Lance Armstrong: from Tour de France icon to drug user, trafficker, bully and cover-up artist Here is another egregious Armstrong riposte, to a curious reporter: "This is my body, and I can do whatever I want to it. I can push it, study it, tweak it, listen to it. Everybody wants to know what I am on. What am I on? I am on my bike busting my ass six hours a day; what are you on? Now jump-cut to the USADA's report of "direct documentary evidence, including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of US Postal, a team that received "tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding." To the International Cycling Union (UCI), the World Anti-Doping Agency and the World Triathlon Corporation, the USADA lift the lid on a culture that "was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices." These claims are backed up by "sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team and its participants" doping activities." As the fine detail of this arrogance and contempt for sporting values emerged, one's mind imagined Armstrong competing in a triathlon in Elliott City, Maryland, three days ago, after the organisers ignored Wada sanctions to allow him to take part. According to agency reports, "Armstrong finished the 70-mile swim, bike and run in four hours, 16 minutes at the Revolution3 Half-Full Triathlon, racing in a wave of about 50 fellow cancer survivors." Brock Yetso, president of the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults, said: "We had two individuals who decided they did not want to race based on our decision and 300 who said they wanted to. So I think numbers speak for themselves. "I think he's a great inspiration for anybody," said Lennie Phillips of Kensington, Maryland, who survived brain cancer and competed alongside Armstrong. All of these allegations, whether they're true or not, I don't know, but he still had to go through all the treatments. Phillips is entitled to his view on Armstrong's double life. He sees the work done in cancer laboratories, the lives saved, including his own. But the rest of us are entitled to ask whether Armstrong's relentless campaigning was part of the puppet show: an attempt to construct a saintly image that would ease his conscience and protect him from gossip. As it happens, Armstrong protected himself robustly: with threats, denunciations and an aggressive faith in his untouchability. Johnson was the big sacrifice of the seediest era in track and field. He was busted, held up as the sport's most reviled criminal and used to demonstrate a patchy determination to rid athletics of fraudsters. The Balco laboratories doping scandal swept through baseball and US track and field, claiming Marion Jones, Kelli White, Tim Montgomery and our own Dwain Chambers. Back then it was hard to imagine a more graphic insight into the canyon between what we see and what really goes in with syringes, pills and vials. Armstrong persuaded himself that a hyper-aggressive stance in the face of suspicion would crush his accusers. He forgot that a vast network of cyclists and officials were involved in cultivating the bright, shining lie of the cyclist who could ride forever. Sooner of later it was bound to come out. Like many anti-heroes of American "crime," Armstrong holed himself up and was prepared to take everyone down with him. The people whose hearts he has really broken are doubtless those who saw him as a survivor, a unique life force whose real struggle was not against the Alps but illness and death. As if cancer were not bad enough, they had to be conned by their idol.