With admissions and apologies flowing in cycling, the biggest admission of all is still being withheld by one Lance Armstrong. However two very important apologies have not been issued either.
Or, more accurately, a number of apologies to two specific men.
Following the release of the reasoned decision, Levi Leipheimer wrote 563 self-pitying, self-excusing, woe-is-me words for the Wall St Journal, in which he attempted to explain why he did what he did.
After asserting doping was the norm in the peloton, not the exception, and he was just doing what he had to to keep up, he apologised.
“I am sorry that I was forced to make the decisions I made,” Leipheimer said.
“I am sorry that the sport and I have let you down.”
It’s a cowardly way of admitting your mistakes, by showing contrition but laying the blame squarely at the feet of the institution.
While there is overwhelming evidence doping was widespread, to say the sport has let people down is a huge slap in the face to all those riders who spent years toiling on Europe’s greatest mountains without EPO or transfused blood in their veins.
But Levi’s biggest insult was yet to come.
“I could have come forward sooner. But would that have accomplished anything – other than to end my career? One rider coming forward and telling his story in the face of cycling’s code of silence would not have fixed a problem that was institutional.”
Levi is right, one rider coming forward would not have made a difference. But had Levi come forward, he would not have been one rider. He would have been one of three riders.
Because both Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton had come forward and told the truth about Lance (even now, it feels as though I should write ‘come forward and made accusations against Lance’).
Landis was the first to make his revelations, in 2010, while Hamilton followed suit in 2011.
Unfortunately, both men were noted drug cheats who had maintained their innocence for years and finally admitted their guilt while also pointing the finger at Lance.
As a result, their credibility as witnesses against him was shot to pieces.
How could you trust two men who spent years lying about their own use of drugs? Perhaps with a man like Levi Leipheimer coming forward to support their story.
Had, say, Levi come forward and confirmed what these two men had said, that he himself had doped and got away with it, this whole sordid affair may have played out far sooner.
Sure it would have probably ended Levi’s career but, with his 39th birthday falling this week, it’s not as though he had much of a career left when Landis and Hamilton told their stories.
I’m picking on Levi because of his pathetic ‘admission’ in the Wall St Journal. But all the riders who knew what Landis and Hamilton said was accurate are almost as bad as Lance for maintaining such steadfast silence in the face of truth.
Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, George Hincapie, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie were the other former teammates who testified against Lance when subpoenaed and under oath.
Andreu and Swart both testified against Lance in 2006 and refused to back down from claims made then, but the others all kept their mouths shut and allowed Landis and Hamilton to be crucified in the media.
It’s not enough to cite the ‘code of silence’. Where’s the code of basic human decency? The code of teammates standing by one another? They may not have wanted to throw Lance Armstrong under the bus but when they saw Landis and Hamilton going under, they simply stood by and watched.
As a result, before any of Lance’s other teammates admitted their role, their testimony was already being discredited by Lance’s team, with attorney Robert Luskin saying in June this year:
“We’re focused on what we understand to be a corrupt bargain USADA made with other riders and said, essentially: ‘Here’s the script and, if you co-operate, you get a complete pass. And if you refuse, we’ll use Landis and Hamilton against you and you’ll never ride again.”
And the line of argument was reasonable – none of these guys had said a thing about Lance in the past, why would they say it now unless they were being coerced in to it by the testimony of the two discredited and disgraced riders?
But if more riders who had doped and not been caught come forward and supported Landis and Hamilton while their names and reputations were being dragged through the mud over the past two or so years, this line of defence would never have been possible for Lance’s team to raise.
Instead, the likes of Leipheimer, Hincapie, Zabriskie, Vande Velde – even Matt White – maintained their silence, giving a lying cheat a hall pass and allowing the men they knew to be telling the truth be painted as petty, bitter and looking for an angle to sell their respective books.
So when Travis Tygart, CEO of USADA, penned his preface to the reasoned decision last week, one part was not totally accurate:
“The riders who participated in the USPS Team doping conspiracy and truthfully assisted have been courageous in making the choice to stop perpetuating the sporting fraud, and they have suffered greatly.”
Those who finally told the truth about USPS Team may have shown courage and suffered as a consequence.
But compared to their cowardice in perpetuating the lie at the expense of their former teammates, their courage is too little, too late.
And their suffering is little more than deserved penance.
Joe is the editor of Disaffected Middle Class
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