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Off Topic: my thoughts on Lance Armstrong

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Sorry Lance, your 7 titles are no longer. Photo AP via si.com

(Editor’s note: on this holiday workday when nobody’s likely reading baseball blogs, I’m clearing a topic that i’ve been collecting links and thoughts on for the better part of a year.   For months and months I’ve collected URLs for stories related to Armstrong.  I think part of this post is merely a cathartic cleansing of this draft blog post from the my WordPress instance so that I don’t have to look at it any longer.  But if you’re interested, read on.  This is a nice little timeline of events that led to his downfall at the end).

For months and months, I defended Lance Armstrong as being somewhat victimized by what I thought was an over-zealous pursuit of him based on evidence that wasn’t “court of law” worthy.   I think at the beginning I may possibly have thought he didn’t cheat, I definitely defended him in arguments among friends, saying that hearsay and testimony did not equate to scientific evidence in my mind.   The Tyler Hamilton interview on 60 minutes was pretty damaging though, and I began to waver in my beliefs that perhaps Armstrong was just the sole guy in a sea of cheaters.  After the federal case was dropped but the USADA case kept going, I began literally to feel like some sort of national witch hunt was underway, and my defense of Armstrong was less about his guilt or innocence and more about not agreeing with the vendetta that was clearly against him in the eyes of certain people (the head of the USADA Travis Tygart, Christine Brennan at the USA Today, etc).

Coincidentally, I hadn’t felt this way since the Pete Rose situation, where I felt like former baseball commisioner Bart Giamatti spent far too much time going after Rose, to the point where the pursuit of Rose felt like it was a personal vendetta.  (Coincidentally, if you’ve read the Dowd report, and if you’re familiar with the Rose situation, you’ll realize that my “feelings” were really misplaced.  My Dad in particular has zero sympathy for Rose, nor does a lot of the baseball community, and after going back and reviewing the literature at the time I realize that my “memory” of the time period was skewed.  I was a bit too young to really understand the issues at hand).  For the USADA’s head, I thought this was similarly a personal vendetta gone wrong.   I wasn’t alone; see the links below for congressional outrage over the findings this summer from those who thought the same vendetta thoughts.

Its clear now, I was foolish to ever defend him, even in casual sports-fan conversations.  Not only was he a fantastic cyclist and an inspiration to an entire generation of cancer fighters and survivors, he was also apparently the ring-leader of the greatest doping scheme ever concocted.  He tested negative for PEDs hundreds and hundreds of times over his career.  He kept clean while hundreds of his fellow riders were found to be dirty.  That’s an achievement.

What I don’t get is this: why would Armstrong admit to this now?  He’s already stripped of his wins, he’s already banned from competitions, he’s already resigned from Livestrong, he’s already lost his sponsors, and he’s already being sued by former sponsors and others looking to recoup losses.  What is his motivation now?  I mean, you’ve lied for 10 years, why not continue to live the lie at this point and keep the bravado up.   I don’t know.  Perhaps its just as simple as releasing the burden of guilt.  But what has changed now in January of 2013 vis-a-vis this guilt versus the last decade or so?  Does he really want to get his name cleared just so he can compete in triathalons on the side?   Does he think that he can get his ban reduced now, after all that has happened?

Apparently the question was asked and answered in the 2nd part of the interview (which I havn’t gotten to yet; having a newborn at home gets in the way of little things like TV, sleep, etc) and the answer seems to be “Guilt.”  Guilt on Armstrong’s part as he watched his 13-yr old son defend his father’s honor to a friend.  His confessions seem more understandible now.  This point is confirmed in this link here (which is also on the below timeline).

Personally, I view cycling similarly to the way I view all the runners in the 1988 Olympic game 100meter final.  The entire sport was a mess (is still a mess?), and if you weren’t cheating you weren’t trying to win.  That’s a shame to say, but by most accounts it seems to be true.   I’m not as concerned about his legacy or his wins or records; just like Barry Bonds‘ 73 homer season, we’ll always have to explain away his accomplishments as being artificially accomplished.  I don’t have children who are old enough to have idolized Armstrong and who now need to be told that he cheated, so perhaps i’m more than a bit jaded.  I’m also not a massive cycling fan who now feels cheated by this admission.

Here’s the collection of links that more or less follow the timeline, starting mostly with Hamilton’s 60 minutes interview, which seems to really have set off the chain of events that led to his Oprah Winfrey interview.

I think this about covers it.  I’m publishing this blog posting and probably will never talk about Armstrong  again.  And in about 15 minutes, i’m guessing America will do the same.

Written by Todd Boss

January 21st, 2013 at 11:01 am

Posted in Non-Baseball

Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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2 Responses to 'Off Topic: my thoughts on Lance Armstrong'

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  1. My theory on why Armstrong confessed now is a little different. I think that he is trying to improve his chances of being able to do something high profile later in his life. I expect that he’ll disappear for a while, and then he’ll resurface. Maybe public office, maybe running a business, I don’t know what. At that point, he’ll still need the public to forgive him, but he won’t have to deal with a lot of people trying to prove that he cheated. It should be less of a media frenzy (or that is what i think he may believe, anyway). He may also feel like America mostly forgives or forgets about earlier mistakes (the Marion Barry/Bill Clinton syndrome). I don’t know if he’ll be successful because this might be different. But he seems too calculating for me to believe it was genuine remorse about his son.

    Btw, Rose has always been different in my eyes, because what he did strikes at the essence of competition, and if you lose confidence in that, then the sport is ruined. You can’t trust it any more, it becomes like professional wrestling. And the ‘I only bet to win’ doesn’t work for me because what does that mean about the games that he didn’t bet? Was he trying less hard? I think it is very dangerous for the game of baseball to start down that path.

    I don’t know if any of that is logical, it is just how I have always seen it.

    Wally

    21 Jan 13 at 4:17 pm

  2. One of the big criticisms of the Oprah appearance was his lack of sympathy, lack of emotion, continued calculated answers. One theory has him admitting now so he could get his ban reduced so he can compete in triathalons (his first love). But that’s kind of an odd reason … in 5 year’s time he’ll be in his mid 40s; he wants to go through all this so he can compete in his mid 40s in events that have no international presence?

    What else is he qualified to do at this point? A retired professional athlete generally is only qualified to go back and coach in his/her home sport. He’s banned for life from cycling. Though I guess being the figurehead of Livestrong gave him some qualifications in running a charity. I figured that he’d lay low for a while and then do some do-good speech circuits on the virtues of staying straight and off PEDs or something. You’re right though; america forgives and forgets. Richard Nixon? By the time he passed many many people had forgotten entirely about Watergate.

    My dad’s take on Rose kind of goes like this: MLB hires Dowd to investigate; he investigates and creates a rock solid case against Rose. MLB goes to Rose, shows him the report and the testimony and says “look, you did this. Admit it and we’ll create a path for you to be re-instated at some point down the road.” And Rose basically said F you. Even Rose’ attorneys pleaded with Rose to just admit it, that the evidence was too much to argue against. But he was too hard headed and Giamatti eventually banned him for life.

    I don’t argue against your take on betting in sports. We’ve been lucky in america and really havn’t dealt with too many issues w/r/t betting and fixing pro games. It seems like every other year in European soccer ther’es match fixing allegations.

    Todd Boss

    21 Jan 13 at 4:53 pm

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