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Question: If a huge percentage of the best competitors are cheating, over many years, and the event owners and sanctioning and enforcement authorities let it go, again over many years, is it, or any particular act of breaking the rules, really cheating? For practical purposes, I’d have to say it might as well not be.

The L’Equipe article in particular ought to tick you off. Not because their reporters are a bunch of bitter Frenchmen, well, at any rate not just because of that, but because L’Equipe and the Tour are owned by the same company. L’Equipe is a Groupe Amaury paper. Amaury Sport, the owner and organizer of the Tour, as you might have deduced from the name, is also part of Groupe Amaury. You know the prize money Lance got? That’s their money. You’d think they’d have a vested interest in not paying their money to cheats, in finding the cheats and punishing them before, not after, the cheats win seven Tours in a row and win lots of money, and Groupe Amaury makes even more money covering the winning streak. Is Lance a cheat? Yeah. The problem is, pretty much everybody else in the sport including the guys running the events, enforcing the rules, and gathering the news, are crooks.