Dearborn (MI) woman: 'I stood up to the bully' named Lance Armstrong

[marmar]

Dearborn's Betsy Andreu: 'I stood up to the bully' named Lance Armstrong
12:47 PM, January 17, 2013

By Jeff Seidel
Detroit Free Press Columnist


Dearborn’s Betsy Andreu, one of the first people to blow the whistle on Lance Armstong’s use of performance-enhancing drugs, said that Armstrong needs to do more than confess on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Armstrong reportedly will admit to using performance-enhancing drugs during a taped interview that airs tonight.

“This is the very beginning,” Andreu told the Free Press this morning. “This isn’t the right forum. He has to meet with U.S. anti-doping officials to give the details. Because this was a massive fraud, the biggest in the history of sport. There is no way he did it by himself.”

"I hope, for Lance’s sake and for the sake of sport, that he tells the whole truth,” Andreu continued. “This is monumental. He has one chance at the truth. If he tells the partial truth, for those of us who know the truth, it’s going to infuriate us.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/article/20130117/SPORTS18/130117031/lance-armstrong-oprah-betsy-andreu-frankie?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

[frazzled]

1. I'm really torn about watching this interview

Armstrong has been such a consummate liar, throughout his career, what good will listening to his "confession" or even his "apology" be? I might tune in for a bit just for prurient interest, but I really find the exercise pretty useless.

From the moment the French accused him of doping, quite a few years ago, I believed it was true (why would they risk such a charge?). The male members of my family (husband, brother, father) are all avid cyclists themselves, and Armstrong was their hero. I just couldn't convince them that my woman's intuition told me he was definitely dopier than a junkie. I'm glad this woman is vindicated; I feel vindicated, too. An apology or admission from him means nothing to me ... and probably nothing for him, either (except trying to regain his name).

[jsr]

8. Lance Armstrong is pond scum in my book

but I wish Oprah would confess that she never retired.

[brush]

28. Huh?

I don't get your point about Oprah but Armstrong is not nearly the only one in cycling. It's overrun with doping. They didn't even know who to award his seven victories to because the rest of them were doping too. What a mess.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. "Monumental"? It's... biking.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. Long-distance cycling, to be exact. . .

. . .a sport that has been filthy and corrupt for decades.

From crass exploitation of athletes to doping scandals to shenanigans by the sponsors, professional cycling is a sport, which, according to sports blogger Dave Zirin, is in need of a union among athletes.

http://books.google.com/books?id=gkt_DYq1b7kC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=dave+zirin+cycling+needs+a+union&source=bl&ots=FwPFNcioRm&sig=09H91hLySDDynYXktgj7oo-8QPY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=o2P4UJyrKYLC0QHwuIH4DA&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=dave%20zirin%20cycling%20needs%20a%20union&f=false

[a la izquierda]

12. Baseball has been too.

Meh.

[frylock]

4. it's cycling..

and, yes, it's monumental.

[Honeycombe8]

11. You know how people are about their sports. There were congressional hrgs on steroid use....

in baseball, in G W Bush's 1st term, remember? I'm sure that cost us taxpayers a few million dollars to hold those hearings. On baseball.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

13. If Hank Aaron came forward and said he used steroids THAT might be "monumental."

Cycling is a tough sport and I tease it calling it 'biking' but the fact is it's small potatoes. It falls somewhere midway between soccer and badminton in the list of sports American's pay attention to. If Armstrong had been a French man leading up a French cycling team we would never have heard of him... unless he'd still somehow managed to hook up with Sheryl Crow. By definition nothing in cycling can be "monumental."

[Honeycombe8]

14. Biking isn't small in Europe, I believe. And soccer is HUGE in the rest of the world.

The Tour de France is in....France. It's HUGE there.

I think your perspective is limited, in a way.

Lance Armstrong is one of the most famous athletes in the world. I don't follow biking, but even I know THAT!

If you didn't hear of Armstrong until he started dating Crow, you might be a little young to grasp the Armstrong significance. I'm not into sports, but it was hard to escape the enormous celebrity of Lance Armstrong going back for years. Way before Crow. BTW....she wasn't more famous that he was. He was internationally famous. Although they were both famous. He dumped her. Before that, Eric Clapton dumped her. I can't figure it out. She's so attractive & sexy (in my female point of view) and talented. Eric Clapton? He was lucky to get her. Maybe it's all the time celebrities have to spend apart and traveling.

[joeybee12]

5. She's a nasty piece of work...as guilty as the rest...and

yet she claims Lance did it all, forced her husband to cheat...she needs to crawl back under her rock.

[frylock]

6. not a shred of humility

smh

[joeybee12]

7. You don't have to like Lance...and you obviously don't...to

realize this woman is full of sh*t

[frylock]

9. i was a fan of lance at one point, and don't take issue with the doping, per se..

as it has been pointed out, the entire peloton was doping. what I don't care for is his treatment of the other riders that blew the whistle on this shit.

[Honeycombe8]

15. The way I've heard it explained is...Armstrong really was in control of the sport.

The team was there to support Armstrong & help him win. He called the shots. If that's true, he would have been in a position to coerce another biker to do steroids.

[Raine]

10. I bet there isn't anyone in that sport that doesn't

"dope".

[MrSlayer]

16. My god, you'd think he killed people or something.

He fucking rode a stupid bike for fuck's sake, it's not like he tricked people into thinking he invented cold fusion or anything important. And the people he was competing against were all doing the same exact thing he was, he was just better than them at it. I just don't get why this is such a big deal.

Sports are entertainment, period. There's no difference between a baseball player and a goddamn mime. So what if they take things that make them run faster or hit harder? So what if taking PED makes them recover from injury faster? Isn't that what we want as fans? To have the star player playing at his best and getting off the IR as soon as possible? I do and if I owned a team and was paying a guy $10 million to be a star I'd want that guy on the field/court/ice.

Armstrong's foundation raised millions and millions for people that need it. That's what is important here. Not that he doped and beat a bunch of other doped competitors in a meaningless race.

Such dramatics over nothing.

[Separation]

18. 30 million dollars isn't "nothing".

That's aprox how much the USPS invested in Lance Armstrong team. I know that in the big scheme of things that's not a lot, but still wrong.

How many people looked up to him for inspiration, then to just be kicked in the sack?

You ask, what does it matter. I say he is a cheat, and lacks principles. Not a person I would ever look up to.

[MrSlayer]

19. Well condemn the entire sport then.

Because they were all doing it. There wasn't one "honest" person in the race. And if you don't think the USPS team knew about it, I've got a bridge to sell you. They didn't care, just as baseball didn't care that Big Mac and Sosa were doing it. It's about the ratings, the money and the win.

If you're looking to athletes to be your role models, that's on you. I'm totally on Charles Barkley's side of that argument.

I'll stand by my assessment that's it's much ado about nothing.

[Separation]

20. Other people were honest.

How do you think this came to light, it sure wasn't because he had feelings of guilt. He denied to the very end.

I personally don't look up to athletes but there are thousands who do. You say Sosa, McGuire, etc were doing it and nobody cared? Unless I am mistaken their legacy is done. Hall of fame chances are next to none. When people talk of baseball greats, Sosa, McGuire are not in that list for a good reason. To you or I our legacy isn't what it is to these people, it's all they have.

Am I going to lose sleep over this? Heck no, but I am glad a cheat & liar was exposed for what he is.

[Whisp]

26. as you said: ''but I am glad a cheat & liar was exposed for what he is.''

we should not get too comfy and accustomed to cheating and lying. It is a big deal.

or used to be.

[daleo]

21. Yes, but he lied point blank on multiple occasions

Though it is true that both pro and amateur sports are racked with hypocracy.

[Honeycombe8]

22. He didn't just lie. He actually SUED people for saying he was on steroids.

That's a snippet I heard from the Oprah interview.

The arrogance of it. The bullying aspect of it....it costs a fortune to be sued. There are court costs, and you have to hire an attorney. So he was trying to bully them into shutting up.

[daleo]

23. He could be in legal trouble then

A civil suit for defamation, or even criminal for perjury.

[duffyduff]

17. What's pathetic is people STILL making excuses for this fraud

Instead of going on national television, he should personally apologize to each and every person whose lives he ruined, starting with Greg and Kathy LeMond.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

24. She seems more invested in this than her husband

[pokerfan]

25. He still doesn't get it

Tonight he moaned the loss of $75M in endorsements. As if he would have had those endorsements in the first place had he not been cheating.

And no apologies for what he did to Betsy and her husband:

One was Betsy Andreu, the wife of Armstrong’s teammate Frankie Andreu, who had said that she heard him talking about doping. He worked to wreck her reputation and her husband’s career. Oprah asked him if she’d been telling the truth. “I’m not going to take that on,” he said. She rephrased, asking him to say whether he was still calling Andreu a liar. He still wouldn’t answer; it may be that doing so would get him in legal trouble, but that’s not an excuse. Instead, he shared what he seemed to think was an amusing moment from a phone conversation they had:

I said, “Listen, I called you crazy. I called you a bitch, I called you all these things, but I never called you fat.” Because she thought I said, You were a fat crazy bitch. And I said, “Betsy, I never said you were fat.”

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/01/lance-armstrongs-flawed-confession.html#ixzz2IO4biIJM

[DollarBillHines]

27. He should have to eat all of those silly yellow bracelets.

Fuck him.