Netflix streaming – they rated it as 4.7 stars for me, and 4.1 for the general audience. I’m going to give it 5 stars, both for the information they delivered, and how well they unraveled it, and how they tied the human element into it. “Stop At Nothing”? Not quite …

I didn’t start following the Tour de France until after I started riding mountain bikes, but I certainly had heard of Lance Armstrong and the controversy surrounding him. How could he have been doping and still pass all those drug tests? This movie tells us how they did it, even going as far as to give the riders blood transfusions in their hotel rooms! But the main point of this movie isn’t how they did the doping, and how well they did it, but what Lance did in order to keep it covered up. The title reflects this – “Stop At Nothing”. Lying, cheating, discrediting people – just completely unconscionable behavior. That said, in other places in the world, I’m sure that people are killed for less, as the saying goes, just to shut them up. Stop At Nothing isn’t quite true – he wasn’t having people killed, fortunately.

It’s like a domino effect of deception – yes, (almost) everybody was doping, and he had to do it to be competitive. From there, it was an endless string of lies and intimidation to try to cover it up. It’s amazing it went on as long as it did. The movie shows Armstrong with presidents, and says he had a federal investigation shut down, even though that investigation had plenty of witness testimony that said he was doping. However, the movie doesn’t go so far as to say that he used his presidential friends to get it done …. though that may well be the implication. To me, this story seems to be a sad reflection on the “win at all costs” mentality that so many people in sports seem to have, and seem to be taught. Tie that together with cycling being people’s jobs, and the huge amount of money and fame involved, and it’s almost inevitable.