Someone told me that the fall is always harder than the climb. I guess that would be true, since the fall usually comes unexpectedly. Such is the case with Lance Armstrong.
The recent ruling of the International Cycling Union upheld the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s ruling that former cycling icon Armstrong would be stripped of all of his titles and banned from cycling for life.
This was the last of the consequences stemming from the doping scandal that has plagued Armstrong for years.
Dating back to 2001, stories of alleged doping by Armstrong surfaced because he had worked with trainer Michele Ferrari, a known dropper and drug dealer.
In 2005, L’Équipe, a French sports magazine, reported that six urine samples, taken from Armstrong during the prologue and five stages of the 1999 Tour de France, had tested positive for the performance-enhancing drug erythropoietinin. The retesting was conducted as part of a research project into EPO testing methods. The samples had been frozen and stored at “Laboratoire national de dépistage du dopage de Châtenay-Malabry”, a French labatory, since they were taken in 1999.
Early signs were apparent that the sport’s hero and celebrity Lance Armstrong wasn’t the person who people thought he was. To the public, he was the best American cyclist in history and dominated the competition by winning seven Tours and a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics.
But Armstrong was secretly using and buying drugs to give himself an unfair advantage over his competition.
Many of us believed Armstrong when he continually denied the doping and drug use accusations, because most of them came from former teammate and rival Floyd Landis.
But looking back, who would be better than his own teammate to know what was going on behind closed doors?
The truth was staring us in the face for a long time. The evidence collected against Armstrong was damning. An insurmountable collection of testimony, documentation and tests have connected Armstrong to drug use, drug distribution, blood doping, cover-ups, and potentially using government money to fund these activities when he was head of the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.
Moreover, Armstrong’s misdeeds don’t just affect him. Recently, he had to step down as chairmen of Livestrong, the foundation he created to help those living with cancer. Armstrong famously helped the foundation raise $500 million by wearing the yellow “LIVESTRONG” bracelets. How sad it will be if the actions of Armstrong were to spill over onto his foundation.
The entire situation is sad. But there is only one person who must take responsibility for his actions and that is Lance Armstrong. His reputation now lies in tatters. He has been exposed as a fraud and a disgrace to his sport, and is deserving of all the ridicule, loss of sponsors and sanctions they can give him.
Armstrong’s worst crime wasn’t the drug-taking, but allowing people to believe him to be something that he was not.
