Lancing The Boil

The case that Lance Armstrong's entire cycling career was nothing but doping fueled cheating was laid out this week in a new report by the US Anti-Doping Agency, and it's pretty brutal across the board.

Armstrong used the banned drugs erythropoietin, or EPO, and testosterone, provided EPO to teammates and administered testosterone on at least one occasion, according to USADA. His teammate George Hincapie said Armstrong tranfused blood in every Tour de France from 2001 through 2005. He won all those races. Signs also point to Armstrong still blood-doping in 2009 and 2010, according to Christopher Gore, head of physiology at the Australian Institute of Sport.

“USADA found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Lance Armstrong engaged in serial cheating through the use, administration and trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs and methods and that Armstrong participated in running the U.S. Postal Team as a doping conspiracy,” USADA concluded. “So ends one of the most sordid chapters in sports history.”

Armstrong has repeatedly denied doping, saying he has never failed a drug test, and today his lawyer Timothy Herman called the USADA case “a government-funded witch hunt.”

Armstrong, 41, was banned for life from competitive cycling and all other Olympic-related sports and stripped of his Tour de France titles on Aug. 23 after opting not to fight USADA’s allegations. 

I have no sympathy for the guy.  Cancer or not, this guy's as crooked as they come.  He ran his entire team as a doping conspiracy to win at all costs, and in the end he finally got caught.  The fact that Armstrong refuses to contest the Tour de France wins pretty much seals it.

It's a sad story, but it's a 200-page report.  It doesn't look like they USADA was just idling messing around, either.

Chalk up another sports hero that was too good to be true...or honest, for that matter.