Armstrong Goes Down

Since I’ve posted on this subject a couple of times in the past I felt obligated to comment now that Lance Armstrong has taken the fall. It’s quite ironic that like his riding, he was too good at cheating to get caught, but it was the lesser riders who got busted and didn’t want to go down alone who ultimately brought him down as well. Try as they might, the authorities couldn’t get him while he dominated their sport, but his own teammates did him in. The sad part is that since they didn’t get him during his career, the only people who will suffer now, other than him, is the people he helps through the Livestrong Foundation.


I admit to getting caught up in the Armstrong fever after watching some clips of his early rides in the Tour. Now, we have long been sports fans, and we love to watch the special ones; Jordan, Jackson, Lewis, Sanders, Hamilton, etc. for their towering athletic talent. In Armstrong I was fascinated by another type of athletic prowess, that being the ability to endure pain and suffering on a level we can’t imagine. When I watched him drive his body over those mountains and break the will of the other riders, it was a whole other kind of appreciation for a god-given talent.

I have a friend at work who rides on a serious level. I asked him about how he and his fellow riders looked at Armstrong. He said everyone was and is in complete awe of him because of his ability to endure. He uses a term: “pain cave” that riders talk about when people enter a state of mind where the pain is so great but they embrace it and overcome it. Armstrong was the guy who lived there most comfortably and I won’t forget watching that happen on TV and knowing I was seeing something unique. Jeremy Schaap talked on the radio today about cyclists being the athletes who have to reach the deepest inside themselves to find something that only a sliver of people can ever comprehend. Because of that, despite everything, Armstrong will always inhabit a special place for me.

S