Lance Armstrong walked on the moon!

This week saw Lance Armstrong have his life changed from being the bloke who won a record 7 Tour de Frances in a row to holding exactly the same number of titles as me... I particularly loved the "banned for life from cycling" part. Does this not imply that now for Lance to get on a bike is tantamount to a federal offece? Do all bikes in the world have a restraining order against him. After checking out his twatter the other day he tweeted that he would be grabbing his bike and heading for a ride in the woods... will this man never stop? The fact he grabbed a bike could be percieved as some sort of hostage situation, but I shouldn't bother calling the Police just yet.

Armstrong has been accused of being a drugs cheat... it happens to many of the top professionals in the world... in fact only the other week Carl Lewis (yes the ex-drug cheat) accused Usain Bolt of taking drugs to which Mr Bolt told the former to politely fuck off. One of the accusers of Armstrong, Floyd Landis, was found guilty of defaruding his charities' supporters ironically in the same day as Armstrong was stripped of his lifes work. To his credit Lance has maintained his innocence to the end and stated his lack of wish to destroy the rest of his life fighting the charges was his reason for throwing in the towel. Does this make it one of the dirtiest sports since snookers bad boys were 'outed'?

The problem with being labelled a drugs cheat is that it has the connotations of some kind of junkie. No matter what people say I still head in my mind to some trainspotting fueled evening of fun that ruined the sportsmans careers. Was Lance so high on drugs that he managed to convince the world he not only won those titles, but did it on the moon while playing a trumpet and singing about it being a wonderful world. Apparantly there is still one of Lance's bikes on the moon to this day! This seems to be the opinions and knowledge of some ignorant bastards on the internet who can't differentiate one great Armstrong from another. The truth is Lance himself is not a junkie, but rather is accused of having used some medicines to improve his performance in the races.

Whether or not Lance cheated I couldn't give a shit - if he is innocent then I truly hope he is exhonerated and his titles restored. My main concern is that his potential cheating is all this man will be remembered for. In my opinion he deserves to make the group of those great Armstongs including Louis, Neil and Stretch and not because he was good on a bike with or without an extra bit of something.

Why? This man battled back from cancer... ok so many people do and many people deserve to be recognised for what they went through, but this man came back from the disease and went on to claim 7 titles. He could have stopped there but he founded a charity. He used his fame to try and do a little bit of good in the world. He gained the sponserships of companies like Nike and tried to help other people. While there was a witchhunt trying to strip him of everything he had he managed to change some peoples lives. I am not usually a fan of big corporations, but Nike to their credit have stood by him and continued their funding citing Lance's un-wavering declaration of innocence as their reason. Kudos, however, to a company who gains little recognition for this act and continues to do the right thing.

I hope that in time people see that what he did, whether or not he cheated, was to try and do something good and used his influence to gain the attention of companies that people outside of the headlines could never have got.

Roy Woodhouse - Twitter