Can you dope your way to the top?

Lance Armstrong has given up his fight against the US Anti-Doping agency — which will strip him of every one of his Tour de France victories. (AP Photo)

Lance Armstrong has given up his fight against the US Anti-Doping agency, which will strip him of every one of his Tour de France victories.

They are defrocking him even though he never tested positive for any banned substance. Which seems strange. Hundreds of tests and he never failed a one?

And that’s the other part of this: That he and his team were not only cheaters, but bullies.

In the famous 60 Minutes interview that broke the story last year, teammate Tyler Hamilton said Armstrong actually did test positive for EPO in 2001, but cycling authorities arranged for him to meet with the director of the Swiss test lab to make sure those results were never revealed.

Armstrong denies it. We may never know the truth.

But some things we do know: We know that he overcome the cancer that had a 50 percent chance of killing him. We know that he endured rounds of chemotherapy, which has a devastating effect on the body, and not only got through it, but then pushed himself in the off-season more than anybody else. And we know that he did, in fact, finish ahead of everybody else in all those races under his own power. And we know that whatever he was taking that might have helped him do it didn’t make him crazy or cause hair to grow out of his fingernails.

His critics say he’s a liar; Nike, his major backer, is sticking with him; the U.S. Anti-Doping agency says it will release its evidence file when the time is right.

But I suspect a lot of people, especially cancer survivors, will look at this case and say, ‘Maybe he cheated, maybe he’s a bully, but in the meantime, I’ll have what he’s having.’

Dave Ross Commentary: