OK, so maybe it’s a felony, but somehow, I find it rather appropriate, don’t you? Earlier this week, six people pled guilty to selling phony versions of those adorable Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” wristbands. In addition, those pesky criminals had to turn over more than $112, 000 in profits.
No, this isn’t a holier-than-thou “You’re taking money away from children dying of cancer” column. Rather, it’s a holier-than-thou “Lance Armstrong is a cheating miscreant” column.
Apparently, the fake wristbands were being sold to retailers across New York City, meaning thousands of well-meaning New Yorkers were cheated out of their hard-earned cash. They were fooled. Suckered. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled. And it’s only fitting, considering the wool’s been pulled over the collective eyes of the American public for the past seven years by Armstrong himself.
I know, I know, speculation is only speculation. But for those who, like myself and many of my friends, have believed he’s been dirty from the start, last week’s report in a French newspaper that six samples of Armstrong’s urine tested positive for EPO, a performance-enhancing drug that has become notorious in the cycling world, wasn’t surprising.
Many have argued that the EPO problem is so widespread that, if Armstrong has been doping, he’s simply leveling the playing field and is no worse than anyone else who rides the Tour de France every year. It’s a good point, and I can’t say I completely disagree. I just find it ironic that Barry Bonds is considered completely guilty in the court of public opinion because of his near-impossible success over the past few years and because of his direct connection to Greg Anderson and the BALCO labs, while Armstrong is still considered the Great American Hero despite being in an almost identical situation.
Armstrong has worked extremely closely with Michele Ferrari, the Italian doctor who was put on trial for supplying EPO and other performance-enhancing drugs to athletes. And if this newest report is to be believed, then he has, indeed, tested positive-in which case, he’s no better than Bonds or Jason Giambi or Jose Canseco, no matter how dirty the sport of cycling is.
But of course, the Armstrong story came and went. No one really wants to believe it, no matter how damning the evidence. Armstrong continued to deny, deny, deny-and people ate it up. He’s everybody’s favorite inspirational fable-no one wants to believe he’s a cheater. He survived cancer, he won the Tour seven years in a row, he’s practically infallible. People will still point to him as a role model, they’ll tell their kids to be just like him. They’ll keep on buying those yellow wristbands by the bundle-not because they care about cancer, but because they just love good ol’ Lance.
Believe me, I don’t want to be right. I don’t claim to care much about cycling, but I certainly don’t want the best in the world to be a fraud.
But, as the old saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. All I see when I look at Lance Armstrong is a big black cloud.
