Armstrong saga

The fact that armstrong left it so long to get checked for cancer indicates that he might have been used to his body doing weird things after the amount of drugs he was putting into himself potentially?

Either way I think the best way to look at the results would be to do what happens with results from many years ago. They stand, but really it only shows who was the best doper not necessarily the best cyclist. Think it is important to bear that in mind, the greatest question is what validity can any race have if a whole team is doping and getting away with it till now? Who else was doping within the peleton and passing 'controls'? Im sure many others would use the argument that Armstrong is using that he never failed any controls at the time.

The best thing to do without a doubt is only to look to the future with increased controls, fewer cheats and more importantly a return to 'realistic' watts/kilo and VAM, for the pros at least!?

The trouble here is we are talking about a transitional time period in the relationship between road cycling and doping. It is a fair sure bet that anyone that won a grand tour in the 90's was in some way implicated in drug-based cheating. It's pretty hard to argue otherwise. These days the Pro peloton is a place where a hell of a lot of guys have aired their sins and now ride as reformed characters (enter Millar.D). Pro cycling has gone a long way towards getting it's act together over drug use and it has been going through that process all the while Mr Armstrong has been ticking off tour wins.

On reflection, what we all witnessed in the late 80's and the 90's is what some people have long called for - that is to say a dirty, level playing field where everyone uses performance enhancing drugs. It's just that no one admitted it at the time. That said, if Armstrong did cheat, then he only beat other cheats. If we can accept that then we need to draw a line under the whole sorry episode and allow ourselves to think that the results would have been the same if everyone was clean.

I cannot decide whether it would be best just to put an asterix next to these years and move on, but I would like the highest placed clean rider get the recognition they deserve, but it is unlikely we will ever find out who that was.
Whilst the riders you have listed are tainted it does not mean that they were doping during those years. You cannot not DQ them just because they served a ban at some point. For example Contador would be a valid winner of this years Vuelta even though he has served a ban, similarly his pre 2010 results stand.
I'm sure that anyone who inherits Armstrong's titles will be investigated by the media, meaning that era of cycling will be in the news for a long time to come.

No winners in this saga, the ONLY hope is that the peleton's current dopers see this as a deterrent. Other than that its difficult to see anything positive from this latest twist.

Surely the greater debate is why cycling catches/has so many dopers.

If cycling (as a sport) inflicts lots more suffering than all the other (relatively) clean sports, this would explain it to me. If not, then cycling is the ONLY sport being honest with itself.

The latter is some kind of positive too, I suppose.