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Like every other child growing up, I learnt the hard way not to believe everything I was told; the very people and institutions that children hold so dear are eventually taken away from them in the process universally referred to as ‘growing up’.  Santa, the Tooth Fairy and Disney for Jewish kids are eventually revealed as frauds; forcing children to reassess their views about the once simple world they inhabited and start forming their own cynical opinions.

This is a process that all children go through. But, what are you meant to do when, as an adult, it happens again?

After St. Nick was revealed as a fraud, I was forced to reassess what it was I could trust - and two things have always stuck with me. The first was that man landed on the moon and the second was that Lance Armstrong defeated cancer and then repeatedly won the Tour de France throughout my young life.

On the 24^th August 2012 it was announced that Lance Armstrong would no longer fight doping charges and would be stripped of all seven Tour titles and banned (in retirement) from ever cycling again. Despite having never tested positive, it is now almost universally believed that Armstrong not only cheated the system (interesting article here about how) but was also the ‘ring-leader’ amongst the cycling-doping-community. Assuming Armstrong loses his titles, there will ensue a ridiculous process of finding someone to take them who hasn’t already been banned/accused of doping.

But, another childhood idol has fallen and once more I am forced to reassess the things I was so sure of. If (arguably) the greatest athlete of my lifetime was a cheat then the cynical world view that we're forced to adopt as children is once more, shoved into our faces like a clown in a really depressing circus.

That leaves just one childhood conviction left: that man did in fact land on the moon. Having never believed in the conspiracy theories, I have never had reason to doubt that Neil Armstrong did make that giant leap for mankind. In a saddening and twisted turn of fait, just one day after his namesake gave up his battle, Neil Armstrong passed away. With him, he took the truth about the moon.

But, whilst there is cause to now disbelieve what we considered fact, to revel in Lance’s downfall is to forget what the Armstrong’s have achieved. He did defeat cancer and did achieve incredible things. Neil Armstrong has inspired, and will continue to inspire generations of people who look to the sky and realise that their existence and their possibilities are endless.