Floyd Landis Falls on Sword, Tries to Stab Armstrong

The answers from Floyd Landis raised the same question about Lance Armstrong:
How could anyone so dominate a sport so dominated by drug abuse if he weren't cheating too?

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Floyd Landis, winner of the 2006 Tour de France, who lost his title after a positive drug test, finally admitted that his consistently vociferous denials of drug use were all lies. He doped throughout his career, he confessed.

In falling on his sword, Landis was not content to kill his own reputation. He claimed that Armstrong helped him cheat, even storing "clean" blood in Armstrong's refrigerator.

Armstrong was as dogged by drug use accusations as fellow cyclists en route to seven consecutive Tour de France titles. And he has been as vocal in his denials as Landis once was. A denial he had to trot out again, with added attacks on his former teammate's credibility, after Landis' announcement.

Unlike Landis — and so may other big-name cyclists felled by drug tests, if not killed by drugs themselves — Armstrong has been able to maintain innocence by repeating, almost mantra-like, "I have never failed a drug test."

Perhaps it is for that he deserves the greatest congratulations.

It is clear that the question is no longer whether Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs, the question is only whether he was a superior doper among equal competitors or a superior competitor among equal dopers.