By Paul Esau (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 31, 2012
The literary man and general pessimist Robert Penn Warren once said (through the mouth of Willie Stark) that “man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud.” When you search the depths of a man’s character for evil, Warren decided, “there is always something.”
Now Warren was speaking of pudgy Louisiana politicians, not the lean, yellow-jacketed figure we’ve come to know as Lance Armstrong, but the sentiment is universal. No one is innocent; everyone has a skeleton in the closet, and honour is a myth.
In the last two weeks Armstrong has been stripped of seven Tour de France titles, implicated in the largest doping scandal in the history of cycling, and forced to step down from the board of his proudest accomplishment, the Livestrong foundation. The abrupt fall from grace is painful given Armstrong’s fairytale-like success and potent survival story, and many have been left wondering if truth is worth the stain his demise is leaving upon his athletic and charitable accomplishments.
Armstrong is not the first to fall, and he will not be the last. His was a story too perfect, and it has succumbed to Stark’s “something” with terrible speed. Armstrong, like Tiger Woods before him, broke a trust which seemed almost sacred with the sporting community, and the consequences to his reputation, finances, records and future are clear.
It is a strange quirk of our culture which compels us to allow so much influence to our sports heroes, men and women who are undoubtedly great, but only proven so on the smallest spectrum of human accomplishment. A great cyclist is a great cyclist, but does that quality make him an acceptable role model? A great golfer may accumulate millions in winnings, but is golf a skill essential to the human experience?
Armstrong undoubtedly has the monument of Livestrong as part of his legacy, but then again, what sporting celebrity of his prestige has not created or donated to a prominent charity? What was it about him, about his sport, which made us follow his career and his accomplishments with such interest?
And what is it now that makes us condemn him for succumbing to that pressure to be the best, at any means necessary?
When coaches and spectators speak of the men and women who compete in the professional sporting world, they inevitably mention skill, but there is often a second component in the same breath. Sometimes it is called “presence,” sometimes “character” or “leadership,” but it speaks to their (and therefore our) expectation that these athletes—by virtue of the discipline instilled in them by physical necessity—are something more than simply masters of a specific ball, bat, board or bike. Commercials by Nike or Adidas encourage this perception of them as ascetics achieving spiritual enlightenment through physical perfection, and often society accepts this. We buy their shoes, copy their hairstyles, or buy their charitable bracelets and when they fall we feel a deep, personal sense of betrayal.
Lance Armstrong, for all the good his fame brought the fight against cancer, was only a man on a bike. He may have struggled, he may have fought, he may have cheated, but he did not deserve the pedestal upon which we decided to elevate him.
The measure of leadership, of character, has never been in skill alone, and it never will be. Our preoccupation as a culture with worshipping only the “best” in the sporting world often precludes the athletes who deserve our respect, who face their “corruption” head on and attempt to overcome it.
As Armstrong himself once said, “it’s not about the bike.”
