Lance Armstrong Stripped of Tour de France Titles
22nd October 2012
The International Cycling Union announced Monday that Armstrong is being stripped of his Tour de France titles.
And yet he still won the races — a historical fact. How are they going to get around that? The Ministry of Truth doesn’t yet have an effective Memory Hole, much as the International Crust might wish they had one available.
“The UCI has tested Lance Armstrong 218 times. If Lance Armstrong was able to beat the system, then the responsibility for addressing that rests not only with the UCI but also with” the anti-doping agencies that accepted the results, the cycling union said in its statement.
Ann Althouse brings up an interesting point:
Shouldn’t the UCI be stripped of something for missing the evidence? I’d like damages for all the time I’ve wasted paying attention to this sport. If all those races are now to be understood as phony, all of the money that anybody made promoting and presenting this sport was a big fraud. Stripping Armstrong of his titles doesn’t restore what we’ve lost.
Actually, I’m inclined to believe Armstrong over some semi-government agency. Their statements sound like the classic mentally-deranged conspiracy theory: ‘The fact that we found no evidence of doping merely underlines the insidious nefarious nature of his evil plot!’
October 23rd, 2012 at 14:22
I’ve heard it said by sports journalists who have been following this for years, that the head of the USADA decided some time back that Armstrong must be doping, to hell with “innocent until proven guilty,” and has lived only to bring him down. He also wants to require Armstrong to refund all his prize money.
Secondly, it seems the accusations from Armstrong’s team members were gained by placing a gun and handcuffs on the table and bluntly telling them if they didn’t talk, federal charges would be brought. Normally I’d find this one hard to believe, but since it’s federal, who knows?
I am no friend of Lance Armstrong: I believe that a man who first requires his wife to undergo artificial insemination and then divorces her, should pay triple support. I wonder if the head of the USADA has it in for her, too.
October 23rd, 2012 at 15:45
Guilt by insemination?