything so uncool:d

🙂:d:d

I see its back on Roche again.

Before I said I didn't rate him as a great. For the record I don't really know - he could well be a great - but he was a bit before my time so I don't know first hand. It just seemed strange to me that he would do so well in one year but then never really do anything after that. That's probably why I had a downer on him.

limerickman said:

Kudos to R.Millar : I know they raced together at ACBB and Peuguot.
The fact that they were on opposite team in that Giro, Millar wnt out of his way to help his old team mate.
Roche always speaks warmly of R.Millar.

I've always had a lot of time for Robert Millar. A genuine mountain climber who won jerseys / stages / races & was much his own man. He and Sean Yates kept the beacon alight in a very bleak era for british cycling.

How did we repay him? The tabloid press accused of having a sex change because the go their hands on a photo of him wearing a t-shirt in the wind - they decided that the gap between him & the fabric 'must' be because he'd had breast implants. Total rubbish of course😠

Roche was good but I'd say Kelly was the best irish cyclist of his generation.

gtm said:

I've always had a lot of time for Robert Millar. A genuine mountain climber who won jerseys / stages / races was much his own man. He and Sean Yates kept the beacon alight in a very bleak era for british cycling.

How did we repay him? The tabloid press accused of having a sex change because the go their hands on a photo of him wearing a t-shirt in the wind - they decided that the gap between him & the fabric 'must' be because he'd had breast implants. Total rubbish of course😠

Roche was good but I'd say Kelly was the best irish cyclist of his generation.

Without R Millar was the best British GT rider, in my opinion.
I Bradley and Cavendish (last year and this year) have ridden well in the GT's.
And guys like Graham Jones, Paul Sherwen, Malcolm Elliot were very good pro - but RM, for me, has been the best of the lot.
When you consider the opposition he was up against (the Columbians, Delgado, Roche, Hinault, leMond, Rooks, Breukink, Mottet, Fignon, Phil Anderson), Millar was the best climber of the lot.

I heard Sean Kelly speaking about RM and he has a very very high opinion of RM and what he did in his career, and Kelly said that RM was a very tough rider.
Roche's view of RM is well known too.
Both of them have the height of respect for RM.

As for Sean - for me he has been the best rider we have ever produced.
He was very very consistent throughout his career.
He's in the top five of winners of all time.
We were really lucky to have both in the 1980's.

[quote="TheDangerMan"] For the record I don't really know QUOTE]

so are you Mavis Riley, not John Drake ?