 |
| Photo from LA Observed |
And while the UCI has also decided to turn its back on
Armstrong after failing to find proof enough to strip him themselves, they
decide to uphold the USADA’s ruling and take all titles away. While the media continues to chime in about
how “damning” the evidence is, and how this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt
that Armstrong is guilty, without any of us reading these documents aren't we just
falling into some sort of media echo chamber?
Instead we read headlines and listen to soundbites of quoted testimony
from teammates who create this image of Armstrong as a moustache-twirling
godfather of cycling, tying innocent fellow cyclists to the railroad tracks and
injecting them with performance enhancing chemicals to force a win.
While I do not claim to have read the entirety of what is
someone’s obvious grand opus of a document, I did bother to glance over the
introduction and then get to the meatier pages surrounding the evidence being
lobbed against Armstrong. By far the
most damning evidence is all, and I repeat all, testimony. Verbal testimony by people who worked with
Armstrong and who have admitted to having seen him do something. Emails are included of calendars where Armstrong
(gasp) left off a few dates, likely because he would like to be a human being
for a few days without some stranger knocking on his door at 3am with a needle
and syringe. Many of the same people who
have testified have admitted to having been given deals to lighten their
punishment significantly by helping to tie Armstrong to the stake.
The so-called scientific evidence could easily be picked
apart by anyone who has even a courtroom-drama level knowledge of the law. The report openly admits that much of the
testing hadn’t been honed until the past several years, toward the tail end and
well after Armstrong’s career was through.
As well, footnotes cite that handling of the samples wasn’t always good,
that practices weren’t always consistent, etc. While medical experts also give testimony
throughout, there are constant caveats about testing samples, and no evidence
that there was any broad spectrum comparison done across samples from every
other competitor in Le Tour. As you flip through page after page, it
becomes less a matter of convincing, and more an exercise in overreaching. And begs the question, why was the USADA so
desperate to take this man down?
The answer may lie more in what they win if the USADA
destroys Armstrong’s career. While it’s
not a government entity, millions of
funding for the non-profit come from the office of the drug czar, which in its
infancy would field scripts for television shows and reward them with monetary
incentives if they changed their programming to a stronger anti-drug
message. With a big win under its belt
it not only is guaranteed to continue to get funding to go after more athletes,
but can do so partially on the taxpayer’s dime. What’s perhaps more disturbing then? That
the UCI, an international organization, would honor the ruling of the USADA and
strip Armstrong of his titles officially.
By doing so, they allow the USADA to prove that they have international
power over international sports, which is a rather large overreach.
For every charge of grand conspiracies and huge networks
working together, there is an equal charge that must be laid on the USADA for
bribing witnesses with softened penalties in exchange for fingering Armstrong.
Even if we give the USADA the benefit of the doubt for what
I would consider to be a shaky case at best, and say that Lance Armstrong
indeed participated in doping, as did the other people who testified, what
next? The problem with laying a case where doping was so ubiquitous and rampant
that everyone was doing it, is that if you plan on having even a modicum of
fairness, you would have to go back and test and reread the results from every
competitor in every tour Lance participated in.
Further, since more and more people have come forward saying
that everyone was involved in doping
of some sort, wouldn’t that mean that Lance was competing on an even playing
field? And, if you are only going to
allow someone who has not doped be on
record as a Tour winner, who exactly are you going to find? Is the next in line going to be carefully
examined to make sure he wasn’t a doper as well? And who will fund these
intense investigations? What kind of
sport will it become if you have to go back ten or more years and rewrite every
victory and can only give it to some schmoe who came in 142nd in the
tour and was the lone representative of the country of Andorra?
When will the nonsense end?
