On the hot road to this village in the deepest south of France, we passed the forbidding, barren mountain where Lance Armstrong, the cyclist, took a giant step toward becoming Lance Armstrong, the sporting myth.
It was 12 years ago this summer. Riding hard, Armstrong fiddled with the collar of his bright yellow Tour de France leader's jersey and tugged its back, getting comfortable in the saddle for one of his trademark attacks.
Then, a few minutes later, he was off, literally like a rocket, leaving rivals for dead and making the towering Mont Ventoux look like little more than a speed bump.
The physical strength he showed that July 13 at the 2000 Tour was mind-boggling. And there were so many other equally mind-boggling moments in the other six Tours he won.
I was there for some of them. The power of Armstrong on the bike, the mix of steely charm and cold, single-minded determination, was like nothing I'd ever seen -- both then and since.
Which is why it's even more mind-boggling to think that none of this really happened. Gone. Expunged. Erased by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and its finding that the bulk of his career was built on lies and banned performance-enhancing drugs.
The utter destruction of the Lance Armstrong myth, the man seemingly so tough that he not only beat cancer but won the world's toughest bike race a record seven times, is going to take quite some time to digest.
Other commentators will talk about how this will affect the cancer survivors Armstrong inspired and the foundation he set up to fight the disease. And only the most cynical will say that side of Armstrong should crumble along with his status as a sporting icon.
They will examine how the fall of the only rider who held a candle to Eddy Merckx as cycling's biggest ever star will affect the sport and the Tour and whether the yellow jerseys Armstrong took back to his Texas home should go to other competitors.
The answer there should be "non." Let the titles remain vacant -- a black hole in the record books for the black hole in the 1990s and 2000s that many riders, presumably now including Armstrong, stared into -- realizing that the only way they were going to succeed in the drug-addled sport was by pricking themselves with syringes of EPO or swallowing drops of hormones like so many others.
Yes, they were cheats. But there were many victims of the doping culture, too, seemingly including Armstrong, who burned so badly to be more than simply an athletic young kid from a broken home in Plano, Texas.
There will be discussion about the fairness of the process that led USADA to ban Armstrong for life and strip him of nearly everything he won. Some will argue that Armstrong simply tried to protect what's left of his name and reputation by turning his back on USADA, portraying himself as the victim of what he says is its witch hunt.
And they are already saying that we shouldn't have allowed ourselves to be sucked in by Armstrong in the first place, because sporting performances that look too good to be true probably are.
That is grossly unfair to all those athletes who don't dope. And that horrid cynicism kills not only our pleasure in watching sport but the very idea that people can do mind-boggling things.
They can. According to USADA, Armstrong no longer can be said to have won the Tour seven straight times. But we should all fight tooth and nail for the ambition that perhaps one day, someone could and that they could do it clean. Otherwise, why get out of bed in the morning?
Now on holiday in some of the same parts of southern France from where I reported on the Tour, I ask myself where did we go wrong? And did we go wrong?
I remember a journalist once asking Armstrong about the color of his socks and I think, "Should we have asked tougher questions?"
In light of what USADA dug up, yes. But the doping questions were asked over and over and his answers were invariably the same: I train hard, have nothing to hide and how mad would I have to be to pump drugs into a body that barely survived late-stage cancer?
In hindsight, the notion of Armstrong apparently risking his health with doping is one of the most mind-boggling aspects of USADA's findings.
And during the years he was winning, we were told Armstrong's drug tests kept coming back negative. Until the evidence started to mount, it was hard to argue otherwise.
There were those, the courageous and enterprising ones, who dug as deep as possible into the growing suspicions that Armstrong wasn't being completely straight, and a few others who faced his wrath by speaking out.
But the truth is also that witnesses of Armstrong's apparent cheating didn't come forward in the same numbers and with the same weight that USADA says they have now.
In short, what we had was Armstrong, with his incredible tale of survival performing incredible feats on a bicycle.
It was good while it lasted. That ride on the Ventoux. The day in the Pyrenees when he snagged his handlebar on a spectator's bag, fell, picked himself up and rode with fury. On and on. One memory after another.
But it all means absolutely nothing now.
Gone. Didn't happen.
Mind-boggling.
© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
18 Comments
Login to comment
Scrote
It seems strange that, despite having failed no drug tests, Armstrong can be labelled a cheat years after the event purely on the say-so of "witnesses" of dubious reliability.
It appears to me that the drug tests are either useless or irrelevant since, even if you pass, they still decide you are guilty of cheating.
AlternateUniverse
I have a feeling that in a few years, its going to be discovered that Armstrong was wronged, and it was due to an error at the lab.
And I really don't care about this personally and I don't follow sports or athletes. I just read the article and some wikis, and it seems really odd to do re-tests years later, and be certain that every sample has been properly labeled, stored etc. and that in that time, there could be no error of organization or anything else.
kaminarioyaji
If Armstrong's wrongdoing is proven, then the far bigger story is how everyone around him was willingly complicit in the deception, and for so long.
japan_cynic
He failed several drug tests, which were covered up. Also, some of the drug-taking was for a substance where there was no test at the time (EPO) but stored samples were later tested and found to be contaminated by it. There is no reasonable doubt that he took drugs.
Iso Poika
This should serve as a warning to those considering taking illegal enhancers; that its not sufficient to only fool today's drug tests. You have to be sure you can fool any future test. In other words, don't do it.
Alex Einz
Gone? Proven by who ? Where are those decisions come from except USADA?
USADA claims that they have testimonies by doping cyclists, the testimonies given in exchange to ban reduction.
I honestly dont understand why media keep recycling this uncorfimed crap, besides only thing USADA can ban is US competitions... so he wasnt stripped of any titles and did nothing wrong except deciding to stop the theatre that has been going on for far too long.
lostrune2
At least the USADA has the balls to pursue his case. The Spanish federation exonerated Alberto Contador before the Court of Arbitration for Sport later banned him.
Nessie
It's cynical to call out cheaters? I'd say it's the opposite of cynical.
RowanM
@Nessie, it's saying that it's cynical to say that his legacy as a cancer activist and all of the work that he's done there should be nullified by the fact that he was doping to win races. Just because he cheated on the tour doesn't negate his philanthropy and activist work for cancer.
Lauren Gardner
Isn't EPO a vitamin?
Cos
That was proven and made public in 1999, not in detail on the moment, but it was known he had a positive. But I agree he was not "in the wrong" with the rule of the "tour de dope" in the years he won as that was not a real race but some tricked reality show, so he could as well keep his drawer of egg yolk t-shirts.
The thing is they covered him up. Not for the love of his beautiful eyes but to save what was left of reputation to their cycle races. And he was not privileged, as they covered others. Now, there is some hope that all the guys of that time can be fired and cyclism becomes a clean sport in the future.
His samples are available to be checked a million more times in the safe of a laboratory, in the suburbs of Paris and they'll keep them forever as long as some doubt. HE TOOK EPO ONCE. And that does not happen by accident when your dermatologist prescribes you some cream with some in it (the accepted excuse in 1999). Then once is enough to lose your virginity. What cannot be proven is as he says is whether he had "an unfair advantage" from it on the tour. Not false since many others took some too
He was right to stop you mean. He has been wrong as an athlete over all those years. You are an athlete OR a cheat. You can't be both, even if you have natural extraordinary physical abilities, which he has, like Virenque, like Landis, like Pantani. They have made careers as extremely gifted cheats while they could probably have been wonderful clean athletes and winners a little less often without dope. He deserve his life ban. That's like Marion Jones. It's important for the future athletes, for all kids that are in sports even at school level, that they are caught and shamed. Otherwise the message to the kids and teens would be : "To win, dope yourself like Armstrong, as they all do it, you must too and as long as you win you will get away with cheating...".
Your reporting job obviously. I can't imagine a person reporting the 2000 tour that would not have heard about the 1998 tour, and the little worries of the proud Lance in 1999. So, you were bribed ? censored ? Or that's like reporting the English Royal Family you refrain from calling them von und zu Battenberg or saying a cat is a cat to preserve some decorum that the audience likes ? Does the audience likes it ? Or did ? Maybe American audience seemed so happy that you feared disappointing them by revealing that Santa did not exist ?
Doping and cancer are not related ? Maybe not in his the case of his past illness (he wouldn't let us know) but he might get some more in the future caused to the huge amount of experimental drugs he was doped with. That was discussed about Thevenet's illness (not cancer), Fignon's cancer and some others. And well that's the only thing we have against doping, that has big risks to ruin health. If doping was safe, that would be allowed. For instance, beetrroot juice and Puer cha are allowed (well don't mix, it's gross). Should a guy that sells doping or a guy that sells cigarettes be a "cancer activist" ? OK if that's to say : "Don't follow my example, I've made mistakes...". But I have totally missed the PR about LA doing that. He spoke more to defend the doping and the junkie cyclists. He has been coherent for that.
Lowly
Sorry, Mr. Leicester,
My mind is not boggled.
ppl want to win. They train hard to do it. They dope to do it. Armstrong did both. And the boggle is...?
Tried to up thumb Cos but it wouldn't let me.
gaijinfo
There is a major silver lining in all of this. As soon as he announced he was throwing in the towel, so to speak, unsolicited donations to his non-profit cancer organization shot up from about 3K a day to about 100K a day.
zurcronium
Read his biography and you will learn what a horrible little person Armstrong is in hi sown words. He was a great athlete but not a great person at all. As for doping, like all those baseball players as well, they lie and lie and lie and then often believe their own lies. THe fact that Armstrong did not want the facts to come to light shows how guilty he is.
Nessie
I think it does, if that philanthropy was financed by wins from cheating.
Lowly
(Nessie)
Well, and, if what he is doing/did, and therefore promoting as an example to younger athletes, is a cause of said cancer.
malfupete
The cheaters will be found out... the only mind boggling thing is that athletes continue to take these substances!!!
SunnysideUp
guilty as sin, brother!