Dear Sports Fan,
I thought Lance Armstrong was just the guy who rode a bike married Sheryl Crowe. Why is the U.S. Government investigating him for stuff that happened a decade ago?
Thanks,
Saoirse
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Dear Saoirse,
Cycling is very much a niche – read, rich, white and primarily European people – sport. The only time Americans become interested, as with most international sports, is when an American dominates the field. Lance Armstrong dominated cycling for years and won the Tour de France something like forty years in a row.
As it turns out, even professional cyclists don’t find it particularly easy to ride a bike 125 miles a day through a mountain range in crippling heat. So they look for every advantage they can find. Stunning fact number one: some of them probably cheat. Stunning fact number two: most of them get away with it, because of stunning fact number three: the powers that be can’t keep up with doping technology.
Now, lots of people in the sport were (are?) doing it – but Lance Armstrong won a lot, got famous and married Sheryl Crowe, so he’s all over the feds’ radar. His urine is probably the most studied liquid in history, and it’s always come back clean.….but now his former teammates are telling 60 Minutes (and, one assumes, the Feds) that he not only took the illegal drugs, he trafficked them and basically dealt them too.
Sincerely,
Dean Russell Bell