The Lance Armstrong Rule

Perhaps it is worth noting right at the outset that where Lance Armstrong is personally concerned, there are (quite literally) no rules. I think we all know the story by now. Lance Armstrong, a household name in this country and many other countries around the globe, became preeminent in the sport of Cycling, and incredibly rich along the way. He won every major Cycling title, and held the record for winning seven Tour de France titles. The Tour de France is the most grueling road race and most prestigious event in the world of Cycling. To win this title seven times is a feat of Herculean proportions, unmatched by any other athlete in any other sport. To make his story even more compelling, Lance Armstrong is also known for his successful battle against testicular and brain cancer and forming the LiveStrong organization to fight cancer. The story is truly the stuff of legend.

Some time ago we learned that the story is indeed only a legend. In reality Lance Armstrong was exposed as a cheat and a liar of equally Herculean proportions. He had long been suspected of using performance enhancing drugs and a procedure known as “Blood Doping” permitting him to perform at this unbelievable level. Most of us know the advantages one can get from using anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. Blood doping is the process of injecting (your own previously extracted) blood or just the red platelets to allow your body to store and use more oxygen. He did it all. It is all forbidden in the world of Cycling and most other athletic endeavors. The sport of Cycling is notorious for these kinds of abuses, but Lance Armstrong is undoubtedly the king of cheating in the Cycling world.

In recent months the International Governing body that controls the sport of Cycling found that there was ample evidence to strip Armstrong of his Tour de France titles and several other titles. Only this week the International Olympic Committee announced they were stripping him of his Olympic Medal. Now the web of lies and deceit have all come down, and we see exposed before us a horrible human being who swindled the entire world. So what was his next logical step? You guessed it- next stop Oprah Winfrey. As one commentator noted, it’s interesting that he chose Oprah as the venue to make his “confession”. After all, the commentator said, “she’s not exactly known for her journalistic talents”. Going to Oprah is another attempt by this this prince of lies to manipulate us. I admit I haven’t watched the entire interview where he “confesses” because practically nothing he can say will change my sense of this sordid story. But I did hear on the news that he still hasn’t fully confessed- claiming to Oprah he stopped cheating in 2005. My personal BS meter pegged out on this one. Frankly his confessions don’t interest me that much. It’s fairly clear that he invented this incredible apparatus of cheating to serve his ego and to create a massive fortune. A quick study of his ruthlessness shows that he may have established the most intricate and pervasive system of sports cheating in the history of sport itself. His feats were questioned from the beginning of his career, but it seems anyone who became a serious threat to his empire encountered incredible personal intimidation or was sued. Isn’t it rich that Armstrong had the gall to sue people for lying about him, when he knew they were telling the truth all along? There is a long trail of people whose lives have literally been ruined by this man. I cannot count the times I’ve seen him on TV providing exhaustive rationalizations and anecdotal reasoning to reassure us he was innocent.

For me, his character and credibility are beyond salvation and my first inclination was to say we should all just banish him from our thoughts forever. Then I reconsidered, and instead started thinking that he is the perfect reason to establish The Lance Armstrong Rule. The Lance Armstrong Rule isn’t for him- it’s for us.

The LAR, as I now call it, is that we should always be reminded to “think instead of believe”. All too often in this culture we want to believe that our heroes really are capable of super-human feats. Somehow we’ve come to believe that when our sports heroes tell us it’s because they really are “that good” or they “train that hard” we don’t question it. Anyone who has lived in their own body in excess of thirty or thirty-five years intuitively knows that we don’t become better athletes as we age- particularly after years of grueling, difficult, pounding, competitive sporting activity. But we want to believe! Unfortunately the LAR eventually comes into play and we have to admit something else caused this to happen. Then we are crest-fallen, and pull our children close to tell them their heroes are just flawed human beings after all. And we are left with the anger of knowing we got duped again.

I will not forget a story 60 Minutes did on Roger Clemens some years ago. Clemens was climbing into his forties and was still a force on the mound- the most intimidating pitcher in baseball. Of course he took the film crew through his fabulous home training facility and tediously traced his training regimen, to explain why he was still such a great pitcher, in such great shape. Then, it turns out he was “juicing” the whole time. Even his friend pitcher Andy Pettitte admitted to using steroids with him. It’s something Roger still denies- or at least claims it may have happened by accident-like those hypodermic needles accidently jumped on his butt! Then there was the case of Seattle Mariner Brett Boone who came into his best-ever season after gaining over twenty pounds of muscle in the 4 month long off-season. He was having a great year, having turned into a power hitter after several mediocre years barely able to hit the ball out of the infield. Legendary Mariner sports announcer Dave Niehaus went on and on about how Brett really hit the weight room hard to transform his body into a power hitting machine.  Then Boone was named in the huge report Baseball finally did about their pervasive steroid problem.  Dave must have known better, but he chose to be knowing co-conspirator in keeping the myth alive.

The only encouraging sign of change in our culture of sports mythology, and our more broad-based acceptance of outlandish lying, is the inaction taken this month by the Baseball Writers Association. Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens were all eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  They are also the face of steroid use in baseball. The Baseball Writers did not induct any of them- primarily to make a statement about how the drugs have tainted baseball, and to say their feats should not be celebrated or rewarded because they cheated to achieve them. 

The pervasiveness of cheating, then lying about it, in sports is just one area that demonstrates a very real weakness of our culture. We tend to believe that anything an American does must be “the best” and we tend to elevate our heroes well above what reason tells us is even possible. Perhaps the worst part of this tendency in us is that we abandon our use of critical thinking when we judge the world around us. It seems we would rather have a Belief System than a Logic Model to guide us. I admit that having a belief system is much easier; and taking the easy way might be an emerging cultural trait too.  But when something like the Lance Armstrong thing happens we can’t just blame it on him alone. In some ways we have to ask ourselves why we believed the unbelievable in the first place and why it's so important to idolize these athletes.

Belief Systems have increasingly become a way to cope with issues beyond the sports world. In matters of public policy, this has become a very dangerous trend. Here are a few practical applications for the Lance Armstrong Rule outside of sports idolatry. When the energy industry tells you that 200 years of burning fossil fuels and putting billions of tons of pollutants in the air doesn’t affect the air, and the weather- even though we can all see the polar ice caps melting and actually see climate change happening before our eyes-then it is time for the LAR. When the gun industry, NRA  and right-wingers tell you that even though we have the highest gun ownership rates and the highest gun violence rates in the world (by far) – AND there is no correlation between those two facts- it’s time for the LAR. When the Republican leaders in Congress tell you we can’t raise taxes on rich people or corporations because they are “job-creators” even though we’ve had that policy for years and there is amble evidence it just isn’t true- you guessed it, LAR!

I keep hoping that we as a culture are starting to get wise to the fact that we have now experimented with belief systems, and will find that they are no substitute for knowledge, research, and critical thinking. This culture has more access to science and factual information than any other people on earth. But, as I heard a commentator (from another country) say the other night, “Americans are the most entertained, and the least informed people in the world.” If that is true we will continue to fall for the likes of Lance Armstrong, ideologue politicians, and others who tell us to ignore our lying eyes and just believe what they say. So when that happens, remember the Lance Armstrong Rule: Think-instead of Believe.

Thanks for looking in.

P.S. If you want heroes to believe in, try looking at Teachers, Firefighters, Police, Nurses, Advocates for the Victimized and the Poor and those who protect the environment. They don’t entertain us like the athletes- but they do more for our children, families and future than a thousand Lance Armstrong’s could ever do.