Finally. Enough already.
Y’know, the most irritating thing about this endless Keystone Kops debacle is that in lack of one tiny shred of a whisper of a fragment of hard evidence, we’ve had to hear the same tired arguments over and over and over. Arguments, incidentally, that would make a reasonably bright 10-year-old groan. To wit:
He couldn’t have been that good! So if a breakthrough megastar emerges and blows the doors off of everyone, it automatically means he’s a cheat? Yeah, I’m familiar with this brand of pathetic snivelling, and it has exactly as much credence on YouTube as it does in sports. Is Tiger Woods a complete fraud? Wayne Gretzky? Roger Federer? Michael Phelps? Tony Hawk? John Elway? Hakuho? Hey, Ronnie O’Sullivan got a maximum break in a little over 4 1/2 minutes, he had to be on something!
His opponents were juicing, so he couldn’t possibly have beaten them unless he was as well! So nobody ever overcomes an inherent disadvantage without cheating? Buster Douglas didn’t beat Mike Tyson clean? The battered, demoralized 2004 Red Sox didn’t really pull the comeback of the century against the mighty Yankees? Royce Gracie, he’s gotta be the biggest cheater ever; no way could he have been all those guys that were so much BIGGER than him!
Lots and lots of people say that he doped! Right, right, because as we all know, mob mentality never steers anyone wrong, and especially not when some of the biggest protesters have transparent grudges against Armstrong. Folks, it’s called “hearsay”. Ask any lawyer how much weight this carries.
I really, really, really think he did! I’m 100% sure he did! He must have! I can feel it in my gut! You’re perfectly free to believe that, just as you’re free to believe that the moon is made of cheese (and not tapioca pudding as was previously reported). If you’re trying to convince me that he’s dirty, I’m going to need something a little more solid that. And no, “Still yet that treble-lettered wretch blindly refuses to see the truth, the poor, deluded fool!” doesn’t cut it.
Look, you need to understand something…if you persist in saying that you know he doped, it makes YOU look bad. Because the cycling authorities have been pounding away at this for years now, and they’ve found nothing. The official results stay official. The titles, money, and prestige, Armstrong keeps every last bit of it. The record book will bear no asterisk, no footnote, no hemming and hawing. The fight is over, and you lost. And right now the last thing you need is to keep harping on this. Life goes on. There will be new battles.