If I had found inspiration in Lance Armstrong's story, I might not want to believe a bad word about him, either. I would want to see only the life-affirming hero.

I once asked Geoff Thomas, the former England footballer, if he believed that Armstrong was clean and I remember his resentment at the insinuation. “It was Armstrong who convinced me I could beat leukaemia,” Thomas said, which is no small tribute.

Sitting in a hospital ward fearing that his life was ebbing away, Thomas had been given Armstrong's autobiography, It's Not About the Bike. Thomas not only recovered but has since ridden the route of the Tour de France twice to raise six-figure sums for research into the blood disease.

There are thousands like him who have taken their inspiration from the man who came back from his own battle with cancer to win the Tour de France a record seven times. There are many more who have been assisted by the tens of millions of dollars that Armstrong has raised for Livestrong, his cancer charity.

If I was Thomas and part of this brotherhood of death-defiance, I would probably not want to know if Armstrong has been doping, even if a dossier of evidence was dumped on my desk. I would probably want to celebrate Armstrong's likely return to next year's Tour. But they will have to forgive the rest of us for wishing that we had seen the back of the Texan in a sporting context.

He insists that his intention is to raise the profile of his charitable work, but so far it has stirred more interest in the drug allegations that he has spent years challenging in the press and in the courtroom. “Suspicion has followed Lance Armstrong since 1999, everyone knows that,” Christian Prudhomme, the Tour director, said in his mixed response to news that the sport's most famous name was returning.

Prudhomme knows that, while the Tour will now attract huge publicity, Armstrong's return has dragged it back to its past just when it is striving to build a new, clean future. Armstrong has not failed any of the dozens of drugs tests that he has taken, but whether he likes it or not, he is associated with an era when cheating was institutionalised in professional road cycling. When Manuel Beltran tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO) in this year's Tour, he became the fifth former team-mate of Armstrong to be caught doping, or to admit to it.

Desperate to try to nail him, the French press will probe and poke the American from the minute he sets foot in France. And Armstrong, as thin-skinned and belligerent as ever, will fight back. He has software on his phone that alerts him every time a news article is written about him (morning, Lance). What, in other circumstances, might have been written up as the latest, heroic twist to the Armstrong story will be mired only in acrimony.

It is not as though Armstrong or his camp can pretend that this will not be the overriding issue. Chris Carmichael, his coach, says that Armstrong has contacted the United States Anti-Doping Agency to offer assistance on a particularly stringent blood test.

But Armstrong’s camp appears to be driven by the extraordinary assumption that, if Armstrong triumphs in 2009 after the toughest testing regime undertaken by an athlete, it will make a decade of rumour disappear. “If Lance comes back and wins the Tour and has absolute transparency in drug-testing and people are then still speculating, they’re either ignorant or jealous,” Carmichael said.

Armstrong also spoke of answering the big questions that hang in the air. “Many of the guys that got second through tenth [behind him in the Tour] are gone. Out. Caught. Positive tests. Suspended. Whatever. And so I can understand why people look at that and go, ‘Well, they were caught, and you weren’t?’ So there is a nice element here where I can come with really a completely comprehensive programme and there will be no way to cheat.” It is a nice idea but probably about as fanciful as the thought that, at 37, Armstrong will come back as intimidatingly powerful as ever. Far from change minds, Armstrong’s return will cause further entrenchment between those who view him only as a hero and those who find that they can no longer believe.

Armstrong’s story is no longer a matter of greatness or scale of achievement. It is about having faith in him. Armstrong could still be racing up Mont Ventoux at the age of 47 on nothing more than bread and water without being able to recover that faith. Trying to outsprint the clouds of doubt is an exercise in futility.

Dagenham & Redbridge tackle race issue

A piece last week on football's place in the vanguard of good race relations prompted a phone call from Dagenham & Redbridge, the Coca-Cola League Two club. “Why no mention of our captain, Anwar Uddin?” Stephen Thompson, the managing director, asked. It was a legitimate inquiry.

If it is remarkable that a player of Bangladeshi descent should captain an English league team, then it is particularly so that it should be at Dagenham. The British National Party (BNP) is more popular in that part of East London than anywhere else in Britain.

“We accept that a number of our fans will be BNP voters,” Thompson said. “Where we can, we try to explain to them the contradiction of coming here to cheer on Anwar and then voting for a political party that wants to deport people.”

The club organise matches against local Asian teams and are doing their best to attract more Asian youths into the sport. “We do think we have a responsibility at the heart of the local community,” Thompson said.

It is heartening to know that some people still talk that way, although most of them reside outside the Barclays Premier League.

Paul Ince to Newcastle would do Blackburn another favour

When Newcastle United came in for Graeme Souness four years ago, Blackburn Rovers could scarely believe their luck that someone would pay to take the manager off their hands. Events would be repeated if the Tyneside club were daft enough to move for Paul Ince.