Former Spanish cycling champion and five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurian still believes Lance Armstrong is innocent, saying that it is not drug tests, rather the testimonies of others, that have brought down the man once described as the greatest road cyclist of all time.
Indurian is to be admired for his loyalty to a friend. I also defended Armstrong time and again, pointing out that not one of the hundreds of doping tests during his career proved positive and suspecting that the smears, years after he had retired, were more to do with attempts to block his possible political career, than to clean up the sport of cycling.
But I can do so no longer. The evidence is compelling and to believe otherwise would be to accept that a cohort of former teammates, support staff, administrators and media personalities are colluding in a giant conspiracy, in many cases willing to wreck their own reputations, in order to destroy Armstrong’s.
Yes, Lance Armstrong is guilty as charged, but does he deserve to take all the blame? Or to quote the Bard, is he a man more sinned against than sinning?
And aren’t all of us culpable in his fate?
For decades now sport has been obsessed with gold medals and world records. People of my generation may remember that line about winning being less important that taking part, but for those born later “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” is much more familiar and much more in keeping with the times.
And anyway, isn’t the Olympic motto “Faster, Higher Stronger”?
But how fast, how high and how strong? In the century and a bit since the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, gave those words to the world there have been sporting performances that he could never have dreamed of. Last placed athletes in the heats of some events at London 2012 would have been finalists in London ‘48, and gold medal winners in London ’08.
Better training techniques and equipment, improved diets, healthier living and the lure of fame and fortune, coupled by winners in some events being proclaimed by a hundredth of a second, has made Faster, Higher, Stronger a reality for decades, but are we reaching human limits in some events?
At the London Olympics we had our share of heroes but it will not be long before we will want someone who is faster than Usain Bolt, who will collect more medals than Michael Phelps.
The outstanding performances of today are just marks to be beaten next time on the merry-go-round. The party has been going on for decades.
But now, in some events at least, we may be at the point where we can go no further – no further unaided by some form of chemical stimulus that is.
Many people believe that the Tour de France is the supreme athletic and mental test – three weeks of highly competitive road cycling, up and down mountains in all sorts of weather with just a couple of rest days and always a centimetre of ill judgement away from a bone-shattering crash that can destroy hopes of success, ruin a career and in a small number of cases, end a life.
Maybe the Tour has reached those limits; maybe we have to realise that if we want our future sporting heroes to be drug free, we are going to have to accept they are human.
And maybe we should not blame Lance Armstrong too much. He was, after all, just giving the public what it wanted.
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