The Damnatio Memoriae of Lance Armstrong

When looking back at the year by year winners of the Tour de France there are two significant time periods when no there was no winner. Theses gaps are the years of the 21st century world wars. No race was run between 1914-1918 and 1940-1945. On Friday the UCI will meet to make a decision on whether they will award the seven Tour titles that had been previously awarded to Lance Armstrong to second place or strike a line through the period as cycling’s ‘dark ages.’ Christian Prudhomme as head of the ASO has already said he’d prefer this period had no winner and leaving the space for the winners name will be a reminder of the brazen doping that took place. If this is to be the route that UCI take, when looking back upon the history of the Tour in 20 years, to an unknowing eye, these missing years may be seen to represent World War Three. 

Pulling the Plug: Nike,Trek and Giro End Armstrong Support

As of today Lance Armstrong is no longer sponsored by the companies that came to define his Tour winning years. Trek, Nike and Giro have withdrawn their support for the accused doper as they have cited the overwhelming evidence against Armstrong as the reasoning behind their decisions. As well as the big three, Anheuser-Busch has decided to stop their sponsorship of the American. These companies are the biggest of the Armstrong sponsors but with companies such as Zipp wheels and Sram yet to comment it still could get worse.

Armstrong also stood down as chairman of Livestrong to make it a miserable day. Nike will continue to support the cancer foundation and with Armstrong standing down from Livestrong they won't be directly affiliated with one of the athletes that defined the company. With the imminent downfall of Armstrong, Nike will have suffered from  two of its biggest stars falling from grace after Tiger Woods infidelity came to public awareness recently.

Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France Stage Wins

Below is a list of stages that Armstrong won at the Tour over the seven years he won the GC with the second place rider on the stage in italics.There is also the TTT he won with Astana in 2009. Jan Ullrich, Alex Zülle and Ivan Basso would be the cyclists who would benefit the most from the results being reassigned to the second place getter however all three have been implicated in doping. 

The Problems of Reassigning Results After Admissions of Doping

After the recent USADA reasoned decision which contained the affidavits of several Garmin-Sharp riders who were teammates with Lance Armstrong in his Tour winning days have had their results voided for the years they admitted doping. Christian Prudhomme who is the head of the ASO has admitted that no rider should inherit the Tour titles that Armstrong looks likely to lose. Instead he has said that “If it’s a question that we would declare that era as a black era, then I’m not afraid to do so” as in many of the years the riders in the top ten have, if not tested positive been implicated, been tainted by doping scandals.