Lance Armstrong was the story so many people wanted to believe. 

I recall some of my most impressionable school days sat through morning assemblies listening to teachers and guest speakers talk of the most inspirational stories and people of our day.  Armstrong was chief among them, and was cited as an example on a number of occasions. 

He eclipsed the sport of cycling and came to represent something far more pertinent to all who knew his story. 

Yet here we are, years later, on the eve of his supposed tell-all confessionary with Oprah, a juncture not many anticipated, or at least hoped wouldn’t come.

However, David Walsh of the Sunday Times did neither.  He says he ‘always had his suspicions of Armstrong, and though not alone in his suspicions, was almost alone in voicing them.’

Walsh waded through threats of silence from Armstrong and his team, criticism from other journalists and an out-of-court settlement totalling £600,000 for allegations made in Walsh’s book LA Confidential: Lance Armstrong’s Secrets in 2006.  13 years on, he has come out the other side the better for it.

The 2012 journalist of the year claims he was “the romantic who believed you could get to the truth.”  

I would argue the opposite, that his dogged pursuit of Armstrong was anything but romantic. 

Were we the romantics? To believe such an extraordinary image, wholly and cleanly, possible?  All the superlatives in the world do no justice to what Armstrong achieved in the relatively short space of him being diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996, to his final Tour de France win in 2005.

Though questions followed Armstrong’s career, his legacy seemed to be secured. 

Walsh followed his journalistic hunch, reinforced by Armstrong’s questionable behaviour, which ultimately led to his uncovering of the truth.  In among this torrid affair, there is a lesson to be had for aspiring journalists.  Their actions, though not always the popular, nor the easy choice, should be the just one.

On the media coverage of Armstrong, Walsh says: “This was one of the great comebacks in the history of sport and everybody wanted to believe it so badly, regardless of what doubts they would have had.”

That is not to say that no good has come of Armstrong’s exploits in the world of cycling.  According to Livestrong Foundation (formerly Lance Armstrong Foundation) they have raised in excess of $470 million (£292 milllion) since 1997, with 81 cents of every dollar supporting programs and services for cancer survivors.  It should be clear to all that this is a force for good.

We all need our sources of inspiration, whether it is a cancer survivor who helped create a highly successful organisation to support other sufferers, or a journalist who waged for 13 years against the torrent of popular opinion to help uncover ‘the most sophisticated doping conspiracy in sporting history’.