Lance Armstrong's victims- the people who were really hurt
<snip>
Four years later, it’s easier for the wider world to see why. The evidence published this month by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency shows that Armstrong and his cronies possessed a cynical assuredness that their yellow wristbands entitled them to smash anyone who threatened their corrupt regime.
But it’s also already becoming harder for the world to see how lonely and painful it was for people in cycling to stand up and resist Armstrong’s Machiavellian tactics. Now it’s trendy to be an accuser — it’s the stuff of bestsellers, not defamation complaints. But if you took on that role during the peak of Armstrong’s Tour de France dominance you might be vilified, accused of being jealous, drunk, unpatriotic, mentally disturbed.
A lot of times Armstrong himself didn’t have to lift a finger. Enough people were invested in his lies that they became foot soldiers in his deceptions. We published on our website a voicemail where an Armstrong friend — a representative of one of his most loyal sponsors — tells one of his accusers, Betsy Andreu, the wife of a former Armstrong teammate, that she hopes “somebody breaks a baseball bat over (her) head.” We published transcripts of a deposition in which Armstrong’s ex-wife isn’t allowed to answer questions about Armstrong and doping because Armstrong’s lawyer won’t allow her to.
Those were among well over 100 stories the Daily News published in the past four and a half years directly or tangentially related to Armstrong and doping. The point wasn’t to determine who really deserved to wear a yellow spandex T-shirt on the Champs-Elysé es; it was about getting people’s stories out in the open in the marketplace of information that Armstrong seemed to so thoroughly regulate.
<snip>
Stories about those who opposed Armstrong:
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/zone-lance-armstrong-bully-downfall-article-1.1188512
This is my major problem with Armstrong. His eleventy billion denials aside, a lot of people have doped and ruined only themselves for the most part. His vindictiveness sets him well apart.
= new reply since forum marked as read
