The fall of a legend

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For a sports illiterate like me, my knowledge about players in sports other than cricket is very limited. I know a couple of famous ones; Ussain Bolt, Phelps, Tiger Woods, Messi, Lance Armstrong... The list is not long. And of those, the only one about which I know more than their name and game they play is Lance Armstrong.

I read his book, one of the rare biographies I have read and was very impressed and motivated. Maybe because have not read about people coming out of cancer and achieving as much as he did in one of the most physically challenging sports, it felt really unreal and great. His book was inspiring at many levels and I took each of his words to be true. Including his tirade against people who 'wrongfully' accused him of doping. It had to be true, how could a person going through such tough times do something as wrong as that?

And then it all came crashing! I don't know why, but I felt personally let down when the truth about him came out. I had read his book, I had believed him, I had felt motivated by him, I had even felt dislike for the officials who have been 'wrongfully' hounding him for doping accusations even though he always came out clean.

As it later turned out, I had been wrong about it! All the way. It was not a happy feeling. Still I kept following up on what the latest updates on him were, expecting to find out it was all a lie and he had never doped! But alas, the truth was what it was.

And I also watched his interview on Oprah, to see if he was repentant, if he redeems himself, but that did not happen either. He wanted to seem genuinely apologetic, but all I saw was a defiant man, trying to justify himself not just to the world, but to himself too. In my view, he still feels he wasn't wrong, as everyone did what he did, he still feels he is being wrongly punished. And now, I have completely lost respect for him.

Sports has been affected by such massive fall downs recently, including Tiger Woods. A big consolation though was that Woods had not been dishonest about his sport, which had given him his fame. He was a faulty person but not a faulty sportsperson. But in Armstrong's case, he had brought a bad name to the sport itself, to everything he stood for.

I don't think he needs or deserves any sympathy from any of us now. And I think he should refund everyone for the book he sold, selling a lie:)

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