LANCE ARMSTRONG

Was he doped? The question has been around since at least 1999, when he came back from testicular cancer to win the first of his record-breaking seven consecutive victories at the Tour de France. Since then, the questions have become ever more persistent, as both competitors and teammates from that era confess to doping. Yet Armstrong, probably the most tested athlete in history, has never tested positive for anything. Federal agents, investigating whether the U.S. Government was defrauded (Armstrong's team for most of those victories was sponsored by the Government-owned U.S. Postal Service), turned over stones for more than two years, but eventually had to drop the case earlier this year.

At which point it was taken up again by the U.S. anti-doping agency USADA. They have apparently amassed a large dossier of evidence against Armstrong, his then team manager, and various medical staff associated with him, much of it in the form of testimony from past teammates. USADA believes it sufficient to warrant a lifetime ban for Armstrong, and the stripping of all his titles back to 1998. They gave Armstrong the right to challenge the evidence by going to arbitration. However, Armstrong, normally quick to litigate against anybody daring to suggest that he is not 100% clean, declined. Which means, in effect, that USADA's claims stand. The most successful stage cyclist in history risks being stripped of his seven Tour de France victories.

Lance Armstrong has always been a controversial figure; basically, you are either really for him or really against him. For what it is worth, and bearing in mind that I have never seen the results of any of the myriad of tests which he has provided during his career, I have always thought he was doped. My reasons are as follows.

1. All of his major competitors took drugs, and he beat them. Notably Jan Ulrich, a product of the former East German sports system and winner of the Tour in 1997 at the precocious age of 23. Ulrich was Olympic champion in 2000 and world time-trial champion a couple of times, but was still beaten by Armstrong at the Tour. Ulrich rode for the Deutsche Telekom team for most of that time, many of whose riders have since admitted to doping. That includes Danish sporting hero Bjarne Riis, winner of the Tour in 1996, who adamantly denied taking drugs for more than a decade before finally admitting it in May 2007.

2. Nearly all of his teammates took drugs, and have since admitted it. They include Tyler Hamilton, Olympic time-trial gold medallist in 2004, and Floyd Landis, who won the 2006 Tour before being stripped of his title for failing a drug test during the race. Both of them have said that they had to take drugs in order to stay on the U.S. Postal team. Furthermore, a large part of USADA's dossier is supposed to come from other former teammates of Armstrong, who have subsequently confessed.

3. It is true that Armstrong has never failed a test. But there are rumours of a cover-up following a negative test at the Tour of Switzerland. It is also true that drug-takers are often one step ahead of the regulatory authorities. When a new test emerged to detect EPO, the authorities were able to go back and retest earlier samples that they had considered suspicious, but could not prove because the tests did not exist at that time. Again, USADA is supposed to have done that with some of Armstrong's samples.

I accept that the above is circumstantial, but not proof. For me, the most compelling evidence is somewhat different. In seven years at the Tour, or almost 150 days of racing at the highest possible level, Armstrong  never had one bad day; no crash, no flu (cyclists are very susceptible to colds and asthma), no going dead on a mountain, not even by 20 seconds. Secondly, and more specifically, when he won his first Tour in 1999, the key stage finished on Alpe d'Huez. Armstrong stood up on the pedals at the bottom and blew away Jan Ulrich and Josef Beloki by more than two minutes. What was incredible was that he pedalled the whole of the 14.4km (average gradient 8.1%) standing up! When you stand up on a bicycle, lactic acid forms in the legs, and it quickly begins to hurt. When Carlos Sastre won the 2008 Tour on the same mountain, he had two standing-up bursts of 500 metres each at the bottom in order to burn off his competitors, and then sat down the rest of the way. A fully-fit professional can keep it going standing up for more than 500 metres, but 14.4km sharply uphill is quite simply unbelievable.

Armstrong is still protesting his innocence. That in itself proves nothing; Riis. Hamilton and Landis were all in denial for many years, and Landis even raised US$500,000 from the general public in order to pay lawyers to help him prove his innocence (this week he agreed to repay the money within three years, otherwise he will go to jail for fraud). And I suspect that many will take the view that Armstong is guilty. Although cycling is still not squeaky clean, it is definitely much cleaner that it was. The best evidence for that is that average speeds are not increasing year after year, and that riders do have a bad day every once in a while. The chances of someone today repeating Armstrong's seven Tour victories in a row are, in my view, nil.

Walter Blotscher