Lance Armstrong: Case Closed

So, after two years, the investigation into Lance Armstrong has been dropped.

Oh good.

Now, in case you have lost sight of this one, here's a reminder.  Floyd Landis had his Tour de France victory taken off him in 2006 after banned substances were found in his samples. For four years, he brayed that he was innocent, until in 2010 he suddenly did a complete turn-around, admitted he'd used PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs) for most of his career, and pointed the finger at Lance Armstrong saying "He done it, too!"

Lance Armstrong denied it: well, he would, wouldn't he? However, he also pointed out that he had been tested hundreds of times, and had never ONCE been found with banned substances in his blood/urine. He further pointed out that he was possibly the most-frequently-tested cyclist on the planet, and of course as we all know (Contador) yellow jersey holders and winners in general are always tested very heavily, simply because they are winners.

Landis would not let this rest, even after Armstrong was repeatedly investigated for doping, and never found guilty: Landis got the US government involved. He pushed them into starting an investigation on the basis that Armstrong's team, US Postal, was sponsored by the government, therefore if Armstrong was claiming that all these big wins were done cleanly, but were actually accomplished using PEDs, then he had been defrauding the government of the sponsorship money, and this was bad. He hadn't managed to "get" Armstrong on drugs charges, so he tried to "get" him on criminal charges.

There was even a story that the UCI had hidden a positive doping result, on the grounds that Armstrong donated a lot of money to them.

The US Attorney's office therefore started the two-year investigation that also involved the FBI, the US Postal Service, and both the civil and criminal divisions of the Department of Justice. Way to go, Landis: waste a whole ton of public money on your personal vendetta, why don'tcha?

So, what are my personal thoughts on this? I don't particularly like Armstrong: I used to cheer for him when I first started following pro-cycling,  but then, everyone did. As I became more interested in cycling, I realised that there was a huge Anti-Armstrong group, and I didn't quite understand why: it became clear that it was mostly the jealousy that any major star gets. These days, I don't like Contador on pretty much the same grounds: when he's in it, and on form, the race is boring, boring, boring: ladies and gentlemen, may I present Exhibit A, the Giro last year, the last half of which was boring, boring, boring. And the Contador fans are now screaming at me "Yeah, bet if it were your boy winning, winning, winning, you would be singing a different tune" and of course, yes, I would. It must have been pretty hard to be a cyclist during those years when Lance won the Tour every year. Rather like being a skater during the Torville and Dean years. You know that no matter what you do, you will only ever be second best to them/him. That's life.

So, I'm not that bothered about Mr Armstrong per se, (although I have read "It's not about the bike" and another of his books, they are quite, quite incredible) but I am hugely relieved that the case has now been closed.

OK, just one moment of sympathy for Mr Armstrong - poor Lance, once again the case is closed, but it's just "closed",  he's not "declared innocent".  It's like a final spiteful dig, that they can't find him guilty, but won't actually say the word "innocent".  Still, he will be used to that, it's happened before.

And the good news is, Cycling can now move on.

The UCI have openly stated "What happened in the past happened in the past. We prefer looking into the future."

Well done, UCI, let's forget about it and move on. It's a bit annoying that WADA are now demanding that the paperwork be handed over to them, in case they can find any doping-related info that might be relevant to their witch-hunt.  They say, with some truth, that the US Attorney were looking for evidence of criminal mis-deeds, ie fraud, not specifically for evidence of doping. But, duh, the point of the case was that if there had been doping, it would have been fraudulent to say "we won without doping" so the tiniest evidence of doping would have been exactly what they were looking for.

Come on WADA, drop it: save those funds for catching today's dopers.