Why do folks want to succeed so badly in sport that they cheat in order to achieve success? Cursed with the probable, is it that many would rather tempt the improbable? Is it that money has so corrupted sport that real sport no longer exists? Or is it that a certain narcissism brought on by technology has deluded some? If we're instantly being served up access to this or information about that 24/7, is it somehow making us impatient/uncomfortable with ourselves? Given that so many love sport, indeed live by sport, has our infatuation necessarily distorted its meaning and falsely inflated its importance, making us all at least partially culpable for its current troubles? There are legions of examples of folks who have betrayed out trust. Worse, they've depreciated sport, and I take that very personally.
- Paul Ryan may be a gifted orator with some reasonable ideas for America's future. There's even a chance he could be a future president. So why say you've run a sub-3 hour marathon in a race when you've not ever broken 4? To a runner, the time difference is at once mind-boggling and ridiculous. Think Rosie Ruiz. Those who run 2 hours and change are in different running worlds than those who don't break 4. Ask any runner. Yet, unprovoked, Mr. Ryan felt the need to grossly deflate his achieved time and thereby incredibly inflate his best actual performance. For a man who apparently would have us believe that hard work and determination can get a person anywhere, this would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic and ironic. My advice to any voter: If you want to know whether to vote for a person, see what the fact- checkers say about the candidate's PBs, in any sport. Full stop.
- Then there is the case of Kip Litton. The man is my age, apparently came to running in mid-life and, for a while at least, seemed to have made marathon racing his mainstay. Not satisfied with being merely a prolific marathoner, Kip decided to embellish his record by starting and finishing races in different outfits and inadvertently perhaps, with negative splits on occasion. Hmm... As if that weren't suspicious enough, Kip also resorted to wholly making up races he'd "competed" in so as to pad his running CV. As if it's not bad enough to cheat your way to a fast marathon time, it takes a lot of imagination (and time) to conjure a marathon and design its website, complete with fictitious roster of runners, in order to "win" the thing outright. How does anyone even think of that?!
- Perhaps most infamously, there is Lance Armstrong, a person who probably had less reason to cheat than most anyone on account of his obvious natural athletic gifts. I suspect there would be full agreement that Lance was precocious and prolific as a young athlete and that, if you saw him race as a teenager you'd have felt he was already in a league of his own - no reason to dope. What is less clear is why he eventually felt the need to cheat personally, essentially coerce teammates to cheat as well, and then lie about it compulsively for years and years, and still. Lance has cheapened already damaged cycling (a sport I love), has harmed, possibly irreparably, a foundation that gave real hope and money to our ongoing fight against cancer (a disease I now take very personally), and perhaps worst, he continues to deny his failings, with ongoing repercussions for many, not least Lance. Were Shakespeare alive today, I'm sure he'd find a great play in all this.
No comments:
Post a Comment