Pages

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Lance Armstrong

Did you ever want to believe in something so much you purposefully ignored clear facts? I have. I think it’s pretty clear what I am talking about, but I haven’t wanted to talk about it at all because it hurts. I am not mad. I am hurting in my soul. Writing this has my stomach all rung up because I don’t want to say it. I was wrong. I guess we won’t know anything for certain until the over hyped, narcissistic interview airs tonight, but didn’t we already know? Lance Armstrong is indeed a cheater and maybe more importantly, a liar and a bully.

For those of you who don’t know, I have been a very big Lance fan for years. I have a USPS cycling jersey, I read the book, a have the overpriced custom sunglasses. In years since his retirement and second retirement, I have adamantly defended him in accusations of doping. This is all over. He cheated. He lied about it. He viciously attacked those willing to come forward and tell the truth. He built a charitable foundation on a mountain of lies and bribery. This hurts more than just Lance and the people he took down with him. This hurts the people who believed in the idea of the Livestrong Foundation. I just don’t see a way it can continue on after this. But I am not going to harp on about all this, there are plenty of people doing that for me. I’d much rather forget him, move on, and try to help the people with real problems.

There are those out there cheering this fall from grace and I have words for you:

You were right, now shut up. What kind of sad, messed up world do we live in where people are happy when news like this breaks? This was not just a great sports story, it was a great human story. What has happened to our culture? We enjoy tearing people down more than building them up. Lance deserves every bit of criticism coming his way, no doubt. He brought this upon himself by first cheating and second lying about it and trampling those around him who did nothing but tell the truth. But must we revel in it? I am sad because I can no longer trust anything.

2 comments:

  1. So... did you watch the interview? I'm interested to hear your reaction.

    Also, did you see this article by Rick Reilly? It would seem he feels similarly to you. http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/8852974/lance-armstrong-history-lying

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did not watch the interview of many reasons, starting with the narcissistic undertones and ending with I am lazy and have better (more entertaining) wastes of time.

    I did read Reilly's article and he pretty much says it all.

    ReplyDelete