Hero

Today I was planning on writing about my experience in the Tempe International Triathlon, which I competed in this previous weekend, but my intention to present a nerdy, statistical analysis of my performance—including a graph!—has met with the reality of time constraints, so I must delay that post until next week. Instead, in that post's place, I'd like to write about today's big professional cycling news: Floyd Landis's admission to doping and his accusation of other big names involved in performance-enhancing drugs.

Firstly, bonus points are awarded to those of you who are asking how a guy who doesn't seek out the news can know about this event. Really, really, I don't seek out the news, but it seems that at times that the news seeks me out. This is one of those times. Coworker Nick told me about Landis this morning, and, I admit it, I then sought out more information on my own on the matter. I want to clear my conscience from the start about my use of performance-enhancing news. Phew, I'm glad that nasty bit is over.

I imagine that all over the Internet thousands of strangers are engaging in heated debate about Floyd Landis and his accusations. Specifically, I imagine most people are most interested in Lance Armstrong because he is, frankly, professional cycling's number one star. I'm not going to detail my own opinion as to whether I think Armstrong doped; that question has been covered in great detail in numerous places in the Internet, and I suspect that if you care about the matter enough then you will do your own homework and reach your own conclusion. I have a different point to make.

I remember once having the topic of Lance Armstrong and doping come up when I was with my family, and my sister asked me my opinion. My response was that, basically, yes, I think it's highly probable that he doped. To me, after doing my own homework on the matter, this just seemed like the straightforward and common sense answer. What surprised me is that Rachel was disappointed by my remark; she had figured and hoped he was clean. “Why does my sister care whether Lance doped?” I wondered. It was only after asking myself this question that I realized that Lance is not merely a seven-time winner of the Tour and an amazing cyclist (even when assuming he doped), but rather he is an inspiration for countless people, including many non-cyclists, and that many people have developed an emotional investment in his image remaining clean. For some people this investment is rather large; you need only search for a few of these heated debates doubtlessly taking place right now in Internet fora to understand what I'm talking about. For others, like my sister back then, the investment is small, but it's there nevertheless.

In this light I think it's unfortunate that we are a sports-obsessed culture that collectively pays millions for the privilege to worship individuals who then become incentivized to act in dishonest and non-upstanding ways. Maybe Armstrong is clean. Maybe he's not. The point, as I think many golf fans may better understand these days, is that the problem isn't whether a sport's number one star is clean and upstanding or not but that we ever placed our personal interest in the matter.

There remain plenty of ways to develop one's own separate peace and to admire Lance Armstrong regardless whether you think he doped. In the meantime, let's not elevate the guy to hero-worship even if he is clean. Watch and read about his exploits on the bike. Enjoy them. Then get off that couch and onto your own bike and be your own hero.