I have mixed feelings about Lance Armstrong.
Whether or not he used performance enhancing drugs, his athletic achievements are remarkable and he's done incredible work supporting cancer sufferers and their families. The balance of probabilities says he probably did dope; it was so much a part of cycling in that era, and so many champions were later proven to have veins full of EPO, that it's hard to imagine the man who beat them all again and again and again was riding clean.
Regardless of his innocence or guilt, I have some serious misgivings about the end game that unfolded with the U.S. AntiDoping Agency (USADA) over the past few days. The lack of due process. The assumption of guilt until proven innocent. Witness testimony apparently given more credibility than the USADA's own scientific standards. A witch hunt-because without a doubt, that's what it had become-and one pursued beyond the statute of limitations and beyond the point where it was beneficial to anyone. The investigation is "Kafkaesque," in the words of a Forbes contributing writer.
Even the judge who ruled against Armstrong's legal challenge to the USADA's case stated, "USADA's conduct raises serious questions about whether its real interest in charging Armstrong is to combat doping, or if it is acting according to lesser motives."
That's the disheartening thing about this. It's not so much the question of whether Armstrong doped or didn't dope during a shameful era when the hidden medical programs were as much a part of professional cycling as the bikes themselves. It's the fact that the USADA's determination to bring one individual down has dragged a sport that has worked very hard to clean itself up, and become the better for it, right back into the mud.
As a cyclist, I'd rather be toasting Ryder Hesjedal's first-ever win for Canada at the Giro d'Italia or cheering Mark Cavendish's incredible solo sprints in this year's Tour de France, than still trying to answer questions about the past.
I'd rather be celebrating today's cyclists, who deliver superhuman performances riding clean, than hand-wringing over the dark era of the sport when athletes lost if they didn't cheat.
And what happens to Armstrong's seven Tour titles, which he won consecutively between 1999 and 2005, when most of the cyclists who rode against him have checkered histories of their own? Will the USADA pursue those cyclists as diligently as it pursued Armstrong, gathering evidence against each one until they find a cyclist without a black mark against him who can take the jersey?
If Armstrong did cheat, he has to answer to that and accept the consequences. But part of what leaves a bad taste in my mouth is the sense that this was about bringing Armstrong down far more than it was about getting to the bottom of what was going on in cycling during the years he dominated.
We may never know for sure if Lance Armstrong really did ride clean. On the one hand, there's the fact that the man who never quits finally gave up the fight. USADA took this as his admission of guilt. On the other hand, there are the 500 drug tests that he passed according to the agency's own testing standards.
The case has now been dropped and the evidence that gave the USADA its confidence to pursue Armstrong may never see the light of day. If Armstrong cheated his way to those seven titles, he can't complain too much that the past finally caught up with him. In its relentless, single-minded pursuit of Armstrong, the USADA ensured that cycling also lost.
Kay Cahill is a cyclist and librarian who believes bikes are for life, not just for commuting. Read more at www.sidecut.ca, or send a comment to kay@sidecut.ca.
