Following the news of Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal, the world-renowned cyclist is being stripped not only of his seven Tour de France championships and an Olympic bronze medal, but also his 4th grade district spelling bee championship.

Earlier this week, a spokeswoman for the Texas-based spelling bee association released a statement saying, “We have reason to believe Armstrong artificially augmented his performance in our 1982 district-wide spelling bee. We must regretfully strip him of his achievement.”

When asked to elaborate on why Armstrong is suspected of cheating in this event, the spokeswoman went on to say that “He just had a way with words that was unnatural for a fourth grader. It was almost as if he read books regularly for fun, which would give him an unfair advantage over every normal American fourth grader.”

“Everyone knows young children don’t read anymore, so for him to walk around sticking his nose in books is unfair for all the other mediocre kids that competed in the event.”

The announcement sent waves through the national spelling bee community, even causing some well-known competitors to walk away from the sport.

Danny Atkins, the current world-ranked first grade spelling bee phenom, recently announced his retirement from active competition, stating, “There is no honor in this sport anymore, and I refuse to stand alongside cheaters.”

In an unaired portion of his interview with Oprah, Armstrong, while showing little remorse about doping during the Tour de France, became very emotional when asked about his blue spelling bee ribbon.

“I’ve gone through so much lately,” Armstrong sobbed, “and I should have known better than to read for pure enjoyment, but can’t I just have this one thing?”

Despite his plea, Armstrong was stripped of his ribbon, which was then retroactively awarded to the runner-up Sean Anderson, who passed out after taking ten minutes to spell “soap.”