Cycling: Why Lance Armstrong Should and Will Be Forgiven for Doping

I don't have any type of insider information on the matter, but I truly believe without too much indecision that Lance Armstrong took a cocktail of performance enhancing drugs during his racing career. In layman's terms, he cheated.

Now everyone knows how this will end. Lance will eventually admit to doping, apologize for any fans he hurt or offended, take some time to himself where he won't tweet for everybody to see, and then reemerge, forgiven.

This is the United States of Forgiveness, we know Lance will be pardoned. So why does the charade and the debate persist? Why do we even care in the first place?

To begin, Lance Armstrong has become a figure in sports who is inspiration to many. He overcame cancer, stage III testicular cancer that had metastasized to his brain and lungs to be exact.

He won the Tour de France, arguably the most physically grueling competition in all of sports, seven times in a row. He started a multi-million dollar charity to raise money for cancer research. He's a pity-case turned success. He's a man who's laid on his deathbed for far to long. 

So is it fair to say we care because we are let down, or are we truly angry at Lance for dishonorably claiming victory not once, but seven times? I have to assume that opinions are split here, but most people never did and never will again care about cycling without Lance.

We were angry at Barry Bonds when he broke the home run record because he took the crown away from Hank Aaron. Bonds doped and Aaron didn't. It doesn't seem fair. But what did Lance take from anyone? Seven Tour de France victories from most likely, six or seven different cyclists?

So if our anger at Lance is not out of spite for the 'other guys,' it must be out of vengeance for ourselves. Everyone who rooted for Lance and supported Lance now has to ask themselves if they supported the bad guy or the guy who cheated. No one wants to root for that guy. 

So yes, Lance cheated and yes, Lance lied, and yes...Lance is a cocky son-of-a, you know.

But Lance also gave us a reason to love cycling, and he gave millions of people who are afflicted with cancer or who have a family member battling the disease a reason to believe that life goes on and in fact, gets better. 

So let's end the charade before it starts. We can put an asterisk next to each of his seven wins and we can always speak of his success with a slight air of suspicion, but let's forgive the man. Many other people have cheated with worse intentions, and at the end of the day, maybe Lance was just doing all he knew how to do: win and survive.