By Adrian Meredith
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| Lance Amrstrong, with his wife Olivia Armstrong and kids. Those Happy Days!!! |
MELBOURNE, Australia (TheSportsNEXT) October 23, 2012: I am not going to preface this by saying "drug cheat" or anything like that because, undoubtedly, everyone in the world would have read about it by now. I would instead like to take a step back and try to look at the big picture.
I had a passing interest in the Tour de France and at some point became aware that Lance Armstrong had won. Indeed, he won two or three times in a row by the time that I paid it any attention. To me, this made the Tour de France all the more boring. The fact that his team worked as a team and pretty much made it impossible for anyone else to get close felt like cheating to me. The whole thing seemed like a waste of time to me. I had precious little interest in watching the Tour de France as I already knew who was going to win before the competition began. It always felt like he was cheating. It felt like the whole team was cheating.
I heard people saying "oh you should feel sorry for him because he has cancer" but I was like - why should I care? One in three people get cancer - it is not like it is rare or unusual. He had a type that is rarely fatal, a type that is about as scary as having haemorrhoids. Wow, so why should I care? Just because someone mentioned the C word (meaning cancer)! So what? There are plenty of sports people out there who have had less worrying forms of cancer, such as testicular cancer, and nobody even knows.
I knew of a cricketer who had a REAL cancer, a cancer that could kill you - Simon O'Donnell. Now that was a hero. He had a life expectancy, had to retire because he was expecting to die. Now that was a hero.
How does Lance Armstrong compare? He had a type that wasn't any real worry. If we'd said "Wow Lance Armstrong who survived haemorrhoids" would anyone care? And before anyone says that haemorrhoids aren't a worry - they can kill you. It is just that nobody thinks of them as particularly scary. They can be, my word they can. Just that usually you just cut them out and off you go, and indeed you can live with them for a fair while - sometimes forever - without any real problems.
But even if secretly Lance Armstrong did have a scary kind of cancer, why should I care? Simon O'Donnell didn't get special treatment because of his cancer. He had to earn his spot in the team. He wasn't good enough to play test cricket, so he didn't play. The selectors didn't pick him just because they felt sorry for him - they picked him because he was good.
So why was Lance Armstrong handed all of those free victories? Why did his team manufacture victories for him? Why was it so easy for him?
Then came the news reports that it wasn't just his team - in fact Lance Armstrong had this huge lung capacity, something like double that of the average person. How did that happen? Oh, just luck, they said. I smelled a rat. It reminded me of these swimmers with overly large feet and hands, that act as flippers. There's drugs that do that to you. I am sure that there are drugs to increase lung capacity too. The whole thing always smelled like a rat.
When Lance Armstrong finally retired, I was so happy, as finally the Tour de France was worth watching. But then, almost immediately, it was surrounded by drugs controversy. I am sorry but no, it was actually fair for a change, with everyone having a chance of winning, instead of Lance Armstrong having it handed to him on a platter. I was angry that they were banning all of these cyclists for drugs. It didn't seem fair. If they were taking drugs, they weren't getting much benefit out of it - it led to them narrowly winning, or coming 4th, or 10th - rather than winning by an absolute mile every year for 7 years in a row with nobody else having a chance.
They kept saying that at least they had gotten rid of all of the drugs cheats. But then more and more kept getting found! I felt like screaming out - but the problem was while Lance Armstrong was going.
That is not to say that I knew for certain that Lance Armstrong was a drug cheat. All I knew was that he was a cheat. He was someone who used a team to bully other cyclists around. He was someone who made a big deal out of surviving a type of cancer that almost everyone survives, a type of cancer that is no big deal. He was someone who used an apparently ridiculously unfair advantage in lung capacity to win. Every aspect of that was cheating. And, to make matters worse, the sheer size of his victories just smelled cheat to me.
When I first heard the USADA verdict against Armstrong what shocked me was that people were listening to Armstrong. Other people who were completely innocent would be assumed to be guilty just on suspicion of a drugs claim - yet with Armstrong he said that they were not believable. And this was some 2 or 3 years ago!
All of this went along with what I had seen throughout his entire career. Lance Armstrong was a manipulative bully, someone who had no respect for authority. If the USADA is saying you are doping, you take it seriously - don't try to threaten and intimidate them!
And shame on the World Cycling Association for listening to Armstrong. Seriously - he had no evidence to support the notion that it was a conspiracy. Shame on the media, shame on the fans for believing him. Why the hell would the USADA make it up?
The thing is that we are now learning that anti-doping agencies have been on to Armstrong since before his first Tour de France, that he has been doped up throughout his entire cycling career. And, guess what? They decided not to pursue it because he had cancer. They didn't pursue it because his teammate died mid-race. They didn't pursue it because he had won 7 titles in a row and it would bring shame to the sport.
Well, what about now? How much shame is it bringing to the sport now?
The reality is that it should have been obvious to anyone who was able to see the big picture that Lance Armstrong was a cheat the whole time. It should have been obvious to all spectators, all officials, all media, everyone.
It is one thing when a sports hero comes back from nowhere to win. It is another thing when it is handed to them on a platter.It raises the question of whether we should allow drugs in sports like cycling - especially as it seems like more than half of the top level Tour de France riders have taken drugs during the race to enhance their performance.
But it seems that Lance Armstrong was taking a hell of a lot more drugs than anyone else, and even if you consider that drug taking is okay, it isn't fair when one guy gets a lot more than anyone else.
I don't think we should be upset at Lance Armstrong. He went through cancer - got way more sympathy than he should have - and then had a teammate die mid-race, and he used these two as a combination to manipulate the masses into feeling sorry for him, such that his rampant drug taking was ignored.
The people we should be upset at is ourselves.
HOW COULD WE BE SO STUPID?
Oh, and I use "we" to not include me personally. I always knew that Lance Armstrong was a cheat. I always complained about it, said that it ruined the Tour de France.
If we learn nothing more from this, please let us learn not to be so stupid. Please!
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