Lance Armstrong is the Harvey Dent of Cycling

So I recently watched the Batman trilogy, and as soon as I'd finished watching The Dark Knight, I couldn't help but notice an obvious link between Harvey Dent and Lance Armstrong.

If you've seen The Dark Knight, you'll understand all about Harvey Dent, and why Batman saved him instead of Rachel, and why Batman took the fall for Dent's crimes etc. etc.

If you haven't, it basically goes like this:

Harvey Dent is a district attorney in Gotham, he puts criminals behind bars. But he becomes much more important to the people of Gotham than that, he becomes their hero, their idol. He becomes the ray of hope for people that Gotham can overcome all the crime, without him, the people of Gotham have nothing to believe in.

Batman understands this, and so when Harvey Dent is corrupted by the Joker, and goes on a killing spree, Batman decides to take the fall for Dent's crimes, because if he doesn't, and the people learn that even Harvey Dent, the saviour of Gotham, the ray of hope they have, can be corrupted, that even he can sink to the levels of the scum he is trying to fight. Then what hope does Gotham have? Gotham is doomed.

Sure enough, we see at the start of The Dark Knight Rises, that in the 8 years since Dent's death, his untarnished legacy has helped Gotham become a better place.

Everything about that story screams Lance Armstrong to me.

Lance Armstrong is the Harvey Dent of cycling, he was the ray of hope in a sport filled with cheating and doping. He was the guy who had battled cancer and gone on to win 7 Tour De France titles without cheating. If he could do it, so could anyone, fans started to believe that cycling could become a clean sport again.

However, the powers that be in cycling, were given the same choice as Batman was, do they expose Armstrong's corruption? or do they sweep it under the carpet for the good of the sport?

They, rightly so, chose to expose him, but now we're facing the kind of backlash that Gotham never faced in the films. The white knight of cycling proved to be just as corrupt as everyone else, so what hope does cycling have? It's reputation for cheating has become stronger than ever now.

The only hope cycling has, is that Bradley Wiggins is the new Lance Armstrong. If he can become the ray of hope for cycling and go on to become half as successful as Armstrong, and do it cleanly, the sport may just be pulled from the gutter it currently lies in.

But if Wiggins is ever found to have cheated? Cycling could well and truly be finished.