Written by Joe Pietaro
22 January 2013

 

 

 

 

MD’s Exclusive Lance Armstrong Videos Accentuate His Early PED Denials

By Joe Pietaro

Photo: Marc Pagani Photography/Shutterstock.com

 

It certainly didn’t take a staggered, two-part Oprah Winfrey Network broadcast for our readers to roll their eyes when learning of another Lance Armstrong performance-enhancing drug chapter. But because this is the latest installment of the demonization of steroid users by the mainstream media, your friends here at Muscular Development decided to say – or show you – a thing or two about it. And of course throw our opinion out there.

 

MD TO THE RESCUE

 

Just when you thought that there were no more Armstrong denials, our very own Team MD staffers scrambled through hours of video to find a few clips that he shot way back in 2008 when Armstrong was announcing his comeback to competitive cycling. Three years removed from his last race and already having faced years of questions about his possible PED use, the seven-time Tour de France champion holds an impromptu mini-press session that Team MD made sure to be front and center.

 

Armstrong refers to how this situation will differ from the others because the public will have the “confidence of anti-doping” and there will be “no doubt if we’re successful.” At this stage of his career, the Plano, Texas native had been highly scrutinized about steroids and EPO usage, but there was never any ‘smoking gun’ to pin it on him. He obviously felt that he could keep it a secret and boasted about being clean then – which backs up what he claimed to Winfrey regarding being drug-free since 2005.

 

“I never cheated,” he says on the 2008 clip. “If I didn’t cheat in (2001), then I’m not going to cheat in ’09. That’s not going to change.”

 

Issuing what sounds like a confident challenge, Armstrong continues, “We’ll be able to validate it (now). We couldn’t validate it in 2001, 2002…you had to try to prove the negative. If you have something that we can’t find, if you’re sneakier than the other guys…that’s a very hard thing to work against.”

 

 

REALITY SHOW-TYPE TV MATERIAL

 

If Armstrong was in fact clean in 2008, then he had every reason to push testing. Look at it from his perspective for a moment – he can quiet the skeptics and they have no recourse. He takes it a step further in a video also shot by Team MD that same year, this time at a press conference in Las Vegas.

 

“Doping has always existed in sports,” Armstrong says matter-of-factly. “Make the line. People break the rules and you kick them out.” He follows that up with, “There was a level of transparency that (sic) I didn’t want to leave that box unchecked.” There is also talk about the samples taken then can be kept frozen forever for possible future testing in the event that new methods are discovered. Again, Armstrong – at least according to what he is saying now – was clean at the time and would have welcomed any testing.

 

But perhaps the most interesting part of the clip occurs when cycling legend Greg LeMond stands up in the media area and verbally challenges Armstrong, who is visibly upset at his frequent critic.

 

“It’s time for us – everybody in this room – to move on,” a stern-faced Armstrong says to the three-time Tour de France winner.

 

 

WHERE ARMSTRONG WENT WRONG

It’s hard to sit there and pass judgment on someone who used PEDs if you’re not in the same position yourself. The anchors on the nightly news and the sports talk radio station hosts have no problem throwing hellacious barbs out at the likes of Armstrong, but they weren’t the ones having to succeed and exceed the expectations, nor the ones that had money and fame within reach.

 

Sure, you can have an opinion on what Armstrong did (and his admission to Winfrey including years of using testosterone, EPO, human growth hormone and blood doping) and label him as a ‘cheater’ in your own estimations, but he said it best himself about how it has always existed in sports.

 

By being so aggressive in his denials, to the point of filing lawsuits against his critics, Armstrong left himself wide open to possibly get raked over the coals. And that has certainly come to fruition. Quietly denying any drug use and keeping any proof of it inside a very small inner circle would have better served the cancer survivor. The athletes that have done so (Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte come to mind) seemed to have been forgiven once admitting and apologizing. The ones who have fought the allegations tooth and nail – such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens – have been found guilty in the court of public opinion even though they have been cleared legally.

 

PEDs ARE PART OF THE GAME – LIKE IT OR NOT

 

While that may seem shocking and earth-shattering to some, we here at MD say it like it is and don’t stick our heads in the sand like many of the sports and news media outlets. They continue to vilify the athletes that have either been caught or suspected of using PEDs, treating them like a modern day John Dillinger. And they perpetuate the unrealistic ideology that athletics are for the most part clean and these “rule breakers” are few and far in between.

 

Don’t kill the messenger, but bodybuilding is far from the only sport that is writhe with drug use. The main difference is that MD has the balls to openly discuss it, hence our ‘No Bull’ motto. If there were no drug use in sports, then we would certainly report that. But unfortunately that is not the case.

 

And that’s not to suggest that Sports Illustrated start a new column about the best football steroid cycles! Quite the contrary, one should not condone the use of such substances, but at the same time can be informative on what they actually do and how wide spread they are.

 

You can probably count on one hand the number of sportswriters across the country that know what these drugs can - and more importantly - cannot do for someone. They come from the school that believe one shot of test in the ass can make you go from having warning track power to leading the league in home runs. Not a clue on the importance of nutrition and training needed to accompany the drug use to have any realistic effect.

 

Who wants to put any money down that they don’t even realize that Hormone Replacement Therapy (which includes testosterone and human growth hormone) is not only legal, but also covered by most medical insurance? And that the “Is It Low T?” television commercial on during the game is a multi-billion dollar industry?

 

So we have no problem taking the lead on informing the masses on the most talked about subject in sports this side of the Super Bowl. For instance, in the next issue of MD, our very own six-time Olympia winner Dorian Yates speaks about obtaining that grainy look on stage and what substances will do that for you.

 

“I believed in switching over to drugs like trenbolone and Primobolan that didn’t give any water bloat,” writes Yates about what he did in his career as the calendar wound down closer to contest day. ‘The Shadow’ also mentions that the use of insulin is not all it’s cracked up to be.

 

And he didn’t even need any urging from Oprah to admit it.

 

 

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