Before it is confined to the annals of history, or until it comes up again in three or four weeks like a your mortgage payment that won't go away, I thought I'd get a few quick words in on the latest development in the case (or as it is now, non-case) against performance enhancing drug using denier, Lance Armstrong.
This week the US Feds tossed out the investigation into Armstrong for potentially defrauding the US Government by partaking in the use of, and supply of, performance enhancing drugs while riding for the US Postal Service team, the same US Postal Service that is an arm of the US Government. We haven't heard officially why the case was dropped and nor are federal investigators under any obligation to reveal why; they only told us at all because of the intense media scrutiny on it.
Armstrong fans will see this a vindication of Armstrong's innocence, whereas the rest of us see it as a wise move for a non-sporting body to stop investigating a former sports star in a case that would cost the US tax payers a small fortune during a time when money isn't free to burn. Yes some people with a real agenda against the Texan would love to have seen this result in some hard prison time for Armstrong, but I think it's safe to say that while he may well have doped, he was just part of an era in which it was the done thing. He wasn't a very nice man, that much is also true, but not being very nice isn't really a crime in the western world.
The USADA, the American anti-doping agency has said they will continue to investigate, which is all well and good if they have the patience for going after a star who is retired and resigned to a time in the history of the sport which we all know isn't entirely rosy.
I'll not lie and say I wouldn't be interested in knowing the truth, but if I never do, I think I'll live. It's 2012 now and there's the potential for a fascinating cycling season ahead and there are current riders out there, albeit in diminishing numbers, who no doubt are still liable to cheat and who need to be watched more. If all Armstrong receives a trial in the court of public opinion, something he's had many times, then that's enough for me. I made up my mind along time ago just as I did with the likes of Richard Virenque, Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Joseba Beloki, Alexandre Vinokourov and Tyler Hamilton, all of whom have been judged by the public (some later admitting guilt or failing future dope tests), but seen no retrospective (or in the case of Pantani, posthumous) investigation.
Seeing Armstrong stripped of Tour titles won against other dope fiends would only leave us scanning a long way down the results sheet in speculation of who might have been the first place clean rider and therefore retrospectively awarded a Tour de France victory some ten years down the road.
Break out the podiums, aging champagne and and now considerably older podium girls for that one...and do it all again in another few years when Mr. We Thought He Was The Clean One reveals in his tell-all book that no, he was in fact, dirty.
