Last August, I took advantage of an offer from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to be automatically stripped of my Tour de France titles by refusing to defend myself against doping charges. Disappointed as I was to see the government’s anti-success bureaucrats tearing apart the Constitution at great cost to the taxpayer, I was relieved to have finally freed myself from the demonization that my astounding triumphs inflicted on me.
But with the release of the USADA’s new report, which alleges that I was a “doping kingpin” throughout my career, I see how foolish I was. The agency’s offer was nothing but a honeypot, cynically designed to make the idea that I doped seem almost potentially plausible.
This new two-hundred-and-two-page document is filled with lies, each more ludicrous than the last. Lies about me forcing teammates to dope, lies that I threatened witnesses and their families, even lies suggesting that I thought the International Cycling Union was “somewhat at fault for the extent of my cancer,” so, “if I ever have a doping problem, I have this card to play.” With whoppers these large, one can imagine the USADA letting loose even more outrageous ones in the future. Maybe some stuff about chimp hormones, or chimp pituitary glands. A secret, poorly run chimp farm on my villa in Nice, and the like. Loose chimps sent to terrorize enemies. But again, I just said those would be lies. So let’s agree, right now, to not pay attention to those. Deal? Deal.
It comes as no surprise that the anti-cycling, anti-cycling-silence-code, pro-French-athletic-governing-board-doping-test-results media has disseminated the report with glee. They know that the public loves nothing more than seeing their heroes’ faces shoved in the dirt, as if they were common cycling whistle-blowers after an appearance on “60 Minutes.”
But a glance at those accusing me shows why this report is rotten to the core. These people are admitted dopers who cheated their way to the top and only told the truth when they were out of options. One of the report’s “star witnesses,” Floyd Landis, was even stripped of his Tour de France title for doping.
These subhuman piles of trashcan garbage would be pitiable if they weren’t motivated by such malign intent. You’d think their lies sprang from the mouth of some vindictive ex-wife as she stonewalls divorce proceedings, trying not to get dumped for Sheryl Crow. Or some washed-up Sheryl Crow trying not to get dumped for Ashley Olsen. Which, while we’re on the subject, I am the one who dumped Ashley, no matter what lies she spits into the perjury-filled miasma around her head. What can I say? Early in our relationship, it became clear that she had a deep-seated jealousy about how there’s no such thing as women biking.
She might not have long to wait, though. For these are not the good old days, when the cool President went on mountain-bike rides with you, and there was a TV program called “The Science of Lance Armstrong,” and it explained that you dominated because of physiological superiority. And did I mention that you actually won that Tour de France comeback in 2009? No, those days are long gone, shot execution style and flung into a mass grave by militant pro-cancer activists.
But enough is enough. I will no longer be kept silent, except perhaps when I exercise my constitutional right not to be subpoenaed. For years, the federal government, with its network of corrupt witnesses, has been a machine designed to drain the blood from its innocent victims. But the government has failed to realize that we, the people, have our own system. And it will pump another man’s blood back into us, and that blood is infused with a specially formulated cocktail of simian hormones, and it will let us emerge ten times stronger than before, with some chimp-powers thrown in.
That is why I’m thrilled to announce my triumphant return to—Oh, I can’t do that anymore? Your loss, morons. Kill yourselves. Lance out.
Illustration by Christophe Blain.
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