RAVE: Lancing the Armstrong Myths

I came across an excellent article today on Yahoo! Sports' ThePostGame. Written by Lisa Hoehn of the Active Times, and entitled "Lance Armstrong Myths Debunked," it provides very believable evidence of just how many myths have surrounded the entire Lance Armstrong doping scandal.




Courtesy of The Observer

Many of these myths were created and brandished by Armstrong and his handlers, of course.

The five myths debunked included:

1. Armstrong took up to 600 drug tests. False. He barely took over 200
2. And he passed all his drug tests. False. He failed at least two - read the article for more
3. Drug tests would have found PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) in his body. False. And it's not that difficult to pass one, so it appears
4. Lance was still a winner amongst a field where everyone was doing it anyway. False. There were cyclists speaking out against all the doping. And is that really the point anyway?!
5. He founded and is the heartbeat of Livestrong, a basically terrific charity for cancer patients and cancer research. Mostly false. Especially when one reads what journalist Bill Gifford has to say (read here) about the organisation and its (in)famous poster boy. And Livestrong, for all its good, hasn't donated to cancer research in years.

Boy, how all the you-know-what is flooding and stinking up all over the place since he was forced to show some contrition and confess all to Oprah Winfrey this past week. He basically had no choice, of course, and those endorsements were hemorrhaging big time. 

Never mind the mounting lawsuits against ol' Lance - every single one of them very deserved and a classic case of poetic justice.

I have no patience or a shred of sympathy for Lance Armstrong. He's a sporting fraudster and a moral charlatan, who smugly rode the high waves of celebrity and mega endorsements for many years, only to come crashing down on the rocky shores of his monumental ego and neverending lies.

He knowingly destroyed careers and played the moral high ground, even though he was the biggest liar and cheat of all. He is nothing more than a contemptible asshole.

I wish upon Lance Armstrong an endless tide of legal writs, financial ruin and ever diminishing returns on his so-called 'legacy' and undeserved celebrity. He deserves nothing less.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Cycling World Lances Armstrong

Today the big news in the sporting world was the final death blow to what was once the glittering career of cyclist, Lance Armstrong: the International Cycling Union (UCI) has stripped him of his seven Tour de France wins due to his doping over the years. 

It is a scandal that has threatened to rip professional cycling apart.



As reported online by the BBC today:

"Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by cycling's governing body.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) has accepted the findings of the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (Usada) investigation into Armstrong.

UCI president Pat McQuaid said: "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. He deserves to be forgotten."

McQuaid added Armstrong had been stripped of all results since 1 August, 1998 and banned for life for doping.

On what he called a "landmark day for cycling", the Irishman, who became president of UCI in 2005, said he would not be resigning.

"This is a crisis, the biggest crisis cycling has ever faced," he said."

I don't even much care for cycling, to be honest. But there is something about the Lance Armstrong scandal that really gets my teeth gritted and, yes, makes me want to (metaphorically, of course) kick him now that he's down.

It is now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that professional cycling is one of the most doped up, strung out and corrupt sports on the planet. And we all know that Lance Armstrong was certainly not the only one taking hits of 'Edgar Allen Poe' (the slang term used by cyclists for the performance-enhancing drug, EPO) during the 1990s and well into the 2000s. Nor is he the only cyclist who has been caught out and who has been stripped of their titles. Far from it.

Yet no one else has remotely commanded as much baying for his blood and stripping of his very legacy than that against Lance Armstrong. And I'm all for it.

Why?

I could say it's perhaps because I never warmed to the guy, and always found him remote and quite arrogant in his public demeanour. And I was always deep down suspicious of how he never quite enjoyed his phenomenal success as much as I thought that much success would warrant...where was the joy, I niggled?

But that would be churlish of me. No, it goes much deeper than that. 

It's because of all that he stood for - the hero worship by so many, the incredible wealth and celebrity and all the entitlement that goes with that. 

It's despite the fact that he had cancer and came back 'to win' that I hold him in contempt, not because of it that I can excuse his actions. The former is how one judges those who have failed in their character, not the latter as hackneyed redemption. 

There is nothing redeeming about what Lance Armstrong achieved either pre- or post-cancer, because the way in which he did it should never be considered redemptive. His lies and deception and cheating must degrade his accomplishments, otherwise where is the moral imperative to do the right thing? 

And, no, it is simply not good enough to excuse him because 'all the others were doing it.' That has nothing to do with it - their time and penalties will come. He must be even more vilified precisely because he was so lionized - the notoriety now directly correlates to the adoration that once was. And that is most fair.

He reaped the rich rewards of his so-called success, now he must pay the dues of his most-definite deceptions. 

Is he the scapegoat for the actions and omissions of so many others in his team and the cycling fraternity, including even the UCI? Of course he is. So many others were his accomplice, his enabler, his benefactor. But he was the lead man, the most ardently supported and respected, and therefore the target on his legacy will be the largest. As it must.

So it goes, Lance. You are not like me and millions of others. In many ways, you were far better and stronger and able than any of us could ever dream to be. And for that very reason you must be held to the higher standard on occasions such as these. That is the price of such sporting talent and all the glory that comes with it.

In the end, I am quite sure that international cycling and the Tour de France itself will recover and even be stronger than ever. The Tour and France deserve at least that.

Sometimes it is indeed good and very necessary when the once mighty fall. And fall hard.

Do you get my point?