Lance Armstrong was reminded why he isn’t the spokesperson for fairness in sports after offering his take on trans athletes with the world this weekend.
The pro cyclist got called a hypocrite after questioning “the fairness of Trans athletes” Saturday on Twitter. Armstrong’s own sporting legacy was tarnished after he admitted in 2013 to cheating with performance-enhancing drugs.
The athlete seemed oblivious about his reputation as he weighed in on the ethics in a video with Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, where he also complained about the possibility of being “cancelled” for his views.
“Have we really come to a time and place where spirited debate is not only frowned upon, but feared?” he wrote in a tweet accompanying the video.
Thao Nguyen/Associated Press
“Where people’s greatest concern is being fired, shamed or cancelled?” he wondered. “As someone all too familiar with this phenomenon, I feel I’m uniquely positioned to have these conversations.”
After Armstrong and Jenner suggested some transgender athletes have a competitive advantage over their cisgender peers, the internet pointed out the cyclist’s own history of bending the rules.
Journalist Victoria Brownworth remarked on the irony, tweeting, “Man who was stripped of all his competitive awards for years of cheating in his sport thinks he’s uniquely qualified to claim the tiny number of trans women athletes (fewer than 100 in the US) has unfair advantage and claims it―not doping―is THE issue in sport today. Sit down.”
Attorney Bradley P. Moss told Armstrong, “As someone who betrayed the trust of countless Americans who were inspired by the story you put forward, only to learn you were cheating the system, maybe you should not be commenting, Lance.”
Responding to critics of his video in a reply to his own tweet, Armstrong tried to play devil’s advocate.
“Is there not a world in which one can be supportive of the transgender community and curious about the fairness of Trans athletes in sport yet not be labeled a transphobe or a bigot as we ask questions?” he wrote. “Do we yet know the answers? And do we even want to know the answers?”
Armstrong set world records and won seven Tour de France titles before ’fessing up to using performance-enhancing drugs in 2013. He was later stripped of his titles.
In 2013, he told Oprah Winfrey he was guilty of telling “one big lie, that I repeated a lot of times” and called himself a “deeply flawed” person.
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