My 03 Sprint ST had some soft front brakes as well. I read to pump them up and band the lever to the handlebar to dissolve any air in the system, so I gave that a go. I bled them. No dice. Still soft. Feeling that the brake system was a rather simple system, being rather confident it the problem was in the calipers, and throw in some general overally confident 'I thought my way through this' I disassembled the front brake calipers.
Surprise! The calipers can split in half! Didn't consider that when I thought, but no matter; drive on. Pistons came out and I found a ring of hard scuzz right about where the rubber seal rides. I carefully polished that off and the caliper bores, cleaned everything up real nice and reassembled with probably a little more silicone disc brake grease than necessary. That stuff went every where a leak of air or brake fluid could possibly be. Figured it would help seal things up. Anyway, it all went back together and bled out splendidly. After that, I quite litterally had a set of one finger brakes!! Two fingers would nearly toss me!!!
Anywho, you may just need to tear them down and clean them up real nice. That scuzz ring, I don't know what it was but definitely did not belong.