Dirty details
of case against Armstrong may still see the light of day.
“Pain is temporary … if I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?” — Lance Armstrong, as written by Sally Jenkins, in his 2000 autobiography, It’s Not About The Bike.
On Thursday night, at a little after 10 p. m. Eastern time, Lance Armstrong revealed what he was willing to live with. The Associated Press had just broken the news, but Armstrong officially announced he would not fight the U. S. Anti- Doping Agency’s allegations of doping any more. It means he will be stripped of his seven Tour de France victories, his Olympic bronze medal from 2000, of everything he has accomplished in sport since 1998. He will be given a lifetime ban, which is about as close to lasting forever as you can get.
“There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say ‘ enough is enough,’ ” Armstrong wrote in a statement. “For me, that time is now.” The statement was full of the same blustering ferocity Armstrong has been employing against doping allegations for more than a decade; he called USADA’s process an “unconstitutional witch hunt,” and implied the witnesses against him might be lying in order to secure their own deals.
But the statement was only really notable because Armstrong announced he would not contest the charges, just as he did not appeal the federal court ruling that refused to take away the USADA’s jurisdiction. Armstrong has done many things in an extraordinary life. He has never quit.
This time, he did. The USADA apparently had a dozen witnesses, including 10 former teammates of Armstrong, who would testify he had used performanceenhancing drugs, and said it had blood samples from 2009 and 2010 that indicated EPO use and blood transfusions. The witnesses were subpoenaed, under oath.
There are legitimate questions about the USADA’s process, but Armstrong could have fought it with his vast resources, as he has fought every allegation levelled against him over the past 13 years. He didn’t. He had to know what would happen. He had to know he would lose.
So it is over, and now it is just the reckoning. Armstrong will say he never tested positive ( glossing over the one at the 1999 Tour because he got a possibly backdated note from his doctor) and he will call it a witch hunt. But this will end the discussion among reasonable people. Armstrong was like all the rest in cycling, during the era when supermen climbed Mont Ventoux at unimaginable speeds. Lance cheated, and hid that fact with a degree of organization worthy of the mob.
But it is not that simple. This isn’t Barry Bonds, who was headed for the Hall of Fame before his hat size changed. This was the only way.
Armstrong dominated an impossibly dirty era, featuring brilliant cyclists using every conceivable advantage. All of
There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say ‘ enough is enough.’ For me, that time is now. LANCE ARMSTRONG SAYING HE WILL NO LONGER FIGHT DOPING ALLEGATIONS
Armstrong’s major rivals were eventually tarred by doping; between 1996 and 2010, every winner of the Tour was eventually tarred by doping; this news will mean nine of those 15 titles were eventually stripped and given to somebody else, though good luck finding someone clean to take these ones.
Former cyclist and admitted doper Jonathan Vaughters has said EPO can boost climbing power by 20 per cent, if you are lucky enough to have a body that adapts well to it. That’s one thing with saying it was a level playing field; it wasn’t, not quite. Different bodies respond differently to different drugs.
If you were lucky, your body maximized the drugs available in your era. It doesn’t necessarily mean the results would be identical, if everyone was clean. They might be. Nobody knows.
But almost nobody was clean, and this was the only way. Under the circumstances of his era, Armstrong won the most difficult bike race in the world seven straight times after beating testicular cancer, and used his fame to raise almost US$ 500 million for cancer research and inspire millions. He beat cancer, and was supposed to be dead, and has used his fame in the best possible way, or near enough.
To do that ( to do what even his detractors must agree has been great work) he had to build a platform of lies, and he had to defame people, and bully them in court. He had to be as ruthless in beating back allegations as he was on the bike.
And he had to dope. As Vaughters, a former Armstrong teammate on US Postal, wrote in The New York Times, “[ When] the dream is 98 per cent complete, you are told, either straight out or implicitly, by some coaches, mentors, even the boss, that you aren’t going to make it unless you cheat. Unless you choose to dope. Doping can be that last 2 per cent.” There was only one road to get here, and Armstrong rode it.
But so many will forgive him, and they won’t be wrong. Cancer has a way of making stuff like sports and lies and petty betrayals pretty insignificant.
There could be lawsuits from former sponsors, promoters, or even from the U. S. government, which sponsored his US Postal teams. The information Armstrong was apparently unwilling to let reach the public sphere may yet escape; others are going ahead to arbitration, such as former US Postal director Johan Bruyneel, and those hearings could be made public. We may see what he was unwilling to face, and the slightly muddied debate that he has created by giving up ( the notion that he was never given due process, and was tied to the railroad tracks) may become clearer. And dirtier, too.
Regardless, an era is over. The only other road for Armstrong to take would have been not to come back in 2009 and 2010, but hubris and pride overtook common sense; that gave the USADA a new statute of limitations, new blood tests, fresh legs.
But if you accept his 13 years of winning every fight made Armstrong feel invulnerable, and fighting for a higher purpose made him feel like a god, you can accept maybe that was the only road, too. Armstrong has been chased by the pack for so long, and it is not surprising he got caught. It is that he stopped pedalling, and let it happen.