Lance Armstrong Documentary - Part 1

I just finished Part 1 of the Lance Armstrong documentary.

Back when he was winning seven Tour de France titles in a row, I don't think the United States was ever more captivated by a cyclist. Competing cyclists fall pretty far down the totem pole when it comes to sports.

But Armstrong had all of our attention from 1999-2005. And I am here to tell you that he's not as bad of a guy as you think.

OK. He was banned from the sport because of illegal doping. But who wasn't doping back when he got started. The documentary tells us that almost everyone doped. If you didn't dope, you had no chance to win the Tour de France.

So was Armstrong one of many who doped and was just better than the others who doped? I think so.

He isn't all bad either. In 1997, Armstrong and his team formed the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They have raised $325 million to help cancer research.

Armstrong didn't come from the best home life growing up either. His mom got pregnant with him at age 16. His biological father left the family when Lance was a baby.

Lance was adopted by his mother's second husband. Lance said Terry Armstrong would beat him with a paddle for the littlest of things when he was a kid. And Terry admitted in the documentary to pushing Lance in athletics the point where he was winning at all costs.

His mother even forged his birth certificate when he was 15 years old so he could compete in a cycling competition that required the participants to be 16. He won that race, too.

So cheating has been going on in his life for a long time.

Armstrong was against doping before he was diagnosed with cancer. When he returned, he just did what everyone else did.

And basically could have renamed the Tour de France the Tour de Lance from 1999 to 2005.

Before the 1998 Tour de France, he told a friend that he didn't think he would ever do the Tour de France again. He almost retired before he was just getting started at that level.

The French first began accusing Armstrong of doping after he won the Prologue at the Tour de France in 1999. He was always thought of as a cheater.

But again, who wasn't cheating back then.

Do we really think the whistle blower Floyd Landis wasn't cheating?

In baseball, today's fans don't hate football players who use performance enhancing drugs. Even Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez are considered the best players of the steroids era. MLB had an entire era of cheaters and some of turn a blind eye to it.

I don't condone cheating. But I can't fault Lance for doing something that everyone was doing. He's taken too big of a hit of his decisions. The good that he has done should outweigh some of the bad.

He's not perfect, but who is?