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" The fallout from the Lance Armstrong doping scandal has, quite literally, reached Olympic proportions. Armstrong, who finally confessed to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, which will air Thursday, apparently pinned some of the blame on the International Cycling Union, the sport&amp;#039;s governing body. And it&amp;#039;s possible that if the UCI is found to have helped cover up the doping, cycling may be ousted from the Olympics.  Or so says former Anti-doping Agency President Dick Pound in an interview with Reuters: &amp;quot;We could say, &amp;#039;Look, you&amp;#039;ve clearly got a problem - why don&amp;#039;t we give you four years, eight years to sort it out. And when you think you&amp;#039;re ready, come on back [and] we&amp;#039;ll see whether it would be a good idea to put you back on the program.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Doping has long been an unsavory part of the Olympics, even since the 1904 St. Louis Games, when marathonor Thomas Hicks won while strung-out on a potent cocktail brandy and strychnine. A few cyclists have been caught doping in their pursuit of Olympic glory, but not so many as the numerous weightlifting or track and field cheats. And even in the 1970s and 1980s, when even the East German women resembled Ivan Drago, the IOC never threatened to ban swimming. Nor the 100-meter dash after Ben Johnson tested positive at the Seoul Games in &amp;#039;88. It seems a stretch, then, to argue that cycling is irredeemable. The sport is already much cleaner than at any time when Armstrong was racing, and that&amp;#039;s mainly due to just how rife doping and harder-to-detect blood transfusions once were \u2014 after one too many embarrassing episodes came to light, action had to be taken. Now professional cyclists are tested much more frequently than nearly any other sport, and the tests administered to cyclists are rigorous. To the extent that UCI officials might be complicit in cheating, they should be prosecuted and punished just like the athletes themselves. But corruption is as much a part of the Olympics as the iconic Torch \u2014 recall the figure skating judges in Salt Lake City or the boxing judges in Seoul. Cycling should stay, if only for the lamentable reason that as dirty as it may be, it&amp;#039;s no dirtier than other Olympic sports. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a18151/lance-armstrong-olympic-cycling-14986063/>