Lance Armstrong unfairly made the scapegoat for cycling's sins

After the release of the United States Anti-Doping Agency final report on allegations of doping by Lance Armstrong and his former cycling teammates, the International Cycling Union stripped Armstrong of his 7 Tour de France victories. UCI president Pat McQuaid reversed his opinion from just two years ago, stating that “Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. He deserves to be forgotten.”  The USADA triumphantly proclaimed “So ends one of the most sordid chapters in sporting history” during which Armstrong had “presided” over “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” While it appears that despite the fact Armstrong never failed a drug test, that hardly matters now; the “preponderance” of the circumstantial evidence has effectively condemned him. But some believe that Armstrong has unfairly been made a scapegoat for a sport that is hardly “clean” even now, or ever was, given the grueling nature of competitive cycling. 

It is useful to remember that none of this would have come to pass if a former teammate of Armstrong’s had not been greedy and reckless. After Armstrong took time off after his seventh Tour de France victory, Floyd Landis won the title in 2006. Landis was six minutes behind the leader entering stage 17, but after that stage many observers were left shaking their heads in disbelief; an incredulous Australian cyclist, Stuart O’Grady, reflected later that “I was actually 13 minutes ahead of him and he caught us on his own and then he basically rode us all off the wheel. I thought that was impossible, what he did. I'm not a bad bike rider and, you know, he made me look like a little kid." 

Winners of each stage generally are urine tested, and four days after the end of the Tour, Landis was informed that he had tested positive for an “unusually high” ratio of the hormone testosterone to the hormone epitestosterone, which is a natural steroid but inactive. In normal males, the ratio is 1:1, but for athletes, 4:1 is the acceptable limit; in Landis’ test, the ratio was 11:1—with synthetic testosterone accounting for the high irregularity. Landis denied that he had doped, claiming that the testosterone was "natural and produced by my own organism.” At one point, Landis blamed the consumption of whiskey; later he simply said that the urine samples had been “mishandled.” Landis continued to maintain that the testosterone levels indicated were “natural,” but an arbitration panel upheld the positive test in 2007, and Landis was banned from cycling for two years; he was then stripped of his Tour de France victory—the first time this had been done since 1904. 

In 2010, when Landis finally came “clean,” although he continued to deny that he doped in the 2006 Tour. He claimed that he wanted to “clear his conscience.” Landis admitted that it was his word and not any physical evidence that he based his accusations against Armstrong. According to a New York Times story,

“Landis provided detailed information about his own doping practices, saying he consistently used the blood booster EPO to increase his endurance, as well as testosterone, human growth hormone and blood transfusions.” At the time, UCI president McQuaid said that Landis’s accusations did not “taint” Armstrong’s reputation. “I think Landis is in a very sad situation and I feel sorry for the guy because I don’t accept anything he says as true,” he told the Times. “This is a guy who has been condemned in court, who has stood up in court and stated that he never saw any doping in cycling. He’s written a book saying he won the Tour de France clean. Where does that leave his credibility? He has an agenda and is obviously out to seek revenge.”

But since then, almost all of Armstrong’s former teammates have come forward to “clear” their consciences, and McQuaid changed his opinion. But the question is if Armstrong and his teammates were for the most part successful in evading detection, what does that say about less high-profile cyclists, particularly in Europe? Just how endemic is doping in cycling, especially the difficult to detect kind like EPO?  Like Major League Baseball, illegal doping suddenly became endemic in the mid-1990s, and in cycling it continues to be a serious issue to this day. If Armstrong was tested 200 times and never tested positive, to say that he and his teammates are the “bad guys” doesn’t pass the smell test. 

If the USADA and the UCI believes that this “sordid chapter” is over, their naivety and hypocrisy couldn’t be more exposed; it is just one chapter in a long, depressing novel. In his own affidavit, George Hincapie, a fellow cyclist and friend of Armstrong, admitted that in 1995 Armstrong was riding clean, but it was difficult to keep-up with competitors who were using EPO, the use of which was “widespread.” Hincapie recalled that “we got crushed in the Milan-San Remo race and coming home from the race Lance Armstrong was very upset. As we drove home Lance said, in substance, that ‘this was bullshit, people are using stuff’ and ‘we are getting killed.’ He said in substance that he did not want to get crushed anymore and something needed to be done. I took that he meant the team needed to get on EPO.”

Hincapie also admitted that teammates like Frankie Andreu were already “experimenting” with EPO before Armstrong. It was also his opinion that almost everyone was using EPO in competitive cycling. The fact that it is so difficult to detect hardly makes this a “surprise.” In his affidavit, Levi Leipheimer stated that by 1999, “I had come to believe that in order to be successful in professional cycling it was necessary to use performance enhancing drugs.” For his part, McQuaid has chosen to focus his rage on the "bad apples" who came forward with doping allegations, apparently because they embarrassed him personally; contrary to prior statements, he has not indicated that he is at all interested in finding out the whole truth about the sport he oversees.

Julian Savulescu, a Romanian–Australian philosopher and bioethicist at Oxford University, wrote that Armstrong is being made a scapegoat for cycling’s hypocrisy:

“Doping will never be eradicated from cycling. It may be reduced but the problem will remain. I have repeatedly argued that the solution is to relax the rigid controls on doping. That is the only effective way to reduce cheating…Armstrong is a scapegoat – not for one generation, but for cycling. One wonders whether he will now turn on cycling itself and the UCI, pointing his finger at the all those who were involved. It is no wonder that now there are calls for an amnesty. I suggested that a while ago when there were the allegations against Armstrong. But now it is too late. Why should Armstrong suffer to be burned at the stake like a Salem witch when everyone else goes free? We shouldn’t be surprised if Armstrong goes ballistic, spilling the beans on a whole system that at best turned a blind eye to the doping it knew was going on.”

I for one hope that he does just that.