I used to be an avid cyclist. Even beset by a myriad of physical problems, I still climb onto the old stationary bicycle and crank for my minimum daily dose of 30 minutes of cycling every day.
Road cycling is a grueling experience, but the fresh air and the freedom of the open road on two thin rubber wheels is priceless. It’s not just good for the heart. It’s good for the soul. I miss that. I really do.
Lance Armstrong said he’d been doping for 20 years. In other words, he never experienced the essence of cycling. He was always jacked up on physio- and psycho-active drugs, hyped up in a steroid rage, attacking the road the way kids attack zombies in video games.
Lance Armstrong never appreciated the exquisite engineering of racing bikes, the rolling elegance of sweeping roads across grand mountain landscapes, the thrill of sharing exquisite pain with fellow cyclists.
He was in it for the glory, the ego, the adulation, and the sheer arrogance of knowing he had fooled the exquisite engineering of doping tests – tens of thousands of times.
Lance Armstrong wants our sympathy for conquering cancer. For all we know his lifelong addiction to steroids and “performance enhancing drugs” is what caused the cancer in the first place.
What sublime gratification that must have been – the universal admiration of every human being on earth for championing what we fear the most, the big C.
Lance Armstrong has in one swell foop tarnished the accomplishments of every cancer survivor, every disabled person, and every honest athlete (if there is such a thing anymore) who ever put pedal to medal and pushed his body beyond its earthly limits.
I find it infinitely offensive that Lance Armstrong continues to live on his multi-million dollar estate in Hawaii. I am totally depressed when the media says we forgive him.
They forgive him. I don’t.
As Imus in the morning says, Lance Armstrong should lose everything and get a job as a bicycle messenger in Austin, wearing a dirty yellow jersey and peddling a one-speed Schwinn on wide knobby tires.
He should live the rest of his life in shame and infamy.
Lance Armstrong is a loser if ever there was one. He should be in jail not giving million-dollar interviews to billionaire interviewees like Opra Winfrey.
He was an example for all aspiring athletes, and now he should be an example for all doping athletes.
All the fat, lazy, unhealthy media couch potatoes may forgive Lance Armstrong. No aspiring, has-been, or ex-athlete does. Not me, either.
Put him in prison and throw away the key.
