‘Lance wants to win at any cost but has no chance in a popularity contest’
World Rugby gives orange a green light
ORANGE cards were yesterday introduced into rugby union for the first time as a hi-vis deterrent against high tackles.
Players who are shown one will leave the field for 15 minutes during a TMO check.
If footage reveals the offence should have been a red, the player stays off the field; if it should have been a yellow, the player returns after 15 minutes.
Sam Warburton’s sending-off in the 2011 Rugby World Cup semi-final may never have happened under this system.
The sanction was part of a raft of temporary law changes approved by World Rugby but the only one solely intended for the professional game.The others are intended to make the recreational game safe in the Covid-19 era. They include less time spent in mauls and scrums – with resets banned.
TheWRU have said no to the law changes and the RFU said they have a “review under way”.
LANCE Armstrong’s former US Postal Service teammate Christian Vande Velde is talking to filmmaker Marina Zenovich about the intrinsic humility cycling bestows on its riders.
“Cycling in general is such a hard sport that there’s not too many egos involved,” he says.
“What about Lance?” asks Zenovich.
Vande Velde rocks back head and lets out a big laugh. “That’s good,” he says… “Then you have Lance.” Armstrong presumably entered into ESPN’s new two-part documentary ‘Lance’ – the first part of which aired this week – with the aim of some sort of personal rehabilitation.
Fronting up to his past wrongdoing and giving context to it is intended to help the viewer move Armstrong from his place as main exhibit in sport’s museum of his horrors. If anything though, sitting through a fascinating 90 minutes in his company, makes it even harder to sympathise with this serial drug cheat than before.
The difficulty when you have a rampant ego and a long-rolling camera – as another high-profile rule-breaker found in the Downing Street Rose Garden – is that in the end they are always going to give themselves away.
Arrogant does not begin cover it.
Armstrong has charisma – he always did have – but a more ruthless, cynical, win-at-all-costs piece of work it would be hard to imagine.
Winning is the point of professional sport – forget all that taking part schmaltz – but Armstrong took the pursuit of victory to another level. He had to most of the character traits of a grade one sociopath.
Hard though the 48-year-old tries to convince that he has mellowed since retirement, settling the bar tab for a bunch of guys who abuse him, he still carries the glint of evil in those narrow eyes.
As he confesses: “It’s just a miracle I’m not a mass murderer at this point.”
For understanding, he asks us to scroll back through his childhood in Texas and to being hit with a bat by his stepfather for leaving his sock drawer open.
Terry Armstrong claims his discipline created a champion. But hints that it may also have helped to create a monster.
“I drove him like an animal,” admits Terry Armstrong.
“I was a taskmaster but I didn’t put my arms around him enough and tell him I loved him.” His