It Isn't Fair, Mr. Armstrong

It isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair that Lance Armstrong lied, drugged and cheated himself to 7 Tour De France titles, and got an hour on Oprah.

It isn’t fair that he would sit in a tent and receive blood transfusions, while thousands of fans like us thronged outside, waiting for hours just to catch a glimpse of our icon.

So he was stripped of his titles, he lost a lot of money because of his endorsement deals being cancelled, and he will have to live with the shame and guilt for the rest of his life. And we all know, no matter what he says on prime time television, he can live with it. He’ll be fine.

What a sad time for the sporting fraternity it is. The media is already getting over it, and so are we. But somewhere, sometime, it will come up. When India will win a match by scoring 40 runs in 2 overs, there will be rumours about match fixing. If Djokovic is to win a Grand Slam, somewhere, some journalist trying to earn a living will question his ethics. And because of Lance Armstrong, his stories will sell.

I don’t know who to speak as. A fan, a son, a parent, a fellow professional athlete – he’s let them all down. And they all do, each and every one of them who dope their way to a level of success they would not have been able to achieve given their natural talent. You don’t get to play real sports on God-mode. Come on.

I think it’s human nature, the way we eventually accept these kind of people. I’ve seen it in college too. Person A is a guy who probably copied a couple of questions from the guy seated next to him. Everybody knows about it, he feels guilty, but people put him down anyway. Person B, on the other hand, was the guy with the cheat-sheets. You know who I’m talking about. We’ve all had that person in our class – the person who copied every single answer from little notes hidden in every available orifice. You know what we did to that guy? We put him on a pedestal. ‘Cheating is wrong, but if you can be so brave about it, you must be one tough dude. And we applaud you sir!‘ His stories became legendary, and he is always spoken of with awe and respect. And that is what will become of Lance Armstrong. A few years down the line, there will be some idiot who sees himself as a ‘Lance Abignale’, cheating and duping his way to glory. ‘Catch me if you can’, he’ll taunt. What a precedent to set, eh Mr. Armstrong?

I watched the interview on Youtube, and the part that made my blood boil was his insistence on having not doped post his comeback. That is not the point. It does not matter when you stopped doping. What matters is that you started it, and had no plans of stopping, had it not been for the cancer. For someone capable of running a worldwide scam that included smugglers and the mafia, it sure took you a very long time to ‘realise’ what you had done. It took the loss of one testicle to realise that you were cheating? How about we take the other, because one isn’t good enough for us. I wish we never had to see you after you got cancer, Mr. Armstrong, because that ignorance would have been bliss.

It isn’t fair when our heroes don’t care about us. We know the sport is not about us, it’s about them, the gladiators who sacrifice so much to get to where they are. But we live through them. Their triumph is our joy, their success is our contentment, their pain our pain. What gives people like Lance Armstrong the right to treat us so? What allows them to not care about us?

And what about men like Sachin Tendulkar? Sachin didn’t start smoking because he knew he would be a role model to millions. What about men like Rafael Nadal? Rafael Nadal switched from being a right handed player to playing with his left, just so he could improve his chances of winning. THAT is commitment, and THAT is a sacrifice, and THAT is what we call a ‘will to win’. Not taking testosterone. But then again, it only makes sense that Lance Armstrong had to do it – he wasn’t man enough.

Nothing is good enough for men like Armstrong. Anything he gets, even jail-time, just won’t be good enough. Will that give Erik Zabel and Robbie McEwen closure? Will it make them feel any better, that the only reason they were not able to beat this guy was because he was cheating? And that in spite of him having been stripped of his titles, they will still be second. How is that fair?

I bought a Livestrong band when they first came out. I know a lot of you did too. It didn’t really mean much at the time, but now it means absolutely nothing. I read his book during one of the toughest phases of my life, and it gave me inspiration. If that man could face those adversities and then conquer the world, there’s no reason I can’t do better for myself. All lies. This is what turning atheist felt like. Except that was liberating. This is like a slap across the face.

For shame, Mr. Armstrong. For shame.