PARIS—So Lance Armstrong acknowledges the suspicion—was he doped?—that lingers in some minds over his record string of seven Tour de France victories. And a desire to erase that doubt at least partly motivates his plan to come back as Mr. Clean and win another Tour to shut the skeptics up.

Wrong reason, Lance. In France, at least, that cause is likely long lost.

A tragedy of cycling and of Armstrong, the sport’s most famous champion, is that it’s simply impossible to turn back the clock and satisfactorily answer the questions that dogged his reign. The asterisk that cli...

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