Thursday, May 20, 2010

Lance Armstrong: Doper or Clean?

I grew up in a family where we were kind of brainwashed into loving cycling from the first day of life.

I followed Lance Armstrong through all of his Tour de France victories, watched Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich fight with him to the top of the game. I watched Armstrong survive as Ullrich and Basso were dropped for implication in Operation Puerto. The next person to take on the mantle after Armstrong's temporary retirement was Floyd Landis. And then Floyd too was disqualified for drugs. Of course each of these riders vehemently denied involvement in banned substances.

Through seven Tours de France, Lance Armstrong was singularly the most tested cyclist for drugs, and yet somehow all of his competition managed to get caught leaving him seemingly clean.

Finally, after nearly five years of claiming innocence, Floyd Landis finally admitted to doping. Problem is that he's now claimed that he was not alone and in fact Armstrong was doping with him. Plus he used to be on Armstrong's team. So it is possible that it is not a complete fabrication.


This is by no means the first time Lance Armstrong has been accused of taking drugs.
But so far each drug claim has seemed to make the possibility of his use of banned substances less and less likely.

The truth of the matter is that I've got no idea whether Armstrong used drugs, but he was clearly the smartest drug user in the peleton if he did. While he might have taken drugs, though, it is rather stupid to believe Floyd Landis, a person who has lied for five years to protect his reputation. He's got the status of a liar, and I find his lies rather ugly. To protect his bad publicity as he admits, he creates an even bigger story, which might be real though likely is not, to undermine his admission.

Sorry, nope, I'm not believing it from you, Floyd. You've lost all your credibility.

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