Say there’s no chance, Lance.

Doping allegations against cycling champion Lance Armstrong are nothing new — over the last decade, former teammates have testified that he took and supplied them with banned substances, questionable test results have surfaced and conspiracies involving Armstrong’s contributions to cycling’s governing body have been alleged.

Yet the latest charges by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency may represent the most serious threat to date to Armstrong’s legacy, because the USADA has the power to strip him of his past titles and the credibility to tarnish his name forever.

It’s a stigma that baseball great Roger Clemens will carry even after he was acquitted Monday of lying to Congress in a doping investigation.

The worst days of doping are, we hope, behind us.

So many Tour de France winners have had their titles stripped and been banned from competition because of illegal drug use that the dangers of cheating should, by now, be obvious to all competitors.

But then, that’s the point: Without investigations like the one under way against Armstrong, cycling would surely be as dirty as ever.

Armstrong calls the USADA’s probe an unfair “vendetta.” Actually, it does credit to the sport, even if it concludes that there was no wrongdoing.

It’s disheartening to see so many sports heroes humbled, and for our part, we hope Armstrong is innocent — not only because we’d like to believe that his remarkable achievements were legitimate, but because his story as a testicular cancer survivor who went on to become one of the most successful athletes in history has inspired millions battling their own cancers.

But if he’s guilty, there are no good excuses.

 

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