I haven’t been paying too much attention to the Lance deal. I thought he was riding the Tour Down Under as his last Professional race outside the US and then racing the rest of the season domestically. Guess not. I heard on the radio this morning that Lance was officially retiring from the sport of bicycle racing again. Something like Retirement 2.0. It doesn’t seem like it is getting enough press coverage.
On NPR, the spokeswoman from the LAF Foundation said that Lance was back as the full time Chairperson for LAF and a full time father.
I’ve seen a couple articles on Lance’s retirement. Here at Cyclingnews.com, the Subtitle was “Armstrong call time on controversial career.” That seems kind of mean.
I assume this year isn’t going to be so kind to Lance, off the bike. I don’t think having a federal investigation hanging over you could allow you to have a stress free life. I could be wrong.
I’m wondering if all these drug accusations and the federal investigation makes the retirement announcement so much less prominent. Think if Tiger Woods announced his retirement. It would be the front page of every paper and the lead story for every news show. Maybe it is because Lance has already retired once, so since he’s just doing what he said he was doing 4 years ago, so it’s not so news worthy. I don’t know.
It is kind of perplexing, because I was mildly looking forward to seeing him race in Colorado this summer.
And I was kind of hoping to run into him at a MTB race sometime this spring.
Not sure what to make of it… Just like Michael Jordan and Brett Farve before him, retiring doesn’t sit well with most pro athletes and then they jump back in just to find out they aren’t as dominant as they once were.
There needs to be another category of license, a license for “augmented” racers, where they get to use drugs, body mods, whatever, the only thing is that they have to disclose all the drugs or body mods they’re using before the race and during it… so you could have teams sponsored by Merck and Pfizer and SAIC, and have the events be not only interesting but also useful for biomedical research
“… ultimately finishing in 23rd place.
“I have no regrets about last year, either,” he said. “The crashes, the problems with the bike – those were things that were beyond my control.”
He probably could have done quite well if he had a bit of “mother’s little helpers”, too.
Augmented finishes: 1st in 1999 – 2006, 3rd in 2009
Unaugmented finish: 23rd in 2010
hate cheaters but do you think any of you could beat him if he were clean? just asking
hate cheaters too but do any of you really think you could beat him even if he were clean? just asking
Again, if he cheated – not supportive really? At 39 years old I would think that 23rd at the TdF is pretty darn good
from the standings lists that Steve made up, dropping druggies who placed, maybe Lance would do a lot better than 23rd place… It’s hard to tell. As I said, there need to be two kinds of racing licenses: Augmented, for those riders who either want to use performance enhancing drugs or body mods or who have been caught using them, and Unaugmented for the rest.
fair enough, until convicted innocent in my humble legal opinion and still a world class athlete
Lance Armstrong wrapped up his international racing career on Sunday at the final stage of the Tour Down Under.
Armstrong riding for RadioShack, finished his final international World Tour event in 67th position, 6min 42sec behind overall winner 23 year-old Australian Cameron Meyer of Garmin-Cervelo.
You only get one change at a good retirement!