In real life, I work in training and development. I'm the guy at the front of the room, doing his best to teach you and entertain you while you sit there and doodle or check your phone. I mostly train other people's material, by which I mean someone else writes the stuff and I deliver it - although I like to think that I add value, somewhere along the way.
In the past, some of the material I've taught has used Lance Armstrong as an example. Of course, when the material was first written, when I first used it, we didn't know what we know now. Like a lot of (most?) other people, I believed the hype - the lie - that Armstrong was special. I believed that his success was down to ruthless focus and dedication, an intensity and focus that other riders didn't possess: a minute focus on details and relentless training. All of that was correct, I guess: his success was down to those things. And, you know, the drugs. Vast, vast quantities of drugs. In fact, if you look at it in one way, Armstrong was an even better example than we realised, taking his preparation and dedication further than we knew at the time.
Now, at this point, I too must come clean: you be Oprah and I'll squeeze out a tear or two. Like Armstrong I have also used performance enhancing drugs. I've done my job under the influence of, at various times: tea, coffee, Pro-Plus, Beechams powders, Nurofen, Day Nurse and, on one memorable occasion, all of the above at the same time. All of which have enhanced my performance to a degree. I personally think that Armstrong's use of drugs doesn't actually detract that much from his achievement - after all, he wasn't the only cyclist on drugs and it takes more than pharmacology to win the Tour De France. You couldn't, for instance, dose me up and expect me to win! I'm not excusing the drug use. It was illegal and he was cheating (and, by the way, "everyone else was doing it so it wasn't cheating" doesn't really wash, Lance) and there's no way around that: I merely point out that it doesn't make seven wins any less of an achievement. And he did it after beating cancer, for which I suspect he also took a drug or two.
No, the thing that upsets me the most about the whole situation is what all this has revealed about Armstrong's - and my - character. About him, it's not so much the flexible ethics towards drugs or even the lying - after all, once you start down that path, lies are pretty much a part of the deal. It's the nature of the lie - the self-aggrandizement, the myth of the courageous cancer-survivor, taking on the drugs cheats and winning clean, the insistence that those who didn't believe the story were poorer in spirit for not believing in miracles. And that's before we get to the bullying and threats and intimidation, the spiteful, vindictive and destructive way Armstrong dealt with those who sought to reveal the truth. And, of course, the fact that he made a fortune off the back of the lie he span, while honest cyclists lost out.
Are those "sins" grander in scale than, say, Mike Tyson's conviction for rape? Of course not. So why so I feel nothing but contempt and disgust for Tyson but feel so let down by Armstrong? The reason lies, I think, in my character and in the character of all those who feel the same way.
I believed his lie because I wanted to believe it: I wanted to believe in the miracle. It was a triumph of the human spirit story, evidence that anything was possible, that individuals could overcome their history and their limitations and achieve greatness. And I want to believe that's true - I want to believe that human beings don't need divine intervention or chance or luck to succeed: I want to believe that effort and work and determination will do it and, for a long time, Armstrong was proof of that. I guess the fact is I, and everyone else who believed, wanted it to be true so much that we turned a blind eye to the possibility that it might just be too good to be true. We didn't question it too hard because we wanted to believe; we made ourselves gullible. It's a mistake we probably won't make again.
Armstrong hasn't let me or you or anyone else down unless you were the direct victim of his deceit or a lawsuit. But he has, I'm afraid, made us all that little bit more cynical and because of that the world is a little bit poorer.
No comments:
Post a Comment