"Armstrong is perhaps the ideal subject through which to understand the theory and practice of doping. He had a good career on the bike before he was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer, only for the sport to rapidly enter its erythropoietin, or EPO, era while he was away undergoing treatment. Armstrong's innovation was to streamline and professionalize a team-wide EPO operation, all while maintaining an outspoken public persona and loudly proclaiming his innocence."
"The Armstrong era gave the public the language and epistemological framework now being used to fight for the exclusion of trans athletes from sports. That's the meat of this episode, and we were thrilled to be joined by Reo Eveleth of and Coyote Media Collective. The episode situates Armstrong's story within a larger history of doping as a means to understand how his legacy was formed and how it is being wielded now."
After early racing success and a diagnosis of advanced testicular cancer, Lance Armstrong returned to cycling during the sport’s rapid shift into the erythropoietin (EPO) era. He organized and professionalized a team-wide EPO program while maintaining an outspoken public persona and repeatedly denying doping. His methods made doping systematic and reshaped public perceptions of athletic cleanness and natural bodily ideals. The Armstrong case exposed contested definitions of clean and dirty bodies and created language and epistemological frameworks that are now invoked to argue for excluding transgender athletes from competition. The legacy remains influential and contested.
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