Barstool Sports

ESPN – The International Cycling Union on Friday said it will wait for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to explain why Lance Armstrong should lose his unprecedented seven Tour de France titles before commenting on the case. The news follows Thursday night’s announcement from USADA that it will strip Armstrong of his Tour de France titles after he dropped his fight against drug charges that threatened his legacy as one of the greatest cyclists of all time. UCI, the sport’s governing body, says it wants USADA to “submit to the parties concerned (Mr. Armstrong, WADA and UCI) a reasoned decision explaining the action taken.” The UCI says the World Anti-Doping Code requires USADA to do this in cases “where no hearing occurs.” Travis Tygart, USADA’s chief executive, said Armstrong would also be hit with a lifetime ban on Friday. And under the World Anti-Doping Code, he could lose the bronze medal from the 2000 Olympics, as well as any awards, event titles and cash earnings. The UCI and USADA have engaged in a turf war over who had jurisdiction in the case. Armstrong, who retired last year, declined to enter USADA’s arbitration process — his last option — because he said he was weary of fighting accusations that have dogged him for years. He consistently has pointed to the hundreds of drug tests that he has passed as proof of his innocence during his extraordinary run of Tour titles from 1999-2005. “There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ For me, that time is now,” Armstrong said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. He called the USADA investigation an “unconstitutional witch hunt.” “I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999,” he said. “The toll this has taken on my family and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today — finished with this nonsense.”

Obviously I’m the only one on this blog who has any sense or perspective, so let me just break it down — EVERYBODY IN CYCLING CHEATS. Almost practically probably no doubt everybody. All it takes is a simple Googling and you see the mindblowing rising tide of blood doping/testosterone abuse/steroid abuse/etc in their sport over the past 20 or so years. Just check out the number of scandals since 2000, there are so many of them I am too lazy to count to give you the exact number. It’s outrageous. You’ll injure your finger just trying to scroll past the last decade. Here is a list of about a QUARTER of the incidents from 2006, for instance:

The percentage of people who cheat in cycling is about equal to the percentage of people in the NBA who are black. Are there people who don’t cheat in cycling? Sure. Are there non-black players in the NBA? Sure. But you get where I’m going.

Why should Lance Armstrong get the full brunt of negativity from everyone — because he was the best? That’s absurd. Yeah, maybe the guy was “smug” or “cocky” or used his status to drum up support for cancer victims (HOW HORRIBLE!), but any great athlete shares those negative attributes. Kobe, Brady, Crosby, Tiger, whoever. It’s that hate-able KILL KILL KILL part of their personality which drives them that most of us normal rational folks lack. Lance Armstrong isn’t any more specifically arrogant than any of those guys or the dozens of others whose dominance trancended sports.

Yes, he probably cheated and yes, it’s a shitty way of admitting it by saying “enough is enough” and just giving his titles back, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t earn them. All those motherfuckers cheated. I had a roommate who was a cyclist at one point and he always talked about how weird it felt knowing that every single one of his heroes growing up was a cheater. Armstrong shouldn’t be vilified because he was better than everyone else on the same cheating scale. If all things were equal and nobody doped, he probably would have still won a shitload of consecutive titles. An AMERICAN dominating a European-focused sport, mind you.

Haters gonna hate. Slaters gonna swim in a pool of money they earned off of LiveStrong bracelets.