For those of us who worked on newspapers in Yorkshire during the sixties and seventies, revelations about Jimmy Savile are no shock.

Rumours of what the late disc jockey and television presenter was up to at the local Leeds Infirmary involving paedophilic sexual predatory – and worse – were vigorously pursued, but proving it was a no-no as lips were always tightly sealed.

Jim had fixed it so that no one dare say a word.

There are disturbing parallels with the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. Like the sleazy Savile and his protective shield of celebrity through massive charity fundraising, here was a seemingly untouchable icon, the All-American hero who had beaten cancer and repeatedly shown the world clean pair of wheels.

Clean? He had to be joking, as the 1,200-page tome of his cheating art produced by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) now tells us.

There were whispers, innuendo, even allegations, but the Armstrong bike was so liberally Teflon-coated nothing could be made to stick. But, oh boy, it has now.

Sadly, though, that glorious summer of sport that so enthralled the world has black-clouded over.

Revelations of Lance Armstrong’s doping have left a dark cloud hanging over the cycling world

Along has come the ultimate dope peddler to put a spoke in sport's merrily spinning wheel of fortune.

I admit that cycling is not my bag, either journalistically or athletically.

I do not know enough about the sport to make widespread condemnation because of what we are now asked to believe about Armstrong and his stream of cover-up cohorts. But I know plenty who do.

But it is sufficient to know that more than 80 per cent of Tour de France winners since Britain's Tommy Simpson died in a doping-related incident on the slopes of Mont Ventoux during the 13th stage of the 1967 Tour have been associated with doping allegations and that the governing body, the International Cycling Union (UCI), has shown ostrich-like qualities in policing the sport until this bombshell of a report hauled heads from the sand, eyes blinking into the blinding sunlight of truth.

Now even it has to acknowledge that Armstrong for so long translated the Tour de France into the Tour de Farce.

The UCI elected to brush so much dirt under the carpet it has taken the USADA's industrial vacuum cleaner to suck it out.

Lord Leveson please note. As should those now oddly mute members of the Hackled Off group campaigning for press restrictions, among them Hugh Grant and Max Moseley.

For this could not have been done without good, honesty investigative journalism which put the scandal in the spotlight and kept it there.

The UCI launched court action against Paul Kimmage (C) for writing that it covered up a positive doping result for Lance Armstrong

David Walsh, of the Sunday Times, and erstwhile colleague Paul Kimmage have been relentless in their search for the truth.

Just as years ago we knew all about Savile, they were convinced Armstrong was at it, and were bold enough to say so.

They were vilified by those running the sport and for his pains Kimmage is still being sued in a Swiss court by the  UCI via its honorary life President Hein Verbruggen, who is also an honorary International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, and present head honcho Pat McQuaid, for defamation after claiming Armstrong "represented the cancer of doping" in the sport. Supporters have raised £30,000 ($43,000/€37,000) to pay for a defence that is surely now superfluous.

He rests his case.

There are calls, of course so far unheeded, for both Dutchman Verbruggen and Irishman McQuaid to quit for their unchallenging attitude towards Armstrong and all who rode with him on that illicit road to tarnished glory.

It certainly seems a resigning issue but sports Czars, like Government Ministers, are notoriously well practised in the art of avoiding falling swords.

USADA rightly says this is one of the most sordid chapters in sports history. Has there ever been a worse one? It can even be argued that so extensive was this tangled web of deceit that it dwarfs even the Ben Johnson episode at Seoul in 1988.

Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was sent home from the Seoul Olympics in disgrace and stripped of his 100m gold after testing positive for drugs

Johnson cheated in pursuit of an Olympic gold medal; Armstrong rode for hard cash, the prize money for his seven Tour victories, and numerous others. That's not only cheating, isn't it fraud?

Doubts also must be cast over his own Olympic bronze; a situation the IOC is having to review.

Meantime, McQuaid has claimed that the UCI has nothing to apologise for, yet it has presided over a culture of doping in cycling that has existed since drugged-up Danish cyclist Knud Jensen died at the Rome 1960 Olympics through to the present day.

It is ironic that all this should blow up at a time when cycling in Britain has never been more popular both as a sport and a past-time thanks to the exploits of Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Victoria Pendleton, Team Sky et al.

We trust in the unquestioned integrity of cycling supremo Dave Brailsford when he says that British riders are as clean as the proverbial whistle. But so endemic has doping been universally in the sport that, as with athletics, inevitably there is always that lurking suspicion that what we see is not always what we should believe.

British Cycling is under the microscope, and very much on the defensive.

After the golden moments of this year in the London 2012 Olympic Velodrome, the byways of Britain and the boulevards and mountains of France, it is the last thing it needs right now.

But such is the treacherous legacy of Lance.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.