Armstrong contemplates the harsh reality. Photograph: Mark Gunter | AFP
USADA have at last publicly pulled off the lid on their can of worms that is their case against Lance Armstrong ... and the worms are everywhere. The evidence against Lance has finally been exposed proving that it either wasn't a witch hunt at all, or that the witches have shown up at last. Suspensions have been dished out like goody-bags at a child's birthday party to the current riders who testified, two former pros who conveniently retired a few weeks ago released almost identical statements admitting it all and some other guff about wanting to make it better, while there is a deafening silence coming from camp Armstrong.
Well, the later isn't entirely true. The morning began with one of Armstrong's lawyers trying to discredit the USADA investigation once more calling it a waste of tax player dollars in what I can only presume was a last ditch attempt to encourage some to keep their heads in the sand after the days revelations broke. It will have no doubt worked though USADA did hit back by confirming the US Postal Team received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.
When the days revelations did break, it came hard and fast with USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart, saying that "The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," beating the East German program from the old Cold War days into second place, I would assume. That's the kind of cycling domination that Lance should be proud of. He may have lost his record of having won the Tour de France the most times but he gained the privilege of being involved in the most professionalized and successful doping program in an era when it was all about systematic doping.
Armstrong has maintained a plea of not guilty and a PR campaign of deny, deny, deny for years, even despite the knowledge that eleven of his former team-mates had testified against him not to mention that accolade of 'best doping program, ever'. The report today revealed just who those who testified were: Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie.
Some well known names and some who are still active and who look set to face a six month ban for their dirty work. Whether that six month ban is for doping or for telling-tales is not yet clear though I have to think it's the later because for his part in doping, Armstrong picked up a tidy little life-time ban and the stripping of all his results from 1998 onward. Just a shade worse than the others.
Two of the 'Armstrong Eleven' as they shall from here after be known, took to their personal websites with the kind of contrived statements that makes me convinced one of them or neither of them wrote the both of them. Step forward Michael Barry and George Hincapie, who both retired just weeks ago from the sport. Their statements were so alike that I can't help but imagine Barry writing out his then sending it to Hincapie with instructions to change a few words around and put it on his website too. They're so alike they even admit to ceasing their use of performance enhancing drugs in the summer of 2006.
I can't think why that summer would be significant to them, but can only assume it could mean that that point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance. Almost as if it were the temporal junction point for the entire space-time continuum ... or performance enhancing continuum . On the other hand, it could be the year after they got themselves rid of Armstrong.
This thing has a ways to run. According to disturbing rumors the USADA file continues some 1,000 pages of information. Disturbing in that it's going to make for some heavy reading for someone, and disturbing in that it suits Armstrong nicely for he'll know many fence sitters or deniers of his guilt won't be arsed to read it. Still, that info will filter out in the coming hours, days and weeks and conclusions will be drawn.
And then hopefully the whole sordid thing will be put to bed and I can finally watch a present day Tour de France without having to wade through the news articles and Twitter debates about Lance bloody Armstrong, and cycling can move on. Yeah, dream on.
Of course, once this long-time-coming-downfall-of-Armstrong is said and done and we've heard and read about it so much that our ears and eyes begin to bleed, maybe Lance will step up to a microphone and with his loved ones either side of him, he'll come clean in a tear filled admission that he truly believed that the bigger the lie the more people that would believe it to the point that even he began to believe it. And that he would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. He'll probably end it by saying he's doing this for the good of cycling's future as is par for the course in these admissions of guilt that come after running out of road to hide either by way of a positive test or federal pressure (see Landis, Hamilton, Millar, Hincapie, Barry etc. etc.).
Maybe. But I doubt it.
