So Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour wins without being convicted of any offence. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? After years of unsubstantiated rumour and innuendo his one time friends and team mates have decided to stick the knife in.

The system of drug testing that was in place when Armstrong was competing failed to confirm that he was doing anything illegal so that should be the end of it. There is no doubt that cycling has a history of endemic drug abuse but there has also been a concerted effort from within the sport to clean up its act in recent years.

Many of the people that Armstrong beat, during the dark days of cycling's drug abuse, to win his seven Tours were shown to be drug users - through the testing system and not just on someone's say so. If, and it's a big if, Armstrong did break the rules then surely that simply enabled him to compete on a level playing field.  If he didn't break the rules then his achievements were even more amazing.

Armstrong has never been a darling of the media and it is no surprise that the newspapers and TV channels are now queueing up to put the knife in. The press gladly accepted the massively increased sales that Lance Armstrong's exploits in the Tour de France brought them and those same media outlets are now making more money by helping to facilitate his demise.

This unseemly clamour to destroy cycling's greatest hero is one of the saddest spectacles I've witnessed in all the years I have been watching sport. I can only hope that cycling's governing body does not follow suit.