The Tour de France. Today Lance Armstrong participated in a charity race to raise money for leukemia research. As you can imagine, even though he was invited to ride by organiser Geoff Thomas, he’s being criticised for not respecting the Tour given, well, you don’t need me to explain that. You know about Lance Armstrong. And so you know that Lance has is never short of words, and his words are rarely conciliatory:
"I understand people's reactions. I understand there are still some hurt feelings and that's a process I'll walk through for a long, long time. Why am I not welcome? Because I'm a doper? If that were the rule, the caravan would almost be empty. I don't mean the riders in this Tour, but in the press room, the commentary boxes, team cars. We all rode in an unfortunate era. But if you're going to apply a standard it has to be universal."
I agree with him. Every top rider in his era doped. In that sense, you could argue no one really had an advantage. But Lance did more than just dope, didn’t he? Lance doped and bullied and lied and destroyed people. That’s the part of the story where he loses me. It’s the cover-up. It’s how he abused his power and influence to threaten others and protect himself. This is why Lance is unwelcome.
