Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist. Regarded as a sports icon for winning the Tour de France seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005 after recovering from testicular cancer, he was later stripped of all his titles when an investigation found that he had used performance-enhancing drugs over his career.
Armstrong was born Lance Edward Gunderson on September 18, 1971, at Methodist Hospital in Richardson, Texas, the son of Linda Gayle Mooneyham, a secretary, and Eddie Charles Gunderson who died in 2012, and a route manager for The Dallas Morning News. He is of Canadian, Dutch, and Norwegian descent. He was named after Lance Rentzel, a Dallas Cowboys wide receiver. His parents divorced in 1973 when Lance was two. The next year, his mother married Terry Keith Armstrong, a wholesale salesman, who adopted Lance that year.
What happened with Lance Armstrong and what is he doing now?
According to our search, in April 2010 Floyd Landis sent an e-mail to a USA Cycling official, admitting that he and other former teammates, most notably Armstrong, were guilty of doping. Which was investigated by the U.S. federal grand jury to see if the doping allegations against Armstrong were initiated. That year Armstrong finished 23rd in what he had announced, before the race’s start, to be his final Tour de France. He retired for a second time in February 2011 and thereafter began competing in triathlons. The 2010 grand jury investigation was closed in February 2012 with no criminal charges filed against Armstrong.
Later in 2013, reports say, the U.S. government joined a whistle-blower lawsuit that Landis had initiated against Armstrong in 2010. In the complaint, which was filed under the U.S. False Claims Act, he alleged that Armstrong had violated his contract with the USPS by doping and thus had defrauded the federal government. If he lost, Armstrong faced a judgment of up to $100 million. Shortly before the trial was to begin in 2018, Armstrong agreed to settle the lawsuit for $5 million, part of which was to go to Landis. In addition, Armstrong agreed to pay Landis’s legal fees.
Armstrong has dedicated himself to campaigning for cancer awareness and established a foundation to further that goal, apart from his racing career. His Lance Armstrong Foundation became one of the largest organizations funding cancer research in the U.S., and the foundation’s iconic yellow rubber “Livestrong” bracelet was a trendy fashion accessory for a time in the early years of the 2000s. However, in the wake of his doping scandal, he stepped down as the foundation’s chairman and as a member of its board of directors, and the charity officially changed its name to the Livestrong Foundation. He published the memoirs It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000) and Every Second Counts (2003), both coauthored by Sally Jenkins.
Source: Ghanafuo.com
