For David Walsh, it is all black and white. There are the good guys in professional cycling, those who take no performance-enhancing drugs, and the bad guys, those who do. And Lance Armstrong is definitely a bad guy.
Walsh, a British journalist, is the author of From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France, published just in time for Saturday's kickoff of the yearly bicycle race around France.
Lance Armstrong is Moby Dick to Walsh's Ahab. This is his third book aimed at proving that Armstrong used illegal substances, though the first published in English, due to threatened lawsuits and to publishers' lack of interest in tarnishing an all-American hero.
Walsh seems obsessed with bringing down the seven-time Tour de France winner, though Armstrong is now retired and seems to be leading an exemplary post-cycling life, bringing help and hope to cancer patients.
The Landis of the title is Floyd Landis, the American whose victory in last year's Tour is threatened by the finding of odd testosterone levels in his urine sample after a big stage victory. Landis is fighting that, awaiting an arbitration ruling.
Landis gets an added-on chapter. For most of its 330 pages, From Lance to Landis focuses on Armstrong, building a circumstantial case that the cancer survivor used illegal drugs. There is no doubt that Walsh finds a lot of smoke, but only a couple of times does a bit of fire appear. Indeed, for those who closely follow the issue, From Lance to Landis will contain little new, but it does gather all the evidence in one place where it can be more easily considered.
Too much of the stuff comes across like something out of a John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory - throw a bunch of stuff out there and hope some of it sticks. This is true of the pages and pages of evidence provided by Emma O'Reilly, who worked for Armstrong's cycling team for years.
For instance, she says Armstrong once gave her two syringes to discard. They could have been used for perfectly legal vitamin injections. Or for illegal drugs. She doesn't know. All we learn, in a lengthy account, is that she got nervous when a policeman stopped her in the team car. It turned out the cop just wanted to talk about cycling.
Walsh consistently notes that O'Reilly wanted no part of her team's "medical program." He cites that as proof that she was among the good guys. But it also means that she had no first-hand knowledge of what was going on. And that fatally hampers her as a witness.
Then there is Armstrong's association with Italian doctor Michele Ferrari. Certainly Ferrari and other Italian physiology experts were on the cutting edge between legal and illegal in the 1990s. But what is supposed to be the most damning evidence against Ferrari is a comment about the drug EPO, an illegal and very effective way of supercharging an athlete's blood.
"EPO is not dangerous; it's the abuse that is," Ferrari responded to a question in 1994. "It's also dangerous to drink 10 liters of orange juice."
The fact is, Ferrari was right. Used appropriately, EPO will definitely make you go faster and do you no damage. Used inapproprately, as many cyclists did, it can kill you. But, from then on, the comment was reduced to this: "Ferrari, who once compared EPO to orange juice ... " Walsh does it for the rest of his book.
Walsh's first big scoop on the Armstrong beat was discovering that he was consulting Ferrari. But Walsh never comes close to proving that Armstrong was getting anything more than legal training analysis and advice from one of the most respected physiologists in the cycling world.
For a detailed accounting of how this could be the case, read Daniel Coyle's 2005 book Lance Armstrong's War, a much more sober and insightful look at this difficult, gifted star than Walsh's unbridled indictment.
To convict Armstrong for working with Ferrari would be like convicting Walsh for working for Rupert Murdoch - hardly a paragon of objective journalism - in his day job at the London Sunday Times. More is needed than guilt by association.
As for the licks of flame that show through the smoke, two stand out. One is the retesting of frozen 1999 Tour urine samples that show EPO use by Armstrong. It's not enough to convict him - the correct procedures were not followed in those experimental tests - but neither has it been adequately explained. And there is evidence of hanky-panky when Armstrong came up with a doctor's prescription for a cortisone cream after a positive drug test during the 1999 Tour.
Walsh spends too many pages on Armstrong's alleged 1996 confession to illegal drug use while in the hospital for cancer treatment. That will always be a he said/she said event and, even if true, does not speak to Walsh's main point - that a mediocre Tour cyclist of the mid-'90s turned himself into a seven-time winner via illegal drugs.
Walsh interprets every turn of the story to prove his theory. If Armstrong files a lawsuit - as he did against Walsh for his first book, L.A. Confidential - it shows he is trying to shut up those speaking the truth. If he does not, as when the French sports newspaper l'Equipe revealed the 1999 EPO positives, it is an admission of guilt.
Tests showing drug use are ironclad proof. Those that do not are not to be trusted. Armstrong's colleagues who back up his denials have been intimidated into silence. Those who implicate him are completely trustworthy. And so on.
What would be better than this heroes-and-villains story is an assessment of all the gray areas in our attitude toward drug use in sports.
Consider this legendary tale: New York Knicks center Willis Reed limps out on a bad knee for the decisive seventh game of the 1970 finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, scores two baskets and is credited with giving his team the emotional lift that led it to victory. Just before he appeared, Reed received a cortisone injection in his bad knee. He was widely praised for this selfless act.
Now consider that the opening chapters of From Lance to Landis recount in horror cyclists being injected with cortisone.
Then there is the television ad featuring pro golfer Jim Furyk saying that his game suffers when he feels the aches and pains, but apparently improves when he takes the painkiller Aleve. Does that make Aleve a performance-enhancing drug? Is he a part of the drug culture?
What gives?
From Lance to Landis would have been a far better book had it grappled with that question.
michael.hill@baltsun.com