Thoughts about Lance Armstrong and the curse of greatness

It seems increasingly clear that Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). It's sad, but there is one thing clear to me over the past history cycling in the past decade, and indeed for many other sports: PED use was de rigeur. It will take awhile for the drugs to get purged as much as possible from the sporting world, and they will likely never go away completely.

One of the obvious aspects of competitive sports is that you take any advantage you can get to win -- without cheating, theoretically. But there are numerous areas in sport where that line gets pushed repeatedly. Water polo, for example, prohibits contact with an opposing player if they don't have the ball. That rule is basically ignored, fouls get called all the time. Watch a water polo game underwater -- everybody's cheating. That's the way the game is played.

There's a saying out there: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'." Fortunately it appears that this statement is unattributed, but it underscores a stark truth: in a highly-competitive situation, you do take any advantage possible to try to win, if you have a chance to win. To do less would be obviously not trying hard enough. Unfortunately, in many sports, this has meant breaking the rules.

The problem with this situation is the following: what if everybody is cheating? What if you know by virtue of testing and skill and competitive history that you possess everything it takes to be a champion, provided the playing field is level? I.e., if everybody was playing it by the rules, you'd win. What if your entire life -- including your livelihood, not to mention your public persona and how you support your family -- was dependent on your competitive success? Under those circumstances, if you knew that you would likely win on a level playing field but lose if you didn't break the rules -- and lots of other athletes who did break the rules would unjustifiably win -- wouldn't you try to compete at their level?

I don't condone it. I understand it. I understand that Armstrong was certainly equipped with all the physical tools to be a champion, but if he didn't do what (it seems clear now) virtually every other top-flight cyclist was doing, he wouldn't win. And he succumbed to that pressure to succeed instead of trying to blow the whistle on what was happening. Until the tests became so good that they started detecting blood doping and EPO, if he'd tried to be noble and said everybody else was cheating, he would likely have been branded a prima donna, sore loser, or malcontent. Or all three.

The only solution is utterly perfect testing and totally honest athletes. The temptation to cheat is predicated on the financial and acclamatory rewards that are accrued by winning. The theoretical ideal of the amateur athlete does indeed do one thing -- it removes many (but not all) of the incentives that lead to cheating.

If the main reason to compete was the joy of competition, and may the best man (or woman) win based on skill and strength alone, unaided, then no athletes would cheat. But our modern society puts too much pressure on the sporting elite to win, and provides them with too many reasons to win at all costs. And that's why Lance Armstrong was saddled with the curse of greatness -- to fulfill his potential in the environment in which he existed and contended, he either cheated and won or stayed clean and lost. If we chastise and condemn him, then we must also chastise and condemn all of us (myself included) who adulate the champions of sport. I did enjoy the competitions I took part in, because I never had a chance to be a champion, and I would have been duly upset if I had known a fellow competitor was cheating -- I enjoyed the competitive experience partly because winning wasn't in the equation. But I know that had I had a chance to win, and lost, and then found out that I lost because a fellow competitor had cheated and not been found out -- I'd feel that temptation to win, to achieve that glory by whatever means
necessary.

So I'm sorry that Lance's athletic legacy will probably be tarnished by the eventual expected truth, just as it has been for so many other athletes. But I'm also sorry that we couldn't see what should have been if everyone had been competing according to the rules. We'll never truly know if the best man won or not. I do know that despite the likelihood of PED use, Armstrong's effort to train and compete in all those Tour de France campaigns was still difficult, taxing, dangerous, and at times, even heroic. I wish I could also still think of it as athletically pure.