Why Lance Armstrong Had to be Brought Down

Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his medals for alleged use of performance enhancing drugs. A decade ago. From 1999 to 2012 he was a hero, the best cyclist in the sport, an inspiration to millions across the globe. He created a foundation that has done wonderful things to aid cancer research, and help cancer victims and survivors. He was an American icon. But America cannot have heroes. We cannot have great men. We have not been able to allow ourselves to have people who were smarter than us, stronger than us, better than us at anything, for generations. If such a man does come along, we may cheer and applaud him for a time, but eventually we grow jealous and must find a way to tear him down. He must become as small and petty and flawed as we are.

Of course every man and woman has flaws, especially those who gain fame. We are humans; we are flawed. There was a time when such flaws were understood to be there, but were not sought out, were not thrown into the spotlight in order to shame an otherwise great person. Instead those aspects of a person that were admirable and commendable were highlighted. This was not to coddle the ego of the individual, but to allow that individual to be inspirational to a nation. No man is a saint, and even historians are getting into the dirt digging idea and proving that the saints were no saints in their everyday lives.

But why can we not allow an individual who inspired us, who we all said at one point or another was the greatest among us in his or her specialty, why can we not allow that person to remain an inspiration? Why do we as a society insist on dragging our greatest back down into the mud we wallow in?

It took nearly a decade for “investigators” to “discover” evidence that Lance Armstrong had doped, although they were digging for it the whole time. He had passed every single drug test he was given for the seven years he was leader of the Tour de France. But now we say that those test results are still pristine (because of course no one has been trying, by hook or by crook, to prove that Lance doped). And of course with “new testing methods” these investigators can show that the test samples from a decade ago are still viable, untainted, untampered, and pristine, to prove that Lance was doping years ago.

The testimony from former teammates is also going unchallenged. But then, they were all threatened with lengthy suspensions unless they provided damning testimony against one particular man. That is not in the least bit a suspicious, threatening, coercive move by the “investigators.” And here I thought that those who were seeking truth and fairness did not threaten and coerce people. I thought that was the mob, or certain governments in history that were less concerned with truth than with spectacle and vengeance.

And vengeance against who? A man who inspired us, lifted up a nation, inspired couch potatoes and cancer survivors alike to get up and take control of their lives by exercising and caring about their bodies. How dare he. We are a nation who would rather have a “C” student as our leader than a Rhodes Scholar, because we enjoy having someone as ignorant and bigoted as we are lead us. We cannot allow athletes to remain great, we have to find a weak spot and knock them down. We cannot allow ourselves to believe in a person who is flawed, and all people are flawed. So we have to find those flaws, expose them, let those flaws obliterate everything great that our former hero did that we loved, and then rejoice that we have proved to ourselves that they are just as base and petty and vile as we are.

The defaming of Lance Armstrong was not about truth, or justice, or fairness. It was about our own selfish need to not have anyone be that much better than we are. How dare he have inspired us. How dare he be a hero.