Updated on
Summary Lance Armstrong once said his doping needed to be backed by extraordinary evidence.
Die-hard Armstrong believers who cling to the straws that cheating was a necessary evil because practically everyone was doing it and that he still towered above a doped-up bunch must consider this: try substituting the word heroin for EPO, testosterone, blood transfusion and all the other banned substances and methods Armstrongs teammates allege they were pressured into or felt were necessary.USADAs report paints this not as a mere bunch of ambitious athletes who took a bit of this and that but as a drug-pushing, drug-taking, drug-supplying conspiracy that, among others, recruited and corrupted easily influenced young riders.David Zabriskie rode for four years on Armstrongs team. He told USADA that, as a teenager, cycling offered him an escape from a difficult home life, with a father who was a drug addict, and he viewed the sport as a healthy and wholesome outlet that would keep me far away from following my fathers footsteps.But after joining the U.S. Postal squad, he broke his vow never to take drugs himself. Zabriskie testified that team manager Johan Bruyneel the brains behind Armstrongs assaults on the Tour pushed him to dope with EPO and that a team doctor, Luis Garcia del Moral, administered his first shot of the blood-boosting hormone, in Spain in 2003.A charge leveled at USADA by Armstrongs lawyers to shoot down its case and credibility is that testimony from Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton, former close teammates of Armstrong, cant be trusted because they lied for years about their own doping after they were caught by drug tests.USADAs findings, which shatter the code of silence that hid doping in cycling, could be the beginning of a healthier era for the sport if it picks up these threads, answers all questions, and teases out the entire truth about its past.
