Contributed by Michael Levin, BusinessGhost
Lance Armstrong may be, like Hobbes’ conception of life without government, nasty, brutish, and short. But a personality, competitive and abrasive, by all accounts, is no reason to strip a man of his astonishing accomplishments.
Armstrong, of course, is the seven-time winner of the Tour de France, a three week, 2,000+ mile trek through the mountains and valleys of France. Armstrong holds the record for three things: winning the Tour de France the most times; winning the Tour de France the most times consecutively; and annoying the hell out of his teammates, the media, and the French, and not necessarily in that order.
And now an anti-doping agency, the USADA, has come along to strip Armstrong of his titles. Armstrong, who had a one percent chance of surviving testicular cancer prior to his legendary Tour de France run, devotes most of his time to raising funds for cancer research, which he does as spectacularly as he did when riding his bike in the Pyrenees. Apparently exhausted by the decade-long battle to keep his name clean, he gave up the fight this week and is no longer contesting, at least in this particular arena, these challenges to his integrity.
Let’s do what the USADA ought to do and look at the facts. Armstrong passed more than 500 drug tests during his cycling career. He failed none. His accusers have been legion, perhaps because he is not the nicest and meekest of athletic heroes. He’s no Roger Federer, charming his opponents in the locker room at Wimbledon. He’s no Magic Johnson, smiling his way into the hearts of millions. He’s got the ultra-competitive streak of a Michael Jordan or a Kobe Bryant, neither of whom is known for being a nice guy.
Armstrong also had the temerity to be an American dominating a European sport on French soil. Armstrong’s victories, in a sport for which most Americans have little affinity, were an ongoing affront, a violation of national pride, in France. It would be like a group of Martians coming to Yankee Stadium and winning the World Series.
For seven straight years.
If you look at Armstrong’s accusers over the years, they include competitors, teammates, and journalists. Not one of his accusers wears a lab coat. Several of his loudest critics are themselves convicted drug cheats: Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton. Armstrong has also had a long and loud public controversy with a prior Tour de France champion, Greg LeMond. (At least LeMond had the decency to have a French-sounding name.) So there’s obviously no love lost between Armstrong and other Tour de France winners.
But the fact that these guys don’t get along doesn’t prove anything about Armstrong’s use or non-use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Another of Armstrong’s accusers is a masseuse who claims that Armstrong told her that he used PEDs. Are we really accepting some sort of he said-she said as a substitute for 500 negative drug tests? Read More
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