Armstrong victim of witch hunt?

This is a tricky one. I've never been convinced that Lance Armstrong was 100% clean, but that was mostly because I didn't believe anyone in cycling was clean. I wasn't a big enough fan of the sport to really have opinions about individual cyclists and the reason I didn't care about individual cyclists is that every time cycling made headlines in the 90s it was thanks to drugs cheating.

So, maybe Lance is guilty and maybe he's not. Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that he is definitely the victim of a 'witch hunt'. He's being singled out.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Tour director was none too keen on Armstrong. Why else would he back the report that Armstrong took EPO in 1999 despite all the problems in this whole procedure (noted by Ciaran in his comment to my post below).

What I want to know is how many other cyclists' samples were tested as well? Was the entire '99 field tested? Even the top 20? If only Armstrong's sample was tested, then it's pretty clear that this was intended to damage only Armstrong.

If L'Équipe was really interested in testing samples from winners in the 90s they should have tested all the Tour winners during the decade. Why not? EPO existed before 1999.

Testing all those Tour winners or even a large selection of riders from the '99 Tour would have further damaged the Tour itself, possibly fatally. In that situation, Armstrong would have been damaged, but it would have had the look of legitimate journalism. Instead, all we have is one 'witch' caught in the 'witch hunt'.

L'Équipe is owned by the same company that runs the Tour. Could there be some conflict of interest here, perhaps? I'm not saying Armstrong is as pure as the driven snow, but something about this sure stinks.

{I think this is a great column by Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe. He touches on so many aspects that tie into this story.}