With a Palmares which once was the envy of the cycling world, Lance Armstrong’s career as a cyclist is respectable but not longer astounding. Pat McQuaid said during the UCI’s press conference in which it formally stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour titles as well as every result from August 1st 1998 that Armstrong ‘had no place in cycling.’ From 1998 Armstrong will Damnatio Memoriae but as a former road race world champion he is not entirely wiped from cycling’s history. The Latin phrase Damnatio Memoriae, the condemnation of memory, was the Roman method of erasing a person from history who had brought dishonour to Rome. There can be no erasure of the fact that Armstrong won seven Tour’s and in doing so stood upon the final podium in Paris wearing the maillot jaune. The photographs, the memorabilia, television footage, personal experiences and news articles cannot be destroyed. The events took place and now the only way to condemn Armstrong is to remove his name from the record books.
The space that exists where a name previously existed immediately creates suspicion. Why is there is no name? What is the explanation for a blank space of seven years? The war years combined only equal 11 missed years yet one individual is now responsible for seven missing years. This mess extends well beyond the Tour and there are numerous races which will also be considered for reassignment or a black line. That Armstrong deceived the cycling public at the biggest cycling event for seven consecutive years is for many beyond imaginable belief. They saw the Texan in his US postal kit ride up the mountains in yellow and celebrate wins on the podium. Even if he cheated, he still won the races on the road his supporter’s screech Yes he won the Tour’s on the road against cyclists who were just on as much juice as he was. This is an era in which doping was rife and encourages by teams. However any suggestion that that Armstrong levelled the playing field and that doping was the only way in which he could compete is fallacy.
The USADA reasoned decision called the US Postal team’s doping practices as ‘professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices.’ A level playing field does simply not exist. As outlined in the reasoned decision the US Postal team was simply not doping just to compete, they levelled the playing field then smashed it into the stratosphere. Before October 10 2012 the greatest scandal of the Tour de France was undoubtedly the Festina Affair of 1998. Le Tour de Dopage as it is affectionately known as begun with a Festina team car driven by Willy Voet was stopped at the northern Franco-Belgian border and had his car searched. Just three days before the 1998 Tour a routine car search produced a news story that threatened to destroy cycling. In the car the customs officers found doping products, anabolic steroids, EPO and syringes. This unearthed the systematic doping practices of the 1990s and was thought to have been so cataclysmic that getting away with doping in cycling would no longer be possible.
Hotel rooms were searched, riders pulled out of the Tour the ONCE-Eroski team pulled out, a protest was held by the riders on Stage 17 in reaction to the affair. The Festina team had been involved in systematic doping and criminal charges were brought against not the riders but numerous team personal as well. In the wake of the US Postal doping practice, Festina and TVM are specks on the rear windscreen. US Postal raised the level of doping to an unfathomable level and immediately after the largest doping scandal the sport had seen. It is a brazen act of arrogance and egoism that was ruined the professional careers of any clean riders and riders of the peloton between 1998 and 2005. The riders on the US Postal team have had their careers tarnished. However it is not only the riders who are affected. The public who cheered Armstrong have been duped and deceived as have any companies who were commercially affiliated with Armstrong. This all happened just months after the scandal which was to end doping and it’s all true.
The Swiss rider Alex Zülle was one of the riders who was implicated in the Festina affair and admitted to using EPO. He was back racing the next year at the Tour finishing second behind Lance Armstrong. Zülle is one example of the difficulty in awarding the Tour to the second place rider since Armstrong has been erased from the records. If the UCI do award the titles to the next placed rider they will simply be taking the title from one doper and giving it to the next one. There may still be a lower depth that cycling can sink to in the coming weeks with Benedetto Roberti’s Padua investigation that may just be as explosive as the USADA reasoned decision. Several cyclists who have been named in the investigations have won Grand Tours in the past, principally Dennis Menchov and Michele Scarponi. Scarponi was awarded the 2011 Giro d’Italia after Alberto Contador was stripped of his win. Scarponi himself may be stripped of the title he won once the investigation is complete. The UCI will be hoping that if they take the approach of handing out Tour’s they won’t have to do take them back and do it again a year or two later.
In the UCI there must certainly be conversations taking place that are solely about risk management. The talk of a breakaway league may gain traction and support depending on what action they take over the next few weeks. Having been severely criticised for its implicit role in the doping culture of the 1990s and 2000s the opportunity to start a fresh seems like it will be passed over. Instead the rhetoric is that this is the past, we need to move on. With several dopers post-ban still involved I the sport who have shown no admission of guilt cycling cannot just break with the past. The cumulative effect of pushing it back into the past, sweeping it under the carpet has partly been responsible for the media storm which has erupted since October 10. To a degree it is true that there is nothing ‘new’ in USADA’s findings as L’Equipe and several French publications and journalists have raised questions over Armstrong’s conduct. However they have been voices in the wind, the accepted view has been that Armstrong overcame cancer to comeback and blitz a drug induced peloton and paved the way forward in this black era. Now it has been shown that in fact he was the kingpin, leading the charge of the guilty. Still there remains in the face of overwhelming evidence that this is past and should be left alone. The cycling generation of the Armstrong Era have almost all left the peloton. Those who remain may just need telling they are no longer welcome.
The problem of doping will not be solved with a zero-tolerance stance. Jonathan Vaughters and David Millar have been two welcome voices in the conversation of doping in today’s peloton. Both have doped in their cycling careers but have become admirable anti-doping figures. A transgression need not mean the end of a cycling career but riders who admit no guilt or remorse and continue as though nothing happened contribute nothing to the sport. Doping is a cultural practise and when young riders singed for teams whose culture was to dope, they inevitably were witnesses to this culture as an acceptance method by which to compete. The inclusion of people such as Millar and Vaughters are guiding voices whose experience of doping and all its negative consequences are now at the forefront of the anti-doping crusade. They have seen the depths that professional cycling can plummet to and are working toward ensuring that another US Postal or Festina situation can occur.
Lance Armstrong is no longer in the record books of the Tour de France from 1998 onwards but he is a stage winner. Armstrong is still a former world champion, a two time Tour de France stage winner, a US national road race champion and winner of both Clásica de San Sebastián and La Flèche Wallonne. He leaves a trace in the records books of cycling and as the case of those who charges with Damnatio Memoriae, they are never complexly obliterated. Instead they are known as once existing honourably, fragments can be found of the life they lived before it was disgraced and no longer deemed of existing in public or official memory. No longer will Armstrong evoke the tale of a proud Texan who overcame cancer and became the greatest cyclist of the Tour de France winning an unprecedented seven consecutive years. He will be known as a charlatan who masqueraded as a cycling immortal, who has now been exposed as the greatest American myth.
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