by Byron Published

Lance and Late Night Comedians

Lance in Happier Days

Happier times on a RAGBRAI ride

After my ankle injury flared in the warmup laps, didn’t race yesterday. Was feeling like a loser not lining up with a number on my back, but then wait! I’ve got the same amount of Tour wins as Lance Armstrong.

Thanks Chris Rock on Twitter! That joke, and I expect more from late night comedians, comes on the day Lance was officially stripped of his 7 Tour titles. The Guardian UK attended the presser, reported live, with notes related to the case; including a nod to Kimmage and Inrng.

So far it’s as predicted. Armstrong scrubbed from history. UCI and McQuaid sticking to their guns.

Juliet Macur covered the UCI’s announcement, so did AP, and Kristen Armstrong says she’s “sorry to disappoint” for being a Dope Mom. As @stevebouey said to me,

There are now two gaps in the Tour’s long, storied history. One for war and the other for Lance.

I ranted more on this topic on the Spokesmen and the podcast is now available for a listen and download. I’ve been asked recently why I had so much skin in the game on this topic, was it personal or a vendetta? Neither. The reason is what David Walsh wrote in Sports Illustrated today

The truth was never hard to find in this story. You only had to be interested in looking.

Few were or did. As Neil says in the podcast, Bicycling admitted to not pursing the story because they didn’t want to lose advertiser dollars. Defending my commentary on a Facebook post, Marcus Connery wrote

It’s bloggers that do not have huge advertising budgets to protect, boards of directors with personal relationships to protect, and want to get the real information out to the masses, which is what journalism should be, and used to be, before it became just another business.

Lance, as we learn, was just another business too. A corrupt one. For him to lie, deny, deny, deny and then expect us to believe that’s all washed clean by sophisticated marketing, like a confessional to a consumer priest wearing a Nike swoosh, is the biggest issue now.

Yellow isn’t that strong of a color.

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