Cyclist Lance Armstrong has recently confessed to using performance enhancing drugs during each of his seven Tour de France victories. Public discussion has focused on whether his apology, during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, was genuine or not. I want to consider whether his conduct was criminal. (By “conduct,” I mean the doping and related activity, not the interview!) There’s a North Carolina connection. This article observes that at Beech Mountain, near Boone, you can ride “the route Lance Armstrong used to train for his final Tour De France.” And in one of his autobiographies, Armstrong recounts a North Carolina ride that renewed his faith in cycling. (I think it was his first book, It’s Not About the Bike. As an aside, I think it’s a red flag when a person writes more than one autobiography.) The full story of Armstrong’s systematic doping and his campaign to cover it up is told in this report from the United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA. Briefly, the agency concludes that Armstrong masterminded “a massive team doping scheme, more extensive than any previously revealed in professional sports history” and engaged in a “fraudulent course of conduct that extended over a decade and leave no doubt that Mr. Armstrong’s career . . . was fueled from start to finish by doping.” Obviously, Armstong and his foundation have also done a great deal of good, and the purpose of this post isn’t to assess Armstrong’s legacy. My personal view is that the doping and the lying are [...]
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