Truth or Witchhunt

You may remember I give a quick holler to Lance Armstrong a few weeks back on his astounding accomplishments. No sooner had we finished celebrating, when he is back in the papers again. Lance has been dogged by steroid accusations for years and a so-called tabloid paper in France says that it has a smoking gun. Apparently a urine sample from 1999 has been tested and turned out positive for EPO. There were no means of testing for that chemical at the time the test was administered.
When I read the story, my eyebrows raised but upon reading further stories off MSN, certain French race officials have had it in for Armstrong for years. Now don't get me wrong, if Armstrong had ban taking a banned substance and it is proven, he should face proper punishment. But so far the story is that Armstrong's victories have embarrassed the nation so much and the fact that he is a cancer survivor from a nation that largely does not embrace cycling and has won 7 times in a row has them in a lather. The fact that they went this far and this amount of time shows that this is more than investigative reporting. This is an attempted smear and an attempt to ruin a man's reputation by throwing enough things to the wall in a hope that something will stick.