Livestrong Park's painful Armstrong connection
Yael T. AbouhalkahLivestrong Sporting Park opened last year even as doping allegations continued to swirl around seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
But Sporting KC officials moved forward with the naming rights that involved Livestrong, the cancer-fighting foundation started by Armstrong.
Their reasoning: The partnership highlighted Livestrong, not Armstrong, and the Major League Soccer club wanted to help that group with an agreement to donate $7.5 million over the next six years.
However, now that Armstrong is being stripped of his cycling titles after saying he won’t officially fight the doping allegations any more (while he continues to deny them), Livestrong Sporting Park will be a constant reminder of the park’s connections to someone now seen as a drug cheat by a large number of Americans.
It’s certainly not the kind of advertising Sporting KC had hoped to get when it arranged the tie-in with Livestrong in 2011.
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