The demise of Lance

When Lance Armstrong made the announcement that he would stop fighting allegations regarding doping during his cycling career on August 23rd, I thought he had either evaluated his priorities and realized his Tour victories didn't define him and was ready to move on OR he knew that a mountain of undeniable evidence was just around the corner and he was trying to save face and take the high road before he was pegged a cheater.

There comes a time in every man's life when he has to say, "Enough is enough." For me, that time is now. I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. Over the past three years, I have been subjected to a two-year federal criminal investigation followed by Travis Tygart's unconstitutional witch hunt. The toll this has taken on my family, and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today - finished with this nonsense. - Lance Armstrong, August 23, 2012

That's it. Armstrong quit. The poster child for never give up did exactly that. I'm angry because I believed him and believed in him for so long. "Everyone wants to know what I'm on," he said during memorable commercial. "I'm on my bike busting my ass 6 hours a day. What are you?" The answer his teammates and every other cyclist interviewed gave was, "the same thing as Lance...and our bikes for 6 hours a day, too." His actions over the past two months have been nothing short of an admission of guilt. Quitting the fight says he's guilty of cheating.

The Lance Armstrong that I admired was not a quitter. He was a cancer survivor and became the most dominant athlete in professional sports. People like that don't quit, but this one did. His 'enough is enough' statement came only a few weeks before a gigantic, 202-page compilation of eye-witness accounts of him taking performance enhancing drugs on several occasions. He never failed a drug test (at least what we know), but quitting the fight this way is worth more than 1,000 failed drug tests. The man who didn't quit, who wouldn't quit, when death was knocking on his door quit when allegations pilled so high they couldn't be denied any more. If the allegations were false, he would have fought them forever.

What message do these past few months give to people who looked to Armstrong for inspiration? Cancer patients, cancer survivors and so many others now see a hypocrisy in a man who overcame death only to quit when his personal reputation was on the line. Certainly, Lance Armstrong, the inspirational cancer survivor, and Lance Armstrong, the disgraced cyclist, will be put into two separate categories for some time. His foundation has raised over $500 million for cancer research. Regardless of how he earned his platform, that is commendable. Livestrong will continue to do great things in medical research, but will forever be followed by a cloud of suspicion and scandal. It's hard to imagine that it will be as effective as it was before Armstrong's reputation was permanently damaged.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." - Abraham Lincoln