Free Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh, Paul Kimmage, John Follain, Alex Butler

the response. It was the rabble that clamoured for Pilate to free Barabbas and not Jesus.
    Armstrong said the episode would not bother him for long: "When I am on a beach with my family in three or four years, this will not exist."
    Yet, that too was a bleak conclusion. The memory of a Tour-winning ride on Mont Ventoux should be savoured, not banished, and it should enrich easy days on the beach. When they jeered Armstrong last week, they cruelly took from him something that should have been precious.
    But it is sport itself that has destroyed the innocence of the fans. Too many champions have turned out to be phoney, too many winners have cheated. Nobody is now sure of what they are seeing. All that the fans have been left with is the right to their own emotional reaction to what is happening before them. The administrators, the sponsors, the media and the athletes can take from the fans everything but that.
    As hard as it was for them to bear, it was that emotional reaction that Yegorova and Armstrong heard.
     
     

Beautiful and the damned
    David Walsh
    June 29, 2003
    "
    The old drugs helped a rider to maximise his own potential. The new drugs transformed the rider
    "

In the final paragraph of his fine book on the 1978 race, Robin Magowan wrote: "The Tour de France may not be to all tastes. Some may well prefer their heroics more intimate; with Calypso in the cave, or the witch Circe, than before the walls of Troy. But in a world where faces are no longer launching their thousand ships and knights aren't charging across cloths of gold, one can be grateful to our press overlords for having provided us with a bona fide 20th-century epic."
    Magowan's book was written to commemorate a race that was then celebrating its 75th anniversary. He offered us a picture of the Tour as we wish to see it; noble, heroic and epic: an event that transcends the ordinary and shows the human spirit in its boundless potential. Countless times over the last 25 years, the Tour has seemed the greatest race.
    It was a Saturday afternoon in July 1992. The race to Sestriere was over four Alpine passes and was fought under a scorching sun. Soon after the start, a number of riders accelerated away from the pack. Claudio Chiappucci was the strongest of the breakaways and his boyish enthusiasm galvanised those around him. That was until they hit the mountains.
    Then, on the steeply rising roads, Chiappucci's infernal pace hurt his comrades and, fearful they would slow him down, he burnt them off. It enlivened the normally quiet hours before lunch but with another 150km kilometres to race before the finish, Chiappucci could have simply ridden his bike over the edge of a cliff and got it over quickly. His was evidently a suicide mission.
    Halfway through the stage, the Banesto teammates of race leader Miguel Indurain coalesced near the head of the peloton and organised themselves into a posse. They took turns at the front while Indurain sheltered behind, saving his energy for when it was needed. Each Banesto rider gave what he had until, lemming-like, each one dropped away.
    By the time the last one surrendered, Indurain had been towed to within striking distance of the lone leader. On the final slopes of the climb to Sestriere, the big Spaniard could have called out and commended his rival on his courage.
    Indurain didn't need to speak, Chiappucci could feel his wretched presence and the overwhelming sense of futility. Six and a half hours only for it to end like this.
    Then the most extraordinary thing happened. On that final climb, the tifosi screamed and chanted. "Chiappa! Chiappa!" and "Forza! Forza!" Chiappucci had always played to the gallery and for one last time he would do so again. His spirit soared, he found energy where there was none and he accelerated. He felt no pain, only the thrill of glory. Cooked, Indurain watched him go.
    As the gap widened, there was a burst of sustained applause from the 500 or so journalists who had followed