Lance Armstrong, seven time winner of the Tour de France. No longer will these words be uttered about the man who overcame testicular cancer to win the world’s toughest and most prestigious sporting event.
In the words of the US Anti-Doping Agency, Armstrong was the leader of “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful” doping program in the history of sport. It is human nature to idealise those who perform better than mere mortals, those who cycle faster, endure longer, who feel no pain. Armstrong was a hero to inspire not just cyclists but action against cancer, with his hugely successful charity Livestrong still receiving support despite the revelations about his career.
It is clear now that Armstrong was no hero on the saddle. Even if he didn’t legally dominate his sport, he was certainly superior to all his rivals when it came to outwitting the doping testers and general public. The problem he faced was that however well he prepared himself against being caught, however much he bribed and threatened people in the know to keep quiet, there were simply too many people involved with guilty consciences for his secret not to come out. This includes Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton, both former members of Armstrong’s US Postal Service Team, who weren’t as elusive as their Texan leader around doping tests and would inevitably reveal the truth behind the operation.
After months of revelations and damming statistics since the news broke forth in August, the most disappointing thing is that Armstrong has still not admitted his guilt. He perpetuated the myth by protesting his innocence throughout his career, yet when the truth was revealed he fell back on these lies which once captured the hearts of a nation. In the height of his success in the early 2000s, how could a minority of journalists question his ability? He had passed over 500 drugs tests and was fully supported within the cycling world.
Faced with allegations for years, Armstrong vilified his opponents, thriving off the adversity as he had done his entire career. Knowing that this myth would eventually be destroyed, his final act was to withdraw from the USADA investigations before they could officially reveal the truth. For a day or so we believed him, he was subjected to an unfair “witch hunt” disrupting the family life of a retired middle-aged man. If this tactical move was shrewd at the time, it is now hurtful and alienating. His refusal to confess leaves the tiniest shred of doubt over his career, which can only torment his loyal believers and render a forgiveness process unattainable.
Furthermore, this proud stance has shifted the emphasis away from Armstrong and onto the current generation of cyclists. Armstrong belonged to a black era of cycling; in the seven Tours he won from 1999 to 2005, only one rider on the podium was not later convicted of doping. The International Cycling Union had no choice but to write off any winners in that period, as a reminder of the corruption that marred the sport.
The problem faced by many teams now is whether to remove all contacts with riders and staff members who had a history of doping or whether to forgive them and move on to make the sport clean. For Dave Brailsford’s Team Sky, anyone with a history of doping must leave the team to preserve its reputation, and three staff members have already left. This zero tolerance approach may ultimately weaken the team that dominated this year’s Tour, and the current generation of clean riders will be made to suffer for their predecessors’ actions.
Perhaps the best method of burying the Armstrong era is to continue the work of the last few years before the allegations re-emerged: to produce successful, clean riders. It is tragic how this scandal broke out just a month after Bradley Wiggins became the first British winner of the Tour, when cycling was bathing in optimism. The dark days of a previous generation do not represent the present, clean cycling world, and Wiggins speaks in his autobiography of the anger he feels at having his own wins questioned: “they’ve trashed the office and left, we’re the ones trying to tidy it all up”. With Armstrong in exile, the only hope for cycling is that the good of the present and future will, in time, purge the evils of the past.
Matt Bugler
exeposedev 