The disgraced former champion takes time out after every Tour de France stage to give his opinion on the day’s racing. Here are some of the juiciest bits he’s let run from his mouth… so far.

Lance Armstrong can’t stay away from the Tour de France. The disgraced 7-time Champion currently has a Facebook podcast called The Stages Podcast, which he also broadcast on Facebook Live and uploads to Youtube. In it he sits down after every stage and discusses the days action, among other things. Here are just some of the gems he has mouthed off in the 10 stages that have been raced so far.

1.”The experts and pundits were saying, ‘yeah you should do that,’ I wouldn’t have attacked from right underneath his armpit.” – When Fabio Aru attacked Chris Froome after a mechanical on stage 9.

2. “Chris Froome is hard to watch.” – On Froome’s awkward riding style.

3. “Chris Froome, the favourite, the defending champion and the yellow jersey. His gearing? 38 in front and 32 at the back… that’s mountain bike gearing… If you showed up in 1974  with 38/32, they would have laughed you right out of the peloton… Your ego didn’t allow you to show up with that gear.”

4. “That’s not the queen stage. The queen stage is Mont Ventoux. The queen stage is Alpe D’Huez.” – Referring to the controversial Stage 9.

5. “If I ran the sport, which I don’t, and you had an uphill finish… take off the helmet. If you’re going 10-miles-per-hour, take off the helmet… If I think back to my generation, if Marco Pantani wore a helmet and sunglasses his entire career, he would hot have been the character that he was… Let’s allow these guys to develop some character. Let’s see their faces, if they’re bald or have a ponytail.”

6.”The thing with these stages is you can fall asleep for three or four hours and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose.”

7. “The elbow is what gets you kicked out of the tour, but if you watch it closely, the elbow came afterwards, Cavendish was already on his way to the ground. It would have been another thing if the elbow caused him to go into the barrier and crash”

8. “We (the riders) are the actors in this play and the actors are the ones that matter the most. Not Christian Prudhomme and Brian Cookson back there sipping champagne. The professional cyclists need a union. If I think back to the early 2000’s, I would’ve had the ability, and the power and the stroke to galvanize that, but I wasn’t thinking about that.”

9. “Why should a stage not be not be 50-miles (80km)? Because the tour has to make up the distance, it wouldn’t be the same if the distance were shorter… the race would definitely be more explosive if it were a 50-mile day as opposed to a 112-mile (180km) day… I say let the boys ride 178km and we sleep in… I should’ve ridden longer today.”

10. “The biggest question I get is how do I think I would compare if you took me and Chris Froome, US Postal and Team Sky and put them in the same race, same year, how would they compare? The answer is impossible!”

For the full podcast, and more Armstrong jibes get the podcast here or subscribe to the WEDU Youtube channel here

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