The ruthless, win-at-all-costs nature of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has been exposed in a recent documentary with one particular incident even leaving him stunned.
During the 2004 Tour de France, Armstrong was on track to win his sixth yellow jersey. But according to the ESPN documentary, LANCE, he was so threatened by a fellow cyclist that he did something "fundamentally evil".
On the 18th stage, Filippo Simeoni got ahead of the pelaton with five other riders when Armstrong unnecessarily took out his personal grievances against the Italian cyclist who had testified against the American's coach Dr Michele Ferrari.
Simeoni was called a "liar" by Armstrong in 2003 after testifying that Dr Ferrari had given performance enhancing drugs. Armstrong was then sued by Simeoni for 100,000 euros for charity.
Simeoni recounts the Tour de France incident in 2004 in archival footage in the documentary.
"He told me, 'You made a big mistake. You shouldn't have testified against Dr. Ferrari and especially not sued me for defamation. I have no problems, I have time, I have money, and I can destroy you whenever I want'," he said.
"I made a super effort to get to the escape but Armstrong said the peloton would not let the group remain in front unless I let them go.
"I slowed down out of respect for the other riders there. He shouldn't worry about little riders like me."
Even Armstrong's former teammates couldn't believe his behaviour.
"The most irrational thing I've ever seen him do was in 2004 when he decided to chase down this Italian rider Filippo Simeoni," Floyd Landis recalled in the documentary.
"When you're that protected by the organisation that runs cycling, I mean you can actually take out personal vendettas as well as win at the same time. He liked that, that was his thing."
"Lance chased him down vindictively," another teammate Jonathan Vaughters added.
"[He] sat behind him, mocking him.
"When eventually Simeoni comes back to the peloton, Lance comes up to the camera and [zips his mouth]. I mean, you cannot get more fundamentally evil than that."
Armstrong went on to drop the defamation case against Simeoni two years later.
"The god damn thing about it was that it was on national television," Charles Pelkey, former editor at VeloNews said in the film.
"It was horrible, and should have been embarrassing to Lance Armstrong, but he was at a point in his life when he was getting away with stuff. "
In the documentary Armstrong expressed some remorse about his actions against Simeoni.
"To stoop to that level, that's not what a champion does. So I needed to go say sorry for that," he said.
"I went there in 2013; so it had been nine years. He said, 'For nine years my entire life is associated with you.'
"This is a guy who was a multiple-time Italian champion and won stages; I mean, he'd won some races. But everybody remembered that day, because I was a f---ing a--hole.
"So it just takes those days and hearing those things to learn and to be like, 'Okay, what you thought was bad, was way worse'."
from WWOS http://wwos.nine.com.au/news/cycling-lance-armstrong-tour-de-france-2004-filippo-simeoni-pelaton-incident/5108f5d3-6f5f-49de-8453-580e668a5160
0 Comments