Here’s a sample of how some of the Irish newspapers reacted to the Lance Armstrong case over the past few days.
Eamonn Sweeney in yesterday’s Sunday Independent
The two journalists who've been most insistent that Lance Armstrong has a case to answer are David Walsh and Paul Kimmage, both of whom have crusaded against doping in cycling for many a long day. Armstrong's surrender is a vindication of both men and the often lonely battle they waged.
Irish sports, Irish journalism and any Irish person who believes that truth and honesty matter should be proud of Kimmage and Walsh. There's not a lot of prestige attached to chasing down the facts about drug use in sport. They've been accused of jealousy and bitterness and monomania.
Kimmage, who competed three times in the Tour de France, has been a hate figure for his doping fellow cyclists ever since the publication of his great book Rough Ride, which really lifted the lid on cheating within the sport. He was the whistleblower who broke cycling's code of omerta on drugs and he became convinced that Armstrong was "the cancer in this sport".
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It's easy for a sports journalist to be a cheerleader. But you have to be tough to speak truth to power as Paul Kimmage has done. And he is tough…… Paul Kimmage has zero tolerance for drugs in sport. And we should all follow his lead.
Brian O’Connor in today’s Irish Times
Cycling must learn from the galling thought that that the American almost rode into the sunset with money and reputation intact.
Lance Armstrong is reportedly worth about $125 million. Maybe that will be sufficient consolation for him – maybe. More likely it will allow him a more comfortable misery. At the risk of verging into Hollywood schmaltz, it’s hard to put a value on being able to look at yourself in the mirror and feeling comfortable with what’s staring back. Armstrong is 40 now, hopefully at least only halfway through his life. That’s a lot of pretending not to care about what people are saying about you.
Maybe the money will provide him with enough privacy to not worry about that – maybe.
What that kind of money certainly allows Armstrong is the resources to be able to fight the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) through any courtroom he wanted, tie the thing up in knots for a long time, maintaining the pretence for even more years. But he isn’t doing so. And since Armstrong is famously thorough in his thought-processes, one can only conclude he has engaged in damage control, preferring this route and putting a brake on some of the evidence the Usada were prepared to unveil.
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Shane Stokes in Saturday’s Irish Times
For some, the outcome was a much-needed and logical conclusion after years of scandals in the sport; while cycling is perceived as being cleaner now than it was in the 1990s and the last decade, many big names in Armstrong’s era were either directly or indirectly linked to doping.
This number included some of those who stand to inherit his Tour de France titles if it is decided to promote the runner-up rather than leaving the top slot blank; a real headache either way for Tour organiser ASO.
Despite that complication, the argument is that cycling can never truly leave its past behind when unrepentant individuals suspected of practising or facilitating doping still hold positions of great influence.
For others on the opposite end of the scale, Armstrong is regarded as a great champion who has been maligned by an agency seeking publicity – a surprisingly common claim on internet forums and comment panels, furthered perhaps by Armstrong’s PR team speaking constantly of witch-hunts and vendettas, and accusing USADA as having an axe to grind.
Dan Buckley in Saturday’s Irish Examiner
The real tragedy of competitive cycling is not that Lance Armstrong has finally thrown in the towel. The real problem is that there have been opportunities in the past 20 years for the sport to clean up its act but it has never done so.
In terms of doping, 1998 was a particularly scandalous year for the Tour de France. On July 8 of that year, French Customs arrested Willy Voet, a trainer with the Festina team, for the possession of illegal drugs, including growth hormones, testosterone and amphetamines. Investigations that followed made it clear that the management and health officials of Festina had organised drug-taking within the team. Voet later described many common doping practices in his book, Massacre à la Chaîne.
The one hope was that the scandal was so gross that it might prove to be a watershed and that the sport would finally be cleansed.
But the champion of the supposed new era was none other than Lance Armstrong, who tested positive for a glucocorticosteroid hormone after winning the 1999 Tour. Armstrong explained he had used an external cortisone ointment to treat a saddle sore and produced a prescription for it. Although the amount detected was below the threshold, the rules required prescriptions be shown to sports authorities in advance of use. Lance had not done so, but he got away with it.
The shame of it is that if the governing body of the sport, Union Cycliste Internationale, had implemented its own rules, a new generation of cycling cheats might not have emerged.
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