As the WTC Ironman Triathlon season continues on into July 2012 without Lance Armstrong many observers wonder if we have seen the last of Lance the Ironman Triathlete.

There are many, many people inside and outside of the sport of triathlon who want to see Armstrong back at the swim start of an Ironman.

There were many disappointed fans when Lance Armstrong was not allowed to take part in the recent Ironman France that took place Sunday June 24, 2012.

You can bet there will be even more disappointment if Armstrong is not part of the Ironman Triathlon World Championships scheduled to take place in Kona, Hawaii on October 13, 2012.

This is especially true after his amazing performance in Ironman 70.3 Hawaii on June 2, 2012 that turned out to be his last WTC Ironman competition before being banned from racing by the WTC because he in once again facing drug-use allegations that stem back to his career as a pro cyclist.

In reality, there are several sound reasons why Lance Armstrong is such an incredible Ironman athlete that have nothing to do with performance-enhancing drugs.

Sports in childhood- If you look back to the childhood years of most of today's most successful athletes, the majority of them were introduced to sports at a young age. Such is the case with Lance Armstrong and it's also true of Ironman super-star Chrissie Wellington. These early years of exposure to athletics in the crucial developmental years seem to somehow set the tone for athletic prowess in adulthood.

Deep endurance base- Building a proper endurance base is not something that can be done quickly. It is done over months and years. It's sort of like making a deposit into a savings account and collecting interest years down the road. Lance Armstrong was a competitive swimmer and triathlete long before he became a pro cyclist. Then he had all those amazing results in the Tour de France. He has an amazingly deep endurance base earned over years of training and racing at a top level.

Work Ethic- The people who seem so anxious to find Lance Armstrong guilty of drug use seldom mention the years of training he put in to be able to perform at such a high level. They don't talk about those training days when he would climb some of the steepest sections of a Tour de France course three or four times in the rain in order to prepare for the race.

A student of the game- Lance Armstrong figured out early on in his competitive career that there is much more to performing at a top level than just hard physical training. He has a way of adapting and figuring out what happened when things go wrong. Ironman 70.3 Texas was a perfect example. Lance had big problems in the race and finished far back of the winner. Yet you just knew that he would figure it out and come back stronger than ever. He did just that as he demolished the pro field in spectacular fashion in Ironman 70.3 Hawaii 2012.

Perhaps Lance Armstrong explains it best in his answer to a question on training put to him in an interview by Christopher McDougall for the magazine Men's Health.

"Back in the day," Lance says, "people trained on just their feelings." They cranked hard when they felt good and backed off when they didn't, without ever really understanding what made one day better than another.

"Now you have heart rate, altitude, lactic acid, all measured on one unit," Lance says. Those hard numbers not only tell him when he's maxing out in training, but also when he's fit enough to do his best in a race. "That's how I knew I was ready to win the Tour. If I stepped on the scale in the morning and it said a certain weight and the power output was where it was supposed to be when I tested at the end of the day, it was over. Nobody close."