Lance Armstrong Admits defeat

Whilst Lance Armstrong has not admitted anything wrong.  His failure to fight the allegations against him has condemned him to history as a drugs cheat.  The UCI is yet to confirm whether they will follow suit with the ban imposed on him in the US as well as them stripping him of his 7 Tour de France Tour victories.

This has been a long running campaign to catch Armstrong and it finally seems to have caught its man.  What I cannot help feeling is what good it will now do?  An interesting point was made on Channel 4 news, that out of 7 years he won the Tour de France only 8 other riders appeared on the podium with Armstrong and of those only one has not be subsequently caught up in a doping scandal.

The question needs to be asked, rightly or wrongly is.  If the sport was never clean is it wrong to condemn history.  Yes we need a clean sport now, but that was then, Team Sky have proven that hard work, planning an team work can win out so going forward we are in good shape.  Do we really need to drag it all up and ruin the reputation of a sport in full flight? 

You also get a sense of witch hunt?  When most riders seem to have been taking drugs at the time why has Lance been singled out in such a way?  The answer is it makes news! High profile enough to make the Anti drugs campaign feel important.

I have never been a lover of Lance Armstrong as regards to the way he went about his business of riding.  He has however, despite the incredible pressures on him managed to amass a huge charity now worth over $450million.  Now in risk of losing substantial support unless his name drops to the background for a while.

The UCI may yet decide that the USADA has no right to strip Armstrong of any titles so the story may yet rumble on and what seems to be a calculated risk by Armstrong may well pay off.  It will however end his recent attempts to take over the Iron man world.  But hey maybe that’s a small price to pay for him to have the matter put to bed? For now anyway.

Can we now get back to the real cycling? Drugs will never really disappear in cycling especially as the potential rewards are likely to become even greater.