Lance Armstrong is a drug cheat, yes, but should be allowed to ride Tour de France for charity’s sake

WOULD Lance Armstrong riding part of this year’s Tour de France route for charity really bring cycling in to ‘disrepute’? Surely that horse has bolted ...

Cyclist Lance Armstrong on a short ride to stretch his legs after arriving for the Tour Down Under in Adelaide, South Australia.

THE big news in London this week — other than the fact that England has finally won a one-day cricket match against New Zealand, dual Olympic gold medallist Mo Farah’s coach Alberto Salazar has been accused of cheating, Lionel Messi didn’t pay his taxes and former FIFA executive Jack Warner is a complete idiot — is that Lance Armstrong plans to ride in the Tour de France.

Not the race itself, mind you. Armstrong and another cancer survivor, former England footballer Geoff Thomas, intend to ride a few stages of Le Tour to raise money for a leukaemia foundation.

The head of cycling’s governing body, Brian Cookson, says this is not on, as it would be “disrespectful” to the sport.

Armstrong is a (belatedly and begrudgingly) self-confessed drug cheat.

Armstrong, the self-confessed drug cheat who has lost $20 million and his seven Tour titles since finally owning up to what just about everybody knew, has hit back, saying that a ride to raise money for charity is “the least of cycling’s problems”.

On the two occasions that I’ve met Lance Armstrong I got the impression that he was about as slimy as a creek frog, but on this issue I must say I agree with him.

The bloke has been unmasked as possibly the worst cheat in sporting history — if you don’t count Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, Hansie Cronje and the Spanish Paralympic basketball team — been stripped of all credibility, dumped from his own charity and written out of Dodgeball II.

But one thing no one can take away is the fact that he has raised millions for cancer sufferers.

How is continuing to do that “disrespectful” to a sport that turned a blind eye to what Armstrong, and just about every other top cyclist on the tour, was doing for each of those seven years when Armstrong wore the yellow jersey?

A cancer survivor himself, Armstrong has raised huge sums for the cause.

Before covering last year’s Tour de France, I read the book Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh, the Irish journalist who made it his life’s work to unmask the biggest name in world cycling.

It’s an excellent book, an object lesson to every young reporter that persistence, perseverance and single-minded obsession can eventually win out over the big-money interests of professional sport.

But much as I admired the unrelenting work that Walsh put into his pursuit of Armstrong — and felt humbled by the realisation that I would have given up the chase probably about halfway through chapter three — there were two things that struck me as I read.

One, that Armstrong was far from the only cyclist engaging in doping, and two, that hardly anyone cared.

Any more than they really care that Jack Warner and his FIFA cohorts were on the take, or that Lionel Messi and his manager-father short-changed the Spanish government by $7 million.

FIFA is corrupt but that won’t stop people watching the World Cup.

The sporting public wants to watch sport. They want the colour and movement, the majesty and drama. The escape from reality, if only for the 90 minutes of a football game.

Oh sure, they are saddened when an Armstrong, Warner or Melbourne Storm are found to be crooked, but will that stop them from buying a ticket?

You couldn’t have crammed more people into the town square in Leeds for the start of last year’s Tour, and the TV ratings at the next FIFA World Cup will be stronger than ever.

Sport is a circus, with lions, tigers, highwire acts and clowns.

An addendum to the Lance Armstrong story is this: next year a lawsuit filed against Armstrong by his former teammate and convicted doper Floyd Landis could bring the US government $100 million in damages.

Under US law, Landis would get $33 million of it.

And Brian Cookson reckons Armstrong raising a few thousand dollars for charity would bring the sport into disrepute? Please, Brian. It’s been there for years.

Originally published as Lance Armstrong is a drug cheat, yes, but should be allowed to ride Tour de France for charity’s sake