We like to believe, need to believe, especially when it comes to our champions. And no one, arguably, was a more iconic champion than Lance Armstrong. At least up until today, August 24, 2012.
Lance seemed to transcend sport. Precocious, brash, but above all immensely, often scarily talented, Lance seemed to defy all odds. If cancer was racking half his body, well, he overcame it, even if it meant nearly killing himself in the process. You see, he'd been defying odds all along.
If 15 year-old Lance got out of the water with the top pros in the triathlon, then he full well expected to stay with them on the bike. If 18 year-old triathlete Lance decided to have a go at the national championships in cycling, then he didn't expect to just hang with the pack at the front, he made a pack of one off the front and broke away in what would become typical Lance fashion. If 21 year-old now-only-bike-racing Lance took on the best in the world at the world road racing championships, he again expected, and achieved, audacity, even if the day's cold numbing Oslo rain might seem anathema to any other boy from Texas.
And, well, there were the seven Tour de France victories, the Olympic medal, the other accolades and victories too many to recount here. And let's not forget the books that gave the laymen, so removed physically and emotionally as mere mortals must be, intriguing insights into Lance's world, the foundation he started and which is nearing a half a billion dollars in raised funds to fight cancer.
Yet somewhere along the way, and probably longer ago than many of us can appreciate or care to know, Lance got lost. Fractions and smidgens can separate great performances; truly great champions are expected to win their competitions, especially when they're close. No one knows this better than the athletes who delight us with these infinitesimal gradations, often day after day, year after year, preferably at the top of the podium waving the bouquet and kissing the young ladies.
Obviously, there will be much speculation about the whys, whens, and hows of this sad tale. Was it after the fight with cancer, once he'd already stared death in the face and made it blink first? Did he feel that his new, slimmer, lighter body needed that extra edge to win the only race mere mortals care about when it comes to bike racing, the Tour de France, a race he'd never come close to winning before cancer? Did he feel that the poisonous cocktail of drugs and chemotherapy was already more than anything EPO and its chemical brethren could deal him? Or was it before that, perhaps at the behest of an older and cynical cycling curmudgeon who'd not been able to make it clean himself and figured, perhaps naively, that teenager Lance couldn't either? Was it that Lance, lacking a father, and perhaps craving a male mentor, and wanting to be accepted and included in his new-found sport of cycling, obliged a stronger, established rider on the US team and began a long and complicated journey most of us are only beginning to fathom today? Or was it even before that, which is to say before cycling alone dominated his life at 17, going on 18, when Lance was a triathlete in his mid-teens, when he was especially young and impressionable and yet already, clearly and unusually talented?
If so, he would not have been the first triathlete to dope. Scott Molina failed a post-race drug test in Nice, France, in the mid-80s and then was banned for life from the Nice race, at the time, along with Kona, one of only two standout races in the young sport. We know that Lance had access to this coterie of triathletes of which Molina was a leader and growing legend. Was Molina part of a larger performance-enhancing drug culture in triathlon? No matter, was Molina an early and poor influence on Lance? We may never know.
Testing was all but non-existent in those early days of the sport. I know I was never tested, then or now, despite dozens of triathlon wins and Kona podium finishes in 1984 and 2012. Even today, and despite all evidence to the contrary, testing is shoddy at best. As the New York Times and other reputable newspapers reported just this summer, doping is alive and well in age group cycling. It doesn't take a huge imagination to extend doping's reach into a sport that requires similar athletic talent and even more training time and commitment.
No matter where Lance's ethical fork in the road occurred, whether during his triathlon or cycling years, he knew doping had to remain out of the script, tacit to all who knew cycling for the distorted beast it had become but never admitted to a naive lay public that wanted its champions served up readily, with a plot line easily understood. It was a well-worn path of a lie others before him knew well; it was a falsehood Lance was apparently only too willing to subsume as a means to cycling immortality.
Instead, immortality has given way to ignominy, fame to infamy, and again we are left scratching our heads and wondering, sadly, for what might have been.
Lance seemed to transcend sport. Precocious, brash, but above all immensely, often scarily talented, Lance seemed to defy all odds. If cancer was racking half his body, well, he overcame it, even if it meant nearly killing himself in the process. You see, he'd been defying odds all along.
If 15 year-old Lance got out of the water with the top pros in the triathlon, then he full well expected to stay with them on the bike. If 18 year-old triathlete Lance decided to have a go at the national championships in cycling, then he didn't expect to just hang with the pack at the front, he made a pack of one off the front and broke away in what would become typical Lance fashion. If 21 year-old now-only-bike-racing Lance took on the best in the world at the world road racing championships, he again expected, and achieved, audacity, even if the day's cold numbing Oslo rain might seem anathema to any other boy from Texas.
And, well, there were the seven Tour de France victories, the Olympic medal, the other accolades and victories too many to recount here. And let's not forget the books that gave the laymen, so removed physically and emotionally as mere mortals must be, intriguing insights into Lance's world, the foundation he started and which is nearing a half a billion dollars in raised funds to fight cancer.
Yet somewhere along the way, and probably longer ago than many of us can appreciate or care to know, Lance got lost. Fractions and smidgens can separate great performances; truly great champions are expected to win their competitions, especially when they're close. No one knows this better than the athletes who delight us with these infinitesimal gradations, often day after day, year after year, preferably at the top of the podium waving the bouquet and kissing the young ladies.
Obviously, there will be much speculation about the whys, whens, and hows of this sad tale. Was it after the fight with cancer, once he'd already stared death in the face and made it blink first? Did he feel that his new, slimmer, lighter body needed that extra edge to win the only race mere mortals care about when it comes to bike racing, the Tour de France, a race he'd never come close to winning before cancer? Did he feel that the poisonous cocktail of drugs and chemotherapy was already more than anything EPO and its chemical brethren could deal him? Or was it before that, perhaps at the behest of an older and cynical cycling curmudgeon who'd not been able to make it clean himself and figured, perhaps naively, that teenager Lance couldn't either? Was it that Lance, lacking a father, and perhaps craving a male mentor, and wanting to be accepted and included in his new-found sport of cycling, obliged a stronger, established rider on the US team and began a long and complicated journey most of us are only beginning to fathom today? Or was it even before that, which is to say before cycling alone dominated his life at 17, going on 18, when Lance was a triathlete in his mid-teens, when he was especially young and impressionable and yet already, clearly and unusually talented?
If so, he would not have been the first triathlete to dope. Scott Molina failed a post-race drug test in Nice, France, in the mid-80s and then was banned for life from the Nice race, at the time, along with Kona, one of only two standout races in the young sport. We know that Lance had access to this coterie of triathletes of which Molina was a leader and growing legend. Was Molina part of a larger performance-enhancing drug culture in triathlon? No matter, was Molina an early and poor influence on Lance? We may never know.
Testing was all but non-existent in those early days of the sport. I know I was never tested, then or now, despite dozens of triathlon wins and Kona podium finishes in 1984 and 2012. Even today, and despite all evidence to the contrary, testing is shoddy at best. As the New York Times and other reputable newspapers reported just this summer, doping is alive and well in age group cycling. It doesn't take a huge imagination to extend doping's reach into a sport that requires similar athletic talent and even more training time and commitment.
No matter where Lance's ethical fork in the road occurred, whether during his triathlon or cycling years, he knew doping had to remain out of the script, tacit to all who knew cycling for the distorted beast it had become but never admitted to a naive lay public that wanted its champions served up readily, with a plot line easily understood. It was a well-worn path of a lie others before him knew well; it was a falsehood Lance was apparently only too willing to subsume as a means to cycling immortality.
Instead, immortality has given way to ignominy, fame to infamy, and again we are left scratching our heads and wondering, sadly, for what might have been.
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