I have really wanted to believe Lance Armstrong. Despite years of allegations I always gave him the benefit of the doubt although admittedly there was always a nagging little voice in the back of mind warning that something didn't seem right about Lance.
I shrugged off the French journalists as jealous xenophobes. I blew off the American journalists as attention hungry muckrakers. I dismissed his former teammates as bitter.
But the evidence continued to pile up. Even his best friends gave up the goods. Lance himself gave up trying to defend himself. But then it got even worse. Reams of evidence has been released that show that Lance not only used PEDs he was active in pushing them on others. It has been revealed that he was the mastermind of a wide spread and sophisticated doping operation.
Nike (NIKE!) has ditched him. Lance has even been forced to step aside from his own cancer fighting charity LIVESTRONG.
And it's all terribly sad. This guy misled millions of fans. He was the inspiration for so many cancer fighters and athletes. And now it turns out that he was a cheat. He was a dealer. He was a criminal. All while playing the sanctimonious cancer survivor card. And there's even a possibility that he got his cancer as a side effect from doping. That's mere speculation but testicular cancer is indeed a well known possible side effect of the type of PEDs he's been accused of taking.
Dwell on that one for a minute. The one thing that gave him moral credibility, the one thing that kept a lot of people off his back, the one thing that served as a huge inspiration to others...surviving cancer...may have been caused by him cheating and breaking the law. It's in the realm of possibility that he may have never gotten cancer had he not taken PEDs.
Sickening.
I watched all seven of Lance's Tour de France victories. I rooted him on. I wore the yellow bracelet. I argued in his favor through years of allegations. Turns out he wasn't worth it.
Of course this happens when you place your faith in human beings.
