The entire thing is so complicated I’m not even sure how I’d feel if it were proven he cheated his way to all 7 TDF titles. On the one hand, there’s disappointment that a hero, the man responsible for the growing popularity of pro cycling in the United States is a cheater (a fraud?). And on the other you have a man who, without even considering the cancer, has more TDF victories than any other doing what was required of him to compete at the time.

I want to be angry at him and respect him at the same time.

Do I feel differently about Floyd? I do and it’s a little hypocritical, sure. But mostly I’m mad at Floyd because he got caught, spent 2 years denying everything and then changed his story when he thought it suited him. But I do think that, even if the Armstrong question is never answered, what Floyd did might be the catalyst that cleans the sport up further and I do think it is important the sport is cleaned up.

For instance, in the ‘Armstrong dopes’ camp, the prevailing view is that the French riders are clean because they lose, except for those that win who must be on dope but might not be because the French anti-doping authority has used the biological passport for years to root out the cheats but the anglophones who have had only brief experience of this system are cheating because it’s so easily circumvented, any baby could do it, especially Armstrong because he’s got so much money and power and Armstrong must be cheating because he gets grumpy when people call him a cheat and all his team mates cheated plus EPO gives you cancer.