Lance Exonerated. Cycling Not.

CyclingNews reports:

According to Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, the UCI's appointed independent lawyer Emile Vrijman says Lance Armstrong should be cleared of any suspicion surrounding the retrospective testing of his blood samples from the 1999 Tour de France.

I have been a major fan of professional cycling for many years now. I know first hand that cycling fans suffer a lot. Doping IS cheating and something should be done about it, but professional cycling is not (and has not been) handling it very well. After a record setting SEVEN straight Tour de France victories, last fall, the managing director of the TdF, Jean-Marie LeBlanc, completely denigrated Lance's achievements saying:

"On the 24th of July we turned the page on a long, very long chapter in the history of the Tour de France. And one month later, current events made it clear to us that it was just as well that this was so."

It could only be a reference to seven-time Tour winner Armstrong, and the subsequent doping allegations published in the ASO-owned L'Equipe newspaper that came out one month later

Shame on LeBlanc! Especially after all the praise he lavished on Lance during those seven years and all the publicity and new fans that Lance brought to the TdF.

As a final note, wouldn't you think that Mr. Pound, the World Anti-Doping Agency chairman, would use Richard or Rich as his first name?