Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

I've just finished David Walsh's book - Seven Deadly Sins - on his long pursuit of Lance Armstrong. It's a superb, inspiring read with so many parallels to our own doping story (Rangers FC). This tale, at least, has a happy ending but we may have to be very patient as it took >13 years to nail Lance!

The UCI come over very badly indeed - they were aware of the problems early on, covered up and tried to stick to their discredited script right up until the bitter end. For UCI, read SFA, SFL, SPL, SPFL - our governing body were aware of the (financial doping) problems early on, it was covered up and CO's EBT may well have effectively been a bribe. It certainly ensured that SDM had nothing whatsoever to worry about from that quarter.

For the show more most part the journalists were too lazy to cover the LA story properly. The cycling journalists were too conflicted, the more generic sports journalists were not interested. The conflicts, as here, were on promises of access - toe the line or your access to Lance, to his team and to the sport will be adversely affected; by implication the journalists' livelihood is at risk.

The cyclists themselves, the whole sport, was and perhaps still is wholly corrupted by the doping. Again, the riders were forced to toe the line (dope), keep to the script (don't grass up), or leave the sport. How difficult must it be for a talented bike rider to have to choose between the sport he loves and having to cheat to survive.

There are, of course, differences. In Scotland unless we stick to the mandated, establishment script we must be anonymous. Any journalist who breaks ranks is vilified and eventually leaves the story or leaves his job.

What I still cannot fathom out about our story is the motivation - of all of those who maintain the lie. It cannot be possible in this day and age that the BBC, the Herald, the Scotsman, the DR are populated & controlled by Sevco sympathisers. It cannot be possible in this day and age that all of these organisations are so afraid of the mob that they perpetrate the corruption and the lie. show less

Well written account of the years that David Walsh tried to get the world to believe that Lance Armstrong's wins in the Tour de France couldn't be anything other than fraudulent, and that he was a drugs cheat.

This book is really quite eye opening in relation to the lengths that Lance Armstrong went to to hide his cheating ways. I was really pleased for David that Lance finally came out and 'admitted' (let's face it - he had little choice!) that he had taken performance enhancing drugs on each of his seven Tour de France wins.

A rare page turner for me, I just couldn't get enough of the inner workings of cycling's greatest asshole's mind.

I enjoyed this book. Armstrong's history is well known but this is the tale of those few who fought to expose the fraud that they knew existed sometimes at great risk to themselves. I am not a great fan of cycling myself but I found this admirable, entertaining and worth reading.

Great detail not only on Armstrong but the drug culture in cycling & sport. How ineffective leadership by the UCI, the controlling body of cycling allowed the proflication of illegal substances which could have caused the demise of cycling as a sport. It could have created an industry which would permanate into other sports.
Armstrong took it to another level of usage, of legal suppression of
coverage & dominance of the peloton were fellow riders took drugs or got out of the system.

This book would have benefited from some serious editing. It is very poorly written and would have been a better long journal/magazine article than a book. David Walsh may be a good sports writer but his prose is not well done. He jumps around between characters with abandon and others pop up without any context. I was really frustrated with this by the mid way mark but finished it. All to say that cycling is a very corrupt sport and unless serious measures are taken to ensure that riders are clean, it will remain corrupt. Lance Armstrong is a fraud and so are most cyclists.