Just as I thought I was wrapping up for the weekend the announcement about Lance Armstrong landed.
People have already written all about it (including an excellent piece from Matt Seaton), but it would be silly not to mention it at all.
With Armstrong’s refusal to mount a defence, suggesting he doesn’t have one, and therefore a real implication that he did dope during his career I’m left sad. He has always defended his position and now appears to have accepted that he would inevitably lose. I have continued to hope he was innocent, with a growing niggling doubt that he could have been.
This isn’t because I am a big Armstrong fan, in fact, to be clear, I never really liked his style of bullying in the peloton and the arrogance that went with it and found the American-style seriousness a bit hard to swallow. However I did watch all of his Tour wins, and I do like cycling, and for those reasons I have hoped that he was actually clean, for the sake of the competition and for the sake of the sport. I might have seen him as the one to beat, loving an underdog in a very British way, but he added something to the whole event. I also enjoyed the peloton politics that he was so part of. He had apparently earned the right to control the entire race protocol and those unwritten rules that are being so talked-about on the Vuelta, by being the strongest rider.
Except he hadn’t.
Now every rider and team brought under control by US Postal and Armstrong will know that it was only because he cheated that he could be doing it. People respect a hero of the sport, but not someone who has gained that position by breaking the rules.
The arrogance remains in Armstrong’s statement (which you can read here) as he still appears to think he’s bigger than the sport itself. His anger and self-righteousness also leave the suggestion that he might in fact be innocent, but is just frustrated with the “witch hunt” against him, for the hard-core fans to hold on to.
On that note it’s clear that USADA have specifically targeted him, but then can you blame them? He’s arguably the highest international profile athlete in the US to have a large amount of doping suspicion over him and allegedly with the support of that sport’s governing body. If the Anti-Doping Agency want to send a message about cleaning up sport they can’t let that rest.
The most upsetting thing is the questions that will inevitably be asked about current dominating professional cycling teams, who I genuinely believe to be clean, and the damage that it does to the whole sport of cycling. Let’s just be clear on the Tour de France – it is possible to complete the three week course without doping and therefore it’s possible to win it by being the fastest rider. It’s a race not an impossible endurance challenge so any questions about “is it possible to win without drugs?” are moot. The only people who can’t win without drugs are the riders who are not strong enough to win clean.
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