Should Austin Rename the Lance Armstrong Bikeway?
Armstrong has now been stripped of his 2000 Olympic gold medal. Livestrong, his charity, has disassociated from him, and in turn has had its ties with the Sporting Kansas City soccer team severed. The fallout for Lance Armstrong is only beginning. The people he sued and some of the people and corporations who believed in him may now circle around him and pick him clean.
Hopefully Livestrong, the charity that he built but to which he now has no ties, can live on and continue to do the good work that it does. It’s the only part of Lance’s legacy that deserves to survive. Let the bike shop and the cafe stand too if they’re economically viable.
Armstrong says he cheated because he thought he had to in order to win. That cheating made him a champion, and then a friend to Mayor Leffingwell and George W. Bush and politicians and celebrities all over the world. He lied to them as much as he was lying to the cycling world. The only reason that the Lance Armstrong Bikeway exists is because Lance Armstrong cheated more efficiently and more ruthlessly than anyone else had ever cheated in cycling before. It’s now a scar in the heart of Austin. It needs to be removed.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle: Remembering Austin When Lance Armstrong Was Still A Hero
Well, there’s still Pete Rose Way in Cincinnati.
I’m sure a Google search would turn up many streets or facilities named for ethically challenged people.
When did Pete Rose cheat?
I don’t know if Pete Rose cheated on anything. I was coming up with an example of an ethically challenged athlete having a street named after him.
Rose did bet on baseball, while both a player and manager. That is the most serious violation that a professional baseball player can commit. There is a sign in every major league locker room noting that gambling on baseball is expressly forbidden.
When he bet on baseball games in which he had a duty to perform. That gets you on the permanently ineligible list. And it was clearly stated in signs in every clubhouse he entered.
That’s breaking a rule. It would be like saying that sneaking out after curfew is cheating.
“The marks of Armstrong are all over downtown Austin, from Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop (maillot juane — yellow shirt) to the Juan Pelota — Johnny One-Ball — cafe.”
OK I haven’t had my coffee yet. But Juan Pelota is attached to Mellow Johnny’s. Physically. In the same building, So this is like saying, “I feel pain all over my body, from my head to my… neck.”
If they change the name, they’ll change it to honor some commie illegal immigrant hispanic. It’s Austin, after all.
Is that what you want?
If it piss thee off, yes! On a more serious note, just make the Lance bikeway a route that also permits ATVs, segways, and motorcycles as well.
You know what? Let’s rename it “Every Other Cyclist Cheated As Well” trail, shall we?
Rename it for Greg LeMond.
Yeah!
Because, that makes it okay, right?
Sadly, you missed the point. Nothing is going to make it right. But cleaning up (all the) sports and going after all the cheaters is a good start. Not just Lance, who did what every single other cyclist did and beat them all handily is the right thing.
Lance is a hero.
You need to look up the definition of hero. Or petition the powers-that-be to change the definition. Lance is no hero – and neither are any other bicyclists. Unless the likes of Paul Revere rode a bike.
St Louis renamed a portion of Interstate 70 as Mark McGuire Highway in honor of his record breaking 70 home runs one season. I think they changed the name back after McGuire admitted to using steroids. His home run record was beaten by Barry Bonds another likely steroid user.
Everything is relative. Bill Clinton, a long-time & well-known adulterer, was elected President in 1992, defeating a lifelong public servant and war hero. Then 4 years later he defeated a lifelong public servant and war hero to win re-election to a second term, during which he was impeached for perjury and suborning perjury. During Clinton’s presidency, many mysterious deaths occurred, including Vince Foster & Ron Brown. Clinton has a library, a school of public service, and a street named after him.
In 2008, community organizer and corrupt Chicago politico Barack Obama defeated a war hero and former POW, becoming the first black U.S. President. In 2012, he won re-election, defeating a self-made multi-millionaire, who had given his inheritance to charity, and much of his own earnings to charity, after providing jobs for and improving the lives of thousands of others. Within a short time of his election in 2008, and having accomplished pretty much nothing save writing a couple of self-aggrandizing semi-autobiographical books, Obama wins a Nobel Prize. Obama’s policies have caused the deaths of at least one U.S. Border Agent, hundreds of Mexicans and 4 Americans in Libya. In the sick & twisted world in which we live, Obama will also most certainly have buildings, streets and programs named after him as well.
In the grand scheme of things, a street named after Armstrong won’t be the worst thing to occur.
Chicago still has a street, Balbo Drive, named after aviation pioneer and Italian fascist, Italo Balbo. The guy was leader of Mussolini’s Blackshirts (the inspiration for the Nazi Brownshirts) and died when his bomber was brought down over Libya in 1940. Odd that Chicago kept the street name after the Second World War. It would be like having a street in, say, Los Angeles, named after Minoru Genda, the brilliant Japanese aviator who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.
You make it sound like Lance won those 7 Tours by taking a shortcut en route or using some secret power assist on his bike or some other devious means. Fact of the matter is he rode every friggin’ mile of the route, same as every other rider, over every col, thru the same oppressive heat and bone-chilling cold. THAT’S a fact. Why aren’t other riders crying for his head—-? Because they know drugs or no drugs his achievement is simply awesome.
I don’t see the problem here. Everybody doped. Lance won his races in an even playing field.
You know that for a fact? Every rider (200 I think) in every Tour de France cheated each time he rode? How do you know that? Everyone was tested and failed except Sir Liescelot? Interesting because last week you said he didn’t cheat because he was never caught (I mean tested positive)…
It’s the biggest BS throwaway line his defenders use.
Try using that on the IRS when you cheat on your taxes this year; after call “everyone cheats” and your just leveling the playing field, right?
You make a good point NM – yes he may have ‘cheated’, but the people against whom he was competing were likely cheating as well, and he still won, pedaling every mile & suffering up every mountain. Does that make it right? No, but he beat others who were probably doing the same thing he was. While I am not condoning his conduct, it remains an epic story with a tragic ending.
Had Armstrong not tried to make a comeback in 2009, I believe his TDF titles, his Olympic medal, everything, would have all been left intact, but his ego got the best of him and as often follows when that happens, he’s now paying a big price.
The one thing, which more than anything else drove this whole drug cheating scandal was that the drug tests never worked in the first place!
At the level of the sport Lance competed at, just a half-percent increase in one’s performance could make the difference between 20th place and 1st place. With this much at stake, the necessity to dope becomes mandatory. This reality, combined with the fact that the drug tests were so easily gotten around produced a racing culture were everyone had to deny using PED’s, but at the same time needed to use them to remain competitive.
If anyone should be held accountable for the state of the sport it is the drug testing agencies themselves. Think of all of the bureaucratic careers produced, petty bureaucratic empires built and 100+ million of $ that the sporting communities have been forced to spend on drug testing over the last two decades. Then stop and think about the fact that very little of that drug testing was ever based on any valid and peer-reviewed science, but was basically based on nothing more than “snake-oil”, big egos and wishful thinking.
Awesome? No, it’s foul. And admiring it, aside from being immoral, is just plain STUPID.
We don’t know if he could even have COMPLETED a race without doping. We don’t know if he’d have been in the back of the pack.
All we know is that dope won some races.
Not Lance Armstrong.
Lance Armstrong needs to hung up by his remaining ball, not for doping but for the legal warfare and smear campaigns HE launched against people who dared to tell the truth about him. Now i can’t recall anyone else who with malice of forethought set about to destroy his detractors reputation and good name for daring to print or say Lance was doping. It is one thing to dispute the allegations and quite another to launch smear campaigns with the millions of dollars he was making from his tainted victories.
You are 100 percent right. The doping is fairly forgivable. The personal destruction campaigns are hard to overlook.
“Now i can’t recall anyone else who with malice of forethought set about to destroy his detractors reputation and good name”
A tough one but I nominate Bill Clinton.
Why is this even news? We have far worse problems to solve in this country than to spend time worrying that some elite athlete cheated. It’s a shame he chose that road to take in his life and I imagine he will have to pay for it for the rest of his life. This massive coverage by the MSM is nothing more than a ploy to draw everyone’s focus away from some very serious economic problems that the incompetents in D.C. need to get serious about.
Somebody besides me PLEASE read “French Revolutions” by Brit travel writer Tim Moore. In it Moore cycles the route that the Tour De France took that year, a few weeks before the actual Tour.
As Moore, a non-athlete, destroys himself daily over the course, he fills in his journal with description of past Tour events, winners and competitors and various anecdotes of the race’s history. One thing is crystal clear: the cyclists, nearly all of them, have always used whatever drug or potion they thought would give them an edge. Armstrong’s behavior is the rule, not the exception, at least from a historical perspective. Hell, Moore himself takes something, I don’t remember what, just to more closely parallel the actual racers’ experience (it doesn’t go well).
If we want to move the limits of acceptable behavior, declare Armstrong’s actions to be outside the new limit, fine, go ahead. But this pretending that some new and awful crime has been committed is hard to swallow for anyone with the capacity to remember.
The ex-wife still lives in Austin. She writes books. She leads devotions at her church. She’s an amazing friend to her friends. She’s a great encouragement to athletes in town.
I’ve never met her, but I’ve met plenty of people she has helped, encouraged, prayed for, prayed with, built up. Kids, too.
Why not rename it for her? Lance could be the asterisk, since that’s what he is, anyway.
Good idea. Just call it the Armstrong Bikeway. We can even pretend it’s named after Neil.
Another cheatin’ Texan (did I repeat myself?) like Roger Clemens.
Thats the big game, get them white Texas boys to cry uncle.
I will say given the advances of modern science,Lance Armstrong is doing well through his alter ego Johnny Manziel (try, just try to get those 2 on the same stage at the same time). Austin should rename the bikeway since alter-Lance Manziel took his talents to College Station.
Clemens was born in Ohio. Don’t blame Texas for him. Yankees can take the credit for him.
“Armstrong destroyed the reputation of anyone who dared to expose him, with smears and lawsuits”
And that’s the key. Sign of a sociopath, a narcissist. Austin will indicate its honors those who triumph by any means necessary if they leave it. Stregnth over character. Might as well name it after Agamemnon.
Never name anything after a living person. Duh. Simple.
Preferably let a good long while (minimum three decades) elapse after the public figure dies.
Better yet, if tax dollars went to pay for an edifice, said edifice should not be named after any person. I.e., just call it the Austin Bikepath or the like. Only edifices that are privately funded with no public-funded component should be named after a person.
My conclusion from all of this is that biking isn’t cool after all. If the only way anybody ever can win, or even finish a race, is by cheating, then it is a gruesome form of self-mutilation and not a sport.
My new years resolution is to never watch any sporting event again unless I am assured that what my eyes see happen is counted as real and cannot be ever taken away.
This all started with Jim Thorpe, but that was before I was born.
Next came the 1968 Kentucky Derby when Dancers Image was cheated out of winning by a dubious urine sample.
Next came Ben Johnson, not the English playwright but the sprinter.
Next came Floyd Landis who had the greatest single day I ever saw in the 2006 Tour. That day the be greatest day by anyone ever in the tour and my eyes saw it happen. Then they said by eyes decieved me.
Now they say what my eyes saw happen 15 years ago with Armstrong did not happen.
I quit!
I watched on tv and enjoyed seeing Armstrong win most of those tours. It was entertainment. The entertainment I had is in the bank, just as the joy people felt watching Mark McGuire hit all those home runs is also in the bank. But still…it does not feel so good now. Lance was the man’s man, alpha male type, supposedly a model for the way one might hold oneself. Hmmm.
YES
Nah, but they shouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a big dope area.
Austin is a big blue spot in a very red state, so I would say it is already a “dope” area.
Hey, it’s Austin, home of the Texas Legislature and the rest of the state bureaucracy, and UT-Austin — both of which groups are filled with bi-coastal wanna-bes.
Leave the name as it is. For what a majority of area residents would like to turn Texas into, Armstrong’s name now fits perfectly.
A new name for the bikeaway just may take away the blemish on biking that the L man made. Not.
Yes, an interesting observation.Sorry, Ann, I thought of it first.
The similarities between the two are amazing. L.A and B.O.
Lance is a horrific bully.
Lance unmercifully bullied the people who accused him of doping relentlessly. Anybody who disagreed with Lance was fired and blackballed from the sport. If a woman disagreed, Lance used his PR machine to tell the world she was a whore and slut and shouldn’t be taken seriously because of her morals.
And Lance proved to be one of the most prolific liars of his time. Pathological.
Barack’s lies are worse.
Barack tells lies that put 300 million Americans at risk and ignores laws that could start WWIII. Lance just wanted to win some bike races. Obama wants to take down the United States.
If I had a canon professional camera, I’m suggest someone shoot them both, and hang the picture from hell where they both, in my humble opinion, deserve to end up.
But you don’t understand, rachel, Lance Armstrong MUST become the headline story. How else will we manage to ignore that 8% unemployment has become the new norm, our national debt is skyrocketing and we are out of money, our administration continues to back our enemies in Libya, Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations, and we are about to hand over Iraq and Afghanistan to the very people we fought against?
Nevermind that all of Lance’s troubles can be tracked back to one Floyd Landis, who no one seems to want to talk about. But Landis wasn’t happy just going after Lance when he got busted juicing, he went after ALL the Americans that rode the TdF. And what did poor Floyd get for all his efforts to disparage the rest of the riders? Busted for mail and internet fraud and having to pay back almost a 1/2 million bucks for that fraud.
And let’s not mention all the good things Lance did; like helping others with cancer and giving hundreds of thousands of men hope that they, too, could defeat testecular cancer; like helping wounded warriors in bike rides, getting the bicycle companies to design, and build, bikes that those warriors could ride in spite of their missing limbs. Let’s just wipe out all the good.
If Lance Armstrong had only killed a dog, or his girlfriend, or acted like a drunken/drugged up fool in public, and had played for the NFL, he would not be raked over the coals like he is. He would be having lunch at the White House.
There are so many forms of cheating and very few real heros….my advice is to stop naming streets after people and give them numbers or name them after trees, animalsm or elements. At least attempt to stop thie celebrity-centered world.