When Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France in 1999, there was a huge surge of support for him. Here was a great story: in the aftermath of the doping controversies of the previous Tour, which Armstrong had missed after his battle with life-threatening cancer, this was the perfect end to what organisers had dubbed the Tour of Renewal.
But not everyone was convinced. Journalist David Walsh was among a small group who felt that something was wrong. Despite predictions that the race would be slower now that it was 'clean' of drugs, Armstrong in fact rode faster than his predecessors. How was this possible? As former Tour champion Greg LeMond said subsequently: 'If Lance is clean, it is the greatest comeback in the history of sport. If he isn't, it would be the greatest fraud.'
In his quest for the truth, Walsh was accused by Armstrong of lacking ethics and was dubbed a 'troll' as he took on a foe who could always boast that his record showed how he tested clean. As Armstrong once said: 'I can get up every morning and look at myself in the mirror and my family can look at me too. That's all that matters.'
Walsh's search took him around the world as he found a mounting pile of evidence that showed Armstrong was lying, and in the autumn of 2012 he was vindicated when the American was stripped of his Tour titles and found his reputation in tatters. For Armstrong, his seven Tour victories proved to be his seven deadly sins.