The end of the world foreseen by the Mayas has not come, but for cycling it has only been postponed until tomorrow January 17, when Lance Armstrong, as now appears certain, will come clean on doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, one of the most famous presenters of American TV, and which will be broadcast tomorrow at 21 in New York, when it will be late at night here. The long-awaited and dreaded interview that has been talked about for days was already recorded yesterday in Austin where the Texan cyclist lives. According to what the "Washingtoin Post" writes, Armstrong has already telephoned some key figures in the cycling world to apologize for having used doping substances during a triumphant career that led him to win seven consecutive Tours from 1999 to 2005, all victories which after the USADA investigation were canceled by the International Cycling Union. If it may appear to be the first act of redemption of a man hurled from heaven to hell, disbarred from sport, pilloried by public opinion, disinherited by billionaire sponsors who demand the return of hyperbolic figures, the late repentance of the champion becomes a nightmare for many, discrediting the anti-doping system and those who manage it, bureaucrats and conniving luminaries who subjected the rider to over 500 checks, always declaring his pee as pure as mineral water. We wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the organizers of the Tour de France who for seven years pampered and defended the invincible Texan so much as to transform the Grande Boucle into the "Tour de Lance": the one that will start this summer from the Côte d'Azur will be the Centenary Tour , was supposed to be a big party, but it has all the air of being that of the year zero, an event, in the media the most important in the world after the Olympics and the soccer World Cup, with a shocked and sealed roll of honor, forced to make up for it a lost credibility.
Luckily for the Giro, Armstrong has always snubbed him, racing it only once in 2009 as a supporting actor, without ever sprinting, in the middle if not even detached from the group: otherwise even for those in the pink race it would be an embarrassing redde rationem which they are called those of the Tour and with them, rising to the upper quarters of the cycling institutions, the managers of the UCI in the period at the turn of the millennium. A powerful gang that would have helped Armstrong to avoid the positivity - which he had repeatedly blurted out in the group without ever scratching the king in the yellow jersey - at doping controls. It was the Usada itself, the American anti-doping agency, through the mouth of its president Travis Tygart, who poured truckloads of mud on the Lausanne laboratory which, obeying pressure from the UCI, allegedly gave Armstrong the right advice to escape the tests. A tsunami – all the more so after Lance's expected revelations – which will increasingly hit the head of Hein Verbruggen, McQuaid's much-talked-about predecessor at the UCI summit. More and more disturbing rumors have been circulating about him for some time. Greg Lemond's ex-wife, Kathy, also got involved in the turmoil, according to which even Nike would have intervened with a bribe of 500 thousand dollars to reward Verbruggen for his good-natured attitude towards Armstrong. The multinational has denied. But the storm over Verbruggen is just beginning. As for Armstrong, one wonders how he could have a man already affected by cancer, overcome such a terrible disease, take dope for ten years in a row without ever being discovered and above all maintain a superman state of health. Perhaps Fausto Coppi, the champion of anti-doping free cycling, was right when he said: "In cycling there has always been the bomb, but drugs will never transform a donkey into a racing colt".
