In defense of Lance Armstrong

Over the past fifteen years or so, as the elite of professional cycling succumbed one by one to doping allegations, it became progressively more absurd to cling to the belief that Lance Armstrong, the most successful professional cyclist of all time, stood alone as being "clean".

With today's revelations in the New York Times it's safe to say the jig is up.

Apparently Lance still doesn't get it. His high-priced team of PR professionals is still beating the drum for his innocence.

Wrong strategy.

What Lance needs to do is fire the lot of them and fess up. Take responsibility. Ya, I doped and I lied about it.

Simple as that. Lance's credibility would be restored overnight.

It's not as if Lance pioneered doping in pro sports. (This blog has written about the clique of European doctors who were the pioneers.)

When all the guys around you are into the HGH strategies and blood doping, how can it be "cheating" if you do it too? Anybody who went with the prevailing winds in professional cycling over the last twenty years was merely creating a level playing field for themselves.

Heard a clip of Lance on the radio this afternoon talking about how the secret of his success was lots of hard work. Then the announcer came on with a sanctimonious pronouncement that "now we know it wasn't hard work; it was doping."

Wrong!

It WAS hard work, incredibly hard. We need to get over our petty moralizing and give Lance the credit he deserves.

Lance is the kind of sports icon who comes along once in a generation, if that.

Lance, dump your PR team and tell the truth.

You'll be bigger than ever.

Lance legend punctured

Lance Armstrong threw in the towel today. And it's about time.

It has always been our point here at Falling Downs, in contemplating the Lance implosion, that we're pissed with Lance because of his phony-ass attitude about cheating.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. We've always said here that everybody in the upper echelon of cycling was dirty for the last twenty years. Even if you're not taking drugs and just keeping a couple of spare pints of your own blood in the bar fridge at the hotel, come on, that's not "sports" and everybody knows that.

At the same time, let it be said that Lance wasn't "cheating" any more than all the guys around him

That's why I think it's wrong to take those seven Tour victories away from him.

Noose tightening on Lucky Lance

It hasn't been a great week so far for Lance Armstrong.

Yesterday a judge in Texas dismissed the lawsuit that Armstrong tried to file against the US Anti Doping Agency. Not only did the judge throw it out after mere hours of deliberation, he scolded Armstrong's legal team for submitting a case that was long on PR strategies but remarkably short on facts.

That was followed by today's news that two doctors and a trainer with Armstrong's former USPS team have been given lifetime bans by the USADA. What's most significant about this decision is that the three accused did not contest the charges.

The question now facing Armstrong is how much of his money he wants to squander in continuing to try to convince an increasingly skeptical public that he was the only clean player in European cycling in the last twenty years.

C'mon dude, just fess up! The public will respect you for your honesty.

Lance Armstrong, busted at last...

Anybody with a lick of common sense always knew the Lance fable was too good to be true.

When things are too good to be true, they generally aren't true.

So we all knew the Lance Armstrong "seven Tour de France victories and I never doped" fable was just that.

A fable.

But it was a beautiful fable.

There was Lance, coming back from cancer, winning the toughest human endurance competition in the world time after time, and it was just such a compelling story.

Got him in to meet Presidents.

Got him on the Letterman show time and again.

A skeptic would have always wondered why the guy who won year after year could be clean when pretty much all the guys who came in after him were busted for doping infringements of one sort or another.

Don't want to brag about it, but this blog had this exact story out there at least six months ago.

Anyway, the US Anti-Doping Agency is forging ahead with doping charges against Lance.

Guess those guys have been reading my blog.

Lucky Lance dodges legal bullet again

Skill testing question; who won the Tour de France the year before Lance Armstrong began his unprecedented seven-in-a-row streak?

Marco Pantani, later caught up in a doping scandal. The year before that? Jan Ullrich. Also caught up in a doping scandal. And the year before that? Bjarne Riis. Oh no, not another doping scandal!

In fact, you have to go back to Miguel Indurian, who won the Tour five years in a row, to find a Tour winner who wasn't disgraced in a doping scandal.

Indurian credits his success to working closely with Dr. Francessco Conconi, widely acknowledged as the godfather of blood doping and the man who introduced EPO to professional cycling. 

Coincidence?

And who won the Tour the year after Armstrong's awesome streak ended? Floyd Landis, later disqualified for, you guessed it, doping.

Today's news that federal prosecutors are closing a two year investigation into doping allegations against Armstrong without laying charges should end the speculation once and for all.

Or not.