With the recent announcement that Lance Armstrong would be returning to cycling, you know we could not resist. Here, in the first of three parts, our guest-blogger, Connie Wilson, takes a look at the extraordinary athlete and his storied career, not least of which are never-ending allegations of doping...

***

“Trying to outsprint the clouds of doubt is an exercise in futility.” So wrote Chris Carmichael in a September 16, 2008, TimesOnline story about Lance Armstrong’s plans to return to competitive cycling. It’s such a beautiful and apt title that I have played upon it for my own title here…

Talking about apt titles, how about “Lance Armstrong’s Uphill Task to Allay Doubts,” written by Christian Prudhomme. In this piece, the Tour Director, notes, “Suspicion has followed Lance Armstrong since 1999.

Ok…if you’re caught in left field, that “suspicion” has always been about the scourge of doping on the pro cycling tour and the lingering question of whether or not Lance indulged. Did he? For the record, we know he was never caught but the bellowing smoke stifles…

Know the name Manuel Beltran…well he is the 5^th former Lance Armstrong teammate to have been caught and to admit doping…the culprit – Erythropoietin, more commonly known as EPO. Forget about the stifle…the smoke is so thick, it could choke you to death.

No wonder Armstrong, even with an already remarkable life story, seems to want to return to competitive cycling so that he can prove, once and for all, that he did not use drugs to enhance his performance while winning a record seven Tour de France races between 1999 and 2005.

It’s a legacy that the cycling superstar is desperate to protect. So paranoid is he about what people say and believe that he has special software on his phone that alerts him whenever an article is written about him. (Hi, Lance, if you’re reading this!)

Armstrong may tell us more about his reasons for the comeback try at the Clinton Global Initiative on September 24^th and in a piece to appear in Vanity Fair but in a nutshell, the athlete’s own LiveStrong website explains his return to racing:

“After talking with my children, my family, and my closest friends, I have decided to return to pro cycling, in order to raise awareness of the global cancer burden”.

Choking smoke aside, for the noble cause of fighting cancer and raising awareness, this blog will be rooting for Lance Armstrong all the way through the towns, narrow alleys and lush mountainsides of France.

***

Join us for parts two and three as we take a closer look at a story that we will no doubt hear a lot more about in the weeks and months ahead...