r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 12h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/siderinc 9h ago edited 3h ago

And loads of people that finished behind him did the same.

I once heard that if they want to award the first clean racer it was someone that placed 37th or something.

Edit:spelling

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u/Various-Dust285 6h ago

As a cycling fan, this is true.

What makes us all hate Lance more than any one else is his attitude. Lance was an ass even before the issues, and he did a media tour of "how dare you accuse me of drugs" before he got tested. Most other cyclists were like "yea, you got me, well done"

Also, it's WHY Lance got caught that also makes him an ass. Sparks notes version

  • His strongest teammate in his early career was Floyd Landis
  • Landis was caught doping much earlier than Armstrong, and Armstrong already started his "how could he? I would never?" holier-than-thou BS.
  • Landis also had a bit of a "Who? Me? No" attitude, but not nearly as much as Armstrong.
  • Landis served a two year (this is from memory?) exile from cycling. When he was ready to come back, he wanted to be back on Lance's team, they were a great team before. Lance continued with his "I won't be associated with cheaters" BS, and basically told him to F off.
  • Landis was fed up with Armstrong's hypocrisy and slander and such, so he sent evidence that the whole team was doping back in the 2000s

Even now, Lance is still pretty arrogant and likes to toot his own horn a lot, he feels a lot like Michael Jordan in that respect, to give a more well-known reference. He keeps his grudges, he doesn't acknowledge the acheivements of others very well. Like MJ, he was clearly a GOAT for his era, but the sport has moved on. Cycling currently has a guy who is clearly going to be the GOAT. He's only 27 and is already debatably the best ever, but Lance keeps talking about himself and downplays what Tadej is doing.

For cycling fans, the real problem is that the physios, trainers, teams, and such weren't really punished, so some of them are still in the sport. Who was administering the drugs and overseeing all that?

For non-cycling fans, as Bill Burr said, all Lance Armstrong did for me was raise millions of dollars for cancer.

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u/Patecatli 5h ago

Not to mention the attacks and lawsuits against anyone who claimed he was doping.

He demanded that Trek droo Greg Lemond after Greg had raised concerns about a team doctor.

Basically Armstrong was a narcissist, and he attacked anyone who went against him.

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u/Various-Dust285 3h ago

Greg was a guest on The Roadman podcast, great episode. The parts about doping and such were great. He shits on Armstrong a good bit. You love to see it.

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u/supx3 2h ago

If I could somehow forgive him for the other stuff I'd never forgive him for what he did to Lemond.

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u/donitdotis 1h ago

all Lance Armstrong did for me was raise millions of dollars for cancer.

didn't most of the money go to some bullshit that didn't truly help people?

it always sounds beautiful if you hear "oh he raised 500 million for cancer", but i think there was some research done and most of the money went to org maintenance and shit like that.

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u/rotorain 4h ago

If anyone here hasn't seen the 2017 documentary 'Icarus' I highly recommend it. It's about a dude at the top of amateur cycling who noticed there's a big gap between like 15-20 guys at the top and everyone else and suspects that they're doping. He decided to try to dope as well to see if he can catch up to that group and make a documentary about how it all works to expose the issues with the drug testing systems and the prevalence of PEDs in cycling.

It ends up blowing up into a massive whistleblowing operation that exposed the Russian Federation's infiltration of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the government sponsored cheating program that a huge portion of Russian athletes were pressured into doing both for the Olympics and just general global sporting.

The doc starts kinda crazy then goes fucking nuclear and the best part is that very few parts are recreations of events or whatever, it's all the real people in the shit while it was actually happening because they were already recording for the original doc and just never stopped as things went off the rails.

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u/jpcardier 11m ago

Icarus is an amazing documentary.

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u/KaraAliasRaidra 8h ago

Dang, it's like that Jimmy Neutron episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDyxa0k0jg0

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u/ramborage 4h ago

So basically the equivalent of the MVP in baseball from like 1998 to 2004

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u/donitdotis 1h ago

the difference is the team of lance did the doping to an extent the other teams very likely didn't.

they were doped out of their mind.