It may be the only fight he ever walked away from. Still, you have to hand it to the guy.

Had Big Tex gone to arbitration the outcome probably would have been the same, but he’d have come out looking like he’d done a thousand-mile low crawl through a Third World leach field. This way he remains as clean — on the outside, anyway — as is humanly possible. Lance Armstrong, Cancer Killer.

It’s a cliche, of course, but I think it would have been good for the sport to have had a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle fistfight over the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s charges and a final decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. We could point at something then, claim to have an answer, even if it was the wrong one.

This way, the thing will never end. Believers will continue to believe, and haters continue to hate. Nothing has changed.

And for the immediate future, at least, nobody will give a shit about what happens in the Vuelta a España, the USA Pro Challenge or any other two-wheeled sporting competition. They’ll all be gazing upon Cancer Jesus, hanging up there on the carbon-fiber-and-titanium cross that he’s built for himself.