Lance Armstrong... greatest doper there was or ever will be

He'd have got the same punishment as the others if he had behaved the same as the others. USADA asked everybody to come in for a chat, only LA refused. He's not the only one in the frame for perjury, nor is he the only one at risk from civil recovery, so it's not fair to say that he had more to lose by confessing than Levi, George, Floyd et. al.

The rest of that sentence read:

but he was the most systematic and sophisticated doper there was, and backed it up with mafia-style intimidation. He painted a target on his back in the long run

I have no sympathy for him, but equally I have little sympathy for the riders that rode with him or against him. They all deserve equal censure, not just Lance. It has been a collective sin in cycling, and characters like Coppi, Anquetil, Indurain, Virenque, Pantani and Ullrich are all implicated, either convicted or damned by association. Landis is in the mire,although now everything he has said is verified he may have a second coming. Tyler Hamilton must be sitting pretty right now, with the sales of his book. The whistleblowers have got six month bans, yet they were utterly complicit in Lance's crimes. Most will be racing next season, others will be running teams.

There's a lot of 'Lance is the bully, he made us do it'. Don't mistake for a second I don't believe that is true to a degree, but these are grown men, they could have said their grievances a decade ago, as a group, but they didn't. Now it;s 'wha wha my pussy hurts, Mr Lance made us take these drugs and win these races and make this money, now we regret it'. Was Lance the worst? Yes. But did his stink either infect or come from the peloton he was riding in? Double yes.

Millar and Vaughters castigate DB for firing anyone that admits to doping, to me it reallky looks like they are desperate to wave goodbye to a dirty past they are culpable in, and a cheery 'eh-oh' to a clean, shiney future, where Millar is president oif the UCI and Vaughters is the second coming