Lance Armstrong's Tour de Betrayal
Barb ShellyNike fired Lance Armstrong today, and said the cycling champion had betrayed his sponsor.
“Due to the seemingly insurmountable evidence that Lance Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade, it is with great sadness that we have terminated our contract with him,” Nike said in a statement. “Nike does not condone the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs in any manner.”
To say that Armstrong “misled Nike” is an understatement. He betrayed his sponsor, as he did his worldwide fan base. Armstrong wasn’t just another superstar athlete. He was the cancer survivor, the comeback kid, the philanthropist, the inspirer. He was the guy who supposedly could scale mountains and accomplish anything through the sheer force of his will.
And a pharmacy full of banned substances and tricks, it now appears.
Armstrong’s “Mr. Clean” act never made much sense. Cycling is one of the world’s dirtiest sports, and we were supposed to believe that Lance was winning multiple Tour de France titles on the basis of his prodigious training regime and some carbo loading, while his lesser competitors were injecting steroids. It never did add up.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released a report last week laying out, in painful detail, its case that Armstrong practically made a science out of illegal performance-enhancing drugs and techniques, and he encouraged his teammates to do likewise.
One can’t help but draw parallels between the stories of Armstrong and the even more tragic saga of football coach Joe Paterno. The fall is steeper and harder when you have placed yourself on a pedestal.
Brandon Lewis
7 months agoArmstrong is a fraud, liar and a cheat.
Sad!
Jorge A Garcia
7 months agoIn the words of the immortal fictional character Dr. Gregory House: “Everybody Lies”…..and those words are not fictional.
Bob Fritsch
7 months agoThe notion that a cynical, sophisticated organization like Nike could be fooled by anyone for any length of time is beyond laughable. They have made billions selling tennis shoes. They rode the Armstrong cash cow to the last dollar.
Chris Siple
7 months agoThat so many believed Armstrong for so long is a testimony to the need they had for a hero. It took great powers of self-delusion to be certain that he was the only clean cyclist. He was still a cancer survivor, an amazing athlete, and an inspirational figure. It was understandable that he did what everyone else in his sport did, and then lied about, just as they all did. I imagine he felt trapped in the lies and couldn’t bring himself to set the record straight. But that’s all come crashing down, and all by his own doing. In the end, he’s not a proper object for admiration or hate. He’s just a fallible human whose lies finally caught up with him.
Phil Cardarella
7 months agoActually, this guy is an argument FOR doping, since it certainly does not appear to have hurt him. I should be so healthy. Or so rich.
And, lest we lose track, before Armstrong more folks were actually interested in truffle pigging than in the Tour de France or any other cycling event. He made the event an INTERNATIONAL, GLOBAL event. He sold a lot of over-priced bikes and equipment.
OH, but he CHEATED. Probably no more than the other guys whom he beat by a few minutes or so. Wonder if they took blood from the runners-up. Or is that bikers-up? And it is not like anyone actually believed he wasn’t doping. What did he have to do? Fly like ET?
I guess the next big scandal will be the discovery that Achilles was on steroids.
Johnathon Busby
7 months agoAthletes sacrifice for their cause. We celebrate and laud athletes when they sacrifice their time, their long-term health, their relationships with their family. But they sacrifice their health by taking steroids, and suddenly we want to make them outcast.
Armstrong sacrificed more; he deserves his titles, regardless of what some bureaucracy has to say.
Richard L Wagner
7 months agoJohnathon,
I can understand how you feel. I had been an Armstrong fan, and I usually don’t look to athelets for role models or heros. But I am an avid bicylist and fan of the sport.
Still, a lie is a lie, and no spin or rationaling or excuses can change that. He cheated and he go caught. Of couse, he wasn’t the only one, but so can the guy who gets a traffic ticket. Does the policeman let the speeder go, because there are others out there speeding while the cop writes the ticket?
Phil Cardarella
7 months agoHe took a sport that no one outside Western Europe even knew existed. He made the Tour de France a global phenom instead of an in-joke for Jerry Lewis fans.
He gave hope and pride to cancer patients and survivors around the world. He used his fame to help others.
Oh, and he cheated very cleverly, which enabled him to achieve both of those other goals.
You know, a lot of folks think the miracle of the loaves and fishes was not that Christ actually created thousands more loaves and fishes, but that he convinced the crowd to set aside their own hunger and selfishness — and share the food they had brought. That He cheated.
Now, Lance is no Jesus. He did very well for himself in all this. But, you have to ask yoursef whether the world would have been better off without this survivor/hero — and whether the cycling fascisti pursuing him so many years later is really a good thing.