On Thursday, Sports Illustrated’s David Epstein published an
interview with former Armstrong bike mechanic Mike Anderson. Anderson was fired after
he found steroids while cleaning his boss’ apartment. Anderson said that Armstrong promised to help him open up a bike shop, and that after the firing he tried to negotiate a deal to make that happen. Armstrong sued Anderson and sent out information to reporters discrediting Anderson as a disgruntled employee. Anderson, who now lives in New Zealand and works at a bike shop, told
Epstein that he wouldn’t watch Oprah’s interview with the cyclist.
“Since it's Lance and since I have such
a cynical view of him, why would I even bother? I've wasted a lot of mental and
emotional energy with that guy for way too long,” said Anderson. “That aside,
there's not going to be any real genuine contrition. What's the point? I kind
of enjoy getting everyone else's view. I know what he's like. I know he's
completely lacking empathy. I know this. I've seen it. I don't think that
suddenly he's turned 180 degrees and become a normal human being who thinks and
feels like the majority of us do."
In the interview, Armstrong said that he doped. He said that at the time he was doping, he did not think it was wrong or cheating. He did not offer new, detailed information about how he doped or implicate others that were involved. He did not offer a public apology.
Here are the views of eight other
people who watched the interview and are connected to Armstrong.
“I think it’s a huge, huge first step for Lance Armstrong,” Hamilton, one of
11 former teammates to testify against the U.S. cycling star, told NBC
television’s Today Show.
“For a lot of people, it’s raw. I’ve known about it for a long time, since
1998. Big first step,” said Hamilton, whose 2012 book, The Secret Race,
described doping by Armstrong.
“You can tell, it’s real. He’s very emotional and he’s definitely sorry. I
don’t know. I think it’s going to be a hard next few weeks for him, next few
months, years,” he said. “He did the right thing, finally. And it’s never too
late to tell the truth.”
BETSY ANDREU on Anderson Cooper 360, responding to the fact that Armstrong said he
would not answer Oprah’s question about whether he admitted to doping while
being treated in a hospital room for cancer in 1996:
“You owed it to me, Lance, and you
dropped the ball. After what you’ve done to me, what you’ve done to my family,
and you couldn’t own up to it? And now we’re supposed to believe you? You had
one chance at the truth. This is it.”
“If the hospital room didn’t happen,” Andreu told Cooper,
“just say it didn’t happen. But he won’t do it because it did happen. But if
this is his way of saying, ‘OK, I don’t want to go there, we’ll give it to
her,’ that is not good enough. That is not being transparent. That’s not being
completely honest. That’s skirting the issue.”
The Outdoor Retailer show is just around the corner. And new product announcements are rolling in fast. Here's a quick look at some of the most promising bags we'll see in outdoor stores this summer and fall.
BOREAS BOOTLEGGER: This 3-in-1 adventure bag, the "Russian Dolls" of day packs, is designed to be used as a single unit, or in any one of three separate configurations, depending on what kind of excursion you’re on. Boreas calls the outer bag the Scrimshaw Dry Bag. This 11oz, 30-liter bag is made from rough and tough triple ripstop nylon with an extra heavy duty bottom. It’s fully taped to keep your gear from getting wet even when submersed, and its big enough to fit the Hopper Day Pack if you need your day bag to be fully waterproof.
The 28-liter ripstop nylon Hopper also has a burly reinforced bottom, as well as two-way stretch front panel pockets. And, inside it’s an organized commuter day pack.
The third part of the system is Boreas' 13-liter Torpedo Hydration Bag. This minimalist biking or hiking hydration pack has stretch front panel pockets (Boreas’ signature detail). And it fits inside the daypack. Having a hard time picturing it? Here's a visual aid:
Richard Roberts is a London piano tuner who abandoned his apartment and is living a life outdoors so that he can pay off his student debt. He bikes around town and sleeps in a bivy bag on a four-season mat—in a different location just about every night. He blogs about everything at piano-tuning.co.uk/blog/. It's an interesting chronicle, not just because you get to explore London outdoors at night through his lens, but because he takes you inside the homes of the city's residents: swiss bankers, athletic trainers, hunters, etc.
What things does a great climber keep in his gear room? Conrad Anker answers that question in the video embedded above, in which he offers Black Diamond a tour of his basement lair. There's plenty of new climbing equipment, Alex Lowememorabilia, expedition journals from places like Meru, a carabiner from Mugs Stump, and, well, just watch the video.
Feeding and making notes between laps at Starr Pass.
Lesson number one from this year's Tucson test: A full week of hard riding is tough this early in the season. Six straight days was nothing that a hot tub, some ice plunges, and a little bourbon (more on that in a second) couldn't remedy. But on day seven, I felt like an abused bike racing action doll—my legs seemed to come off.
For those of us who attended the whole test (precisely two riders), it wasn't just the volume that hurt. Every single day there were new riders on hand (meaning fresh legs), continued fast pace, and no chance to sit in. Nope, we weren't just riding around down there. My stats for the week: seven days on, 252 miles, 19,609 feet of climbing, 30 bikes. Multiply that by the 12 to 16 riders on hand each day, and you get a sense of the scope of our testing.
Lesson number two: a 26-foot truck might be good for transporting 61 bikes, but it's not useful for much else. We never got stuck (thanks to the expert driving of my wife), but threading the sinuous driveway was a time-consuming affair and we could only get within 200 feet of the garage, meaning lots of running bikes back and forth to the truck each night.
