Armstrong's comeback won't silence the doubts

PARIS - So Lance Armstrong acknowledges the suspicion - was he doped? - that lingers in some minds over his record string of seven Tour de France victories.

And a desire to erase that doubt at least partly motivates his plan to come back as Mr. Clean and win another Tour to shut the skeptics up.

Wrong reason, Lance. In France, at least, that cause is likely long lost.

A tragedy of cycling and of Armstrong, the sport's most famous champion, is that it's simply impossible to turn back the clock and satisfactorily answer the questions that dogged his reign. The asterisk that clings to his generation of riders is as indelible as the white lines on French roads.

Too many of the people that Armstrong beat - Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, to cite just two of the biggest names - have since fallen from grace for that era not to be regarded as forever tarnished.

That doesn't, of course, mean that Armstrong is guilty by association, but it does help explain the persistent doubts that he now wants to - but likely won't - silence.

"There's this perception in cycling ...," Armstrong told Vanity Fair in explaining his comeback, that "the generation that I raced with was the dirty generation."

"Granted, I'll be totally honest with you, the year(s) that I won the Tour, many of the guys that got second through 10th, a lot of them are gone. Out. Caught. Positive tests. Suspended. Whatever," Armstrong said. "So I can understand why people look at that and go, 'Well, (they) were caught - and you weren't?'"

But then Armstrong's logic gets tougher to follow. He says that this time, he'll submit himself to "a completely comprehensive" drug-testing program. "There will be no way to cheat."

Maybe. But that won't whitewash the past. Even a millionaire can't buy trust as easily as a house in Aspen, where Vanity Fair tells us that Armstrong will be training at high altitude to steel himself again for the Tour's ascents in the Alps and Pyrenees.

No matter how dramatic the idea of returning at the ripe age of 36, or how transparent and rigorous about dope testing he now says he will be, Armstrong has scant chance of winning back skeptics in France who believe he must have been injecting to so dominate their beloved and venerable Tour.

It wasn't just unproven doping accusations that riled some French. Armstrong literally blew less well-prepared rivals away with his single-minded rigor and zeal, his hard training, attention to detail, tolerance for physical pain and now-you-see-me, now-you-don't surging rides up mountain passes.

He surrounded himself with the best support riders who worked like sheepdogs in herding the pack, sapping opponents of the will and energy to attack. To critics, it seemed all so clinical, so unromantic, so brash American and perhaps too successful to be honest.

As Christian Prudhomme, the race's no-nonsense director, said Wednesday: "Suspicion accompanies each of his victories since 1999."

What people wonder about are the four former teammates of Armstrong who later got tripped up by dope testers. They included Floyd Landis, stripped of his 2006 Tour crown after testing positive for testosterone. Did Armstrong know they cheated? Did they cheat when they rode for him?

Skeptics also remember the story in the French sports newspaper L'Equipe just a month after his last victory in 2005. It claimed that retesting of urine samples from Armstrong's first Tour win in 1999 had found traces of the banned performance-enhancer EPO.

Those samples are still sitting in a lab in the suburbs of Paris, conserved at well below zero, a frozen reminder of questions that Armstrong never put to rest. Of course, he was in a tough position: it is hard for any athlete to fully demonstrate that they are not doped, to prove a negative. Other samples from Armstrong's subsequent Tours have since been trashed, and so cannot offer any answers, either.

Armstrong said he was the victim of a "witch hunt" when L'Equipe's story came out. Sounding convinced that Armstrong was guilty, the then-director of the Tour, Jean-Marie Leblanc, said: "We were all fooled."

A Dutch lawyer appointed by cycling's governing body later cleared Armstrong. But the affair didn't end there. The World Anti-Doping Agency's then chairman, Dick Pound, said the Dutch findings were full of holes.

Now Armstrong wants the last word - by being at the Tour start line next July 4 - coincidentally, paradoxically and perhaps fittingly, American Independence Day.

But few in France may listen.