Bicycle Diaries: Lance Armstrong

Warning: I am making this up as I go along.

So. What is new? What have we learned? Not a lot. To some people this will be an unspoken guilty plea. Others will take Armstrong at his word. Some will say that they knew that he was a doper all along. Some just don't care.

A lot of people feel that if Armstrong was clean while winning seven Tours de France against all those dopers then that is one of the greatest athletic feats of all time. Then again a lot of those same people will say that if he was doping then he won on a level playing field.

Others will see this as if it's one of those Lifetime movies where a college kid gets arrested in some sketchy foreign country and gets accused of doing something that they are totally innocent of. They end up pleading guilty either by mistake or just to stop all the madness. Then they go off to jail and they hope that they will be let out at the end of their sentence.

Then there is all the money that he as raised for cancer research. That is a good thing. Does it outweigh what he did to gain the notoriety that allowed him the ability to raise the funds?

We have all known someone who may or may not be in a business that is illegal but that doesn't mean they aren't nice guys. Maybe they donate to the local church. Maybe they paid for a new roof on the Senior Center. Whatever. They are still using money gained through unsavory means to do good works. I am NOT comparing Armstrong to a criminal. Let's be clear about that. There is a psychological term for what ever it is that escapes me.

Now all the haters will come out of the woodwork. All the ones that "knew all along" that he was doping. Like the French media. That's all we need. At least they will have a reason to smug.

Then there is Greg LeMond. I was a big fan of his back in the day. Over the last few years he has been one of the few Americans in the cycling community that was been willing to speak out against Lance.

"Willing" is the wrong word. In fact he went out of his way. The problem is that it made him look like a combination of a stalker and one of those cranks that call talk radio at three in the morning. I guess if you are proven right then you aren't paranoid after all.

LeMond had a number of business dealings with companies that were affiliated with Armstrong that went away when he started speaking out against Armstrong. Does he have a lawsuit? I'm sure an army of lawyers will say he does.

As for me I was in the "I want to believe" group for a long time. I was the Fox Mulder of cycling fans. "Was" being the operative word. I won't say exactly when I lost my faith. Faith is a personal thing.