Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong

by David Walsh

Paper Book, 2012

Status

Available

Call number

796.6092

Genres

Collection

Sports - Cycling, Tour de France

Publication

Simon & Schuster Ltd (2012), Edition: Hardback, 432 pages

Description

The basis for the upcoming major motion picture The Program directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity When Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France in 1999, the sports world had found a charismatic new idol. Journalist David Walsh was among a small group covering the tour who suspected Armstrong�s win wasn�t the feel-good story it seemed to be. From that first moment of doubt, the next thirteen years of Walsh�s life would be focused on seeking the answers to a series of hard questions about Armstrong�s astonishing success. As Walsh delved ever deeper into the shadow world of performance-enhancing drugs in professional athletics, he accumulated a mounting pile of evidence that led a furious Armstrong to take legal action against him. But he could not make Walsh�or the story�go away, and in the autumn of 2012, Walsh was vindicated when the cyclist was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. With this remarkable book, Walsh has produced both the definitive account of the Armstrong scandal, and a testament to the importance of journalists who are willing to report a difficult truth over a popular fantasy.)… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Fluffyblue

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.

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LibraryThing member MaggieFlo

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.

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LibraryThing member stevage

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

LibraryThing member thegeneral

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.

LibraryThing member JW1949

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 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.

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