Lance Armstrong Talks About A Truth And Reconciliation Program

For over 15 years, Lance Armstrong, was in the eye of the storm. His story was as compelling and heart moving as any fiction writer could write up. Here, the UCI world champion and yet virtually unknown American cyclist had defeated a life threatening battle with testicular cancer and in a matter of a few years was on his way of winning his first of seven Tour de Frances. And it’s not like winning a Grand Slam, the Ironman, an Olympic gold medal, or the New York City Marathon. This is a whole different issue. The Tour de France is by far the most demanding sporting event in the world. Over 2000 miles of bicycle racing attempted only by the world’s elite cyclist: this race includes 7 hour long mountain stages the cruise up to the Alps and the Pyrenees, it includes individual and team time trail and some of the world most demanding sprinting over a 3 week period.
Since his first win, Lance Amstrong had been a huge suspect of doping. His story was just too good to be true, and as time evolved and he continued on to win a record breaking 7 Tours, it became quite evident that he was either the greatest athlete to have ever taken part of this race in it’s 100-year history, or, as many suspected long time ago, he was taking performance enhancing drugs. Because here is the trick: it seems quite safe now to say that all of Lance’s competition, all of his rivals from Jan Ulrich to Marco Pantani and Carlos Sastre, they were all taking PEDs. Now, let’s be clear about this, the logic was not going on his favor. One by one, his teammates, his rivals, all went on to test positive for doping. And yet, it was too good to be true that in a field were everybody was doping, where everyone was getting a bit of help, the cleanest, classiest rider, the heroic cancer survivor, he who swore not to have taken an aspirin to help on his way up, was the winner of the most demanding race.
So when he finally came out after pressure for the US Anti-Doping Agency, and once his 7 Tour de France titles had been stripped, there were very few out there who felt as if what he was sharing with Oprah Winfrey was a big game-changing surprise. Now he wants to be part of the change. Armstrong wants to be part of the process of cleaning a sport that has fallen out of grace. Armstrong believes that the best way forward is a truth and reconciliation process offering amnesty to riders and officials who detail doping in the sport. Because it seems that this has been a constant, that doping and professional cycling have gone hand by hand for way too long. "No generation was exempt or 'clean.' Not Merckx's, not Hinault's, not LeMond's, not Coppi's, not Gimondi's, not Indurain's, not Anquetil's, not Bartali's, and not mine." Said lance in his first interview after acknowledging that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs in all of his seven Tour wins. It’s still unclear what this will mean to cycling as a whole. The fans, the few fans that still believed that the riders were riding clean, have felt betrayed. Can the sport make it out of this mess?