Lance

There are no winners here.

Not even the possibility of doubt remains. Lance Armstrong doped. He beat cancer. He transformed the sport of cycling. He was a once in a lifetime athlete.

And a fraud.

Why should any of this matter? Cycling is arguably the dirtiest professional sport around, and of all the athletes using performance enhancing drugs, Lance was still better than any of them.

It matters because the first principle of any sport is: "What are the rules of the game?". Lance took drugs for one reason: to cheat.

The revelations outlined in the USADA report are appalling. It portrays Armstrong intimidating junior riders to engage in doping or lose their place on the squad. There are allegations he threatened Levi Leipheimer and his wife after they testified against him.

The riders who testified against Armstrong do not have clean hands in any of this. Leipheimer, Dave Zabriskie, Christian Vande Velde, George Hincapie, and Jonathan Vaughters all clearly knew a great deal more about doping on the U.S. Postal squad than they've been willing to share up to this point. Leipheimer, Vande Velde, and Zabriskie have accepted short term suspensions for their past drug use. I assume these are reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony, but banishment through the winter is unlikely to affect their chances at important races next year.

Vaughters silence up to now is troubling. As a teammate of Armstrong's, he must have known what was going on at the time. Yet he didn't hesitate to hire on refugees from U.S. Postal for his new, clean racing squad at Slipstream Sports (more commonly known as Team Garmin or the "Argyle Army"). Despite his own knowledge of those riders' personal histories, he said and did nothing. The Argyle Army has done so much to move the sport away from the lingering doping scandal of the last few decades. I would hate to see doubts about Vaughters cast a shadow over that success.

I rallied hard for Christian Vande Velde when he attacked at the 2008 Tour de France. And I was ecstatic when he emerged triumphant at the Tour of Colorado (or whatever we're calling that race) this summer. But I will look at him differently from now on.

Whatever Vande Velde's faults as a young rider, at least he (eventually) came around to owning them.

The thing that really offends me is that Lance Armstrong continues to profess his innocence. Anyone who claims otherwise is out to get him, or so the argument goes. And even now, despite the overwhelming evidence, his tactic is simply to say nothing at all.

Any chance of Lance salvaging his legacy now hangs on his character alone. And so far he hasn't shown any. So many of the other riders entangled in this mess, a mess that is as much a part of cycling's culture as it is Armstrong's own scandal, have finally stepped up and acknowledged their role. Hopefully their admissions will be enough to bring about real reform.

No one would be a more powerful spokesman for that reform than Armstrong himself. That will not be possible until he acknowledges his own guilt.

While I hope the work at his foundation can continue without him, I am either too old or too independent for hero worship. I survived cancer myself, long before Armstrong became famous for his own struggle with the disease. When I did eventually fall in love with cycling, I only knew Armstrong's name from the yellow bracelets.

I ride my bike to go fast and have fun. And that won't change.