Lance Armstrong just shocked everyone by revealing that he was physically abuse as a child by his stepfather, who he said used to “beat the s—t out of me.”
Armstrong, 48, revealed this in the first episode of the ESPN 30-for-30 “Lance,” [1] which aired on Sunday night. In the documentary, the disgraced former cyclist said that his stepfather Terry Armstrong used to “beat the s—t out of me” with a fraternity paddle for transgressions that could be as minor as leaving a drawer open.
“I mean you talk about disciplinarian, if he said ‘Don’t leave your drawer open or you’re gonna be in trouble’ and sure enough I’d leave the drawer open, he’d pull out his fraternity paddle and just beat the s—t out of me,” Armstrong said, according to the New York Post [2]. “If I did that, my kids would be getting spanked every minute of every day! Like, who cares? F—king drawer’s open.”
Lance Armstrong says in film that stepfather ‘beat the (expletive) out of me’ https://t.co/ubU4pu9DAr [3] 🙂 pic.twitter.com/vD37NHQ35q [4]
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Armstrong’s parents divorced when he was two, and his mother remarried to his stepfather just one year later. Terry then adopted Armstrong, and he still takes credit for shaping him into the man he would be come.
“I was tough on him as far as cleaning his room up and being orderly, and Linda was always there when I did it,” Terry explained in the documentary. “It wasn’t a belt, it wasn’t hitting him. It was just, ‘bend over and take your licks.’ That came from five years in military school. Very regimented, so I was kind of by the book. The failure of my bringing up Lance, I was the taskmaster, but I didn’t put my arms around him enough and tell him I loved him. I was always there, always coaching him, always pushing him, but I didn’t show him the love that I should have.”
“Lance would not be the champion he is today without me, because I drove him. I drove him like an animal,” he added. “That’s the only thing I feel bad about. Did I make him too much ‘win at all costs?’”
Though Armstrong himself initially said that the men his mother married were not terrible, he quickly corrected himself to say, “Terry Armstrong might’ve been kind of terrible.”
Armstrong would go on to win seven Tour de France titles during his career, but these were all stripped from him when it was revealed that he had been doping for years [6].
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com [7] and is used by permission.
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