The fall from grace of a 'super athlete'

From 1998 to 2005, Lance Armstrong was the winner of the Tour de France and one of the most loved and hated cyclists ever. From the beginning people suspected Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs and as these suspicions got bigger, Armstrong had to defend himself more and more against the allegations. This thesis has critically evaluated the statements made by Armstrong between June 2012 and January 2013, with the use of the image repair discourse theory of Benoit (1997b). The findings indicate that Armstrong used several image repair strategies, however his strategies are evaluated as being mostly ineffective.